Booty

From its excellent, animated title screen, you can see at once that this is a salty sea-dog of a game in which you play Jim (me lad) the cabin boy on a hazardous quest to collect all the booty strewn around the decks of an old galleon.

From the time the title screen, showing a pirate galleon in a shimmering ocean appears, it is clear that Booty is a game on which a lot of time and care has been spent. As the game progresses it gets better and better with a variety of problems and a multitude of different ways of producing the final solution.

In a time when Manic Miner had kick started platform overload, Booty shone like a rising sun rippling on the sea and even now, under cobwebs and a few layers of dust its quality still glimmers.

I found the game to be a little low on concept and really more strategy than anything else - deciding which key to pick up and when. The graphics are chunky and rather un-Spectrum like and, unfortunately, this means that when the cabin boy climbs the ladders the machines colour problems were never more in evidence. The sound is also rather poor. A brilliant title screen sets the mood well and tehre is a catchy little tune. Quite a lot of screens for your money as well - some of them quite good, others best forgotten.

In a bid to capitalise on the computer gaming scene, British Telecom has recently entered the market with their Silver range of games - priced at £2.50.

This represents good value for money. It requires a slightly different approach to other 'ladder and levels' games - but I still didn't find it that compelling.