[{"TitleName":"Besieged","Publisher":"Sulis Software Ltd","Author":"","YearOfRelease":"1983","ZxDbId":"0012110","Reviews":[{"Issue":{"Name":"Crash Issue 5, Jun 1984","Price":"£0.75","ReleaseDate":"1984-05-24","Editor":"Roger Kean","TotalPages":126,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Roger Kean\r\nConsultant Editor: Franco Frey\r\nProduction Designer: David Western\r\nArt Editor: Oliver Frey\r\nClient Liaison: John Edwards\r\nStaff Writer: Lloyd Mangram\r\nContributing Writers: Matthew Uffindel, Chris Passey\r\nSubscription Manager: Denise Roberts\r\n\r\nTelephone numbers\r\nEditorial/office [redacted]\r\nAdvertising [redacted]\r\nHot Line [redacted]\r\n\r\n©1984 Newsfield Ltd.\r\nCrash Micro is published monthly by Newsfield Ltd. [redacted]\r\n\r\nNo material may be reproduced in whole or in part without written consent from the copyright holders.\r\n\r\nPhotosetting by SIOS [redacted]\r\nColour origination by Scan Studio, [redacted]\r\nPrinted in England by Carlisle Web Offset Ltd, [redacted].\r\nDistribution by Comag, [redacted]\r\n\r\nSubscriptions: 12 issues £9.00 UK Mainland (post free)\r\nEurope: 12 issues £15 (post free).\r\n\r\nWe cannot undertake to return any written or photographic material sent to CRASH MICRO unless accompanied by a stamped addressed envelope.\r\n\r\nCover by Oliver Frey"},"MainText":"Producer: Sulis Software\r\nMemory Required: 48K\r\nRetail Price: £8.65\r\nLanguage: Machine code\r\n\r\nThis package comes with two cassettes in a plastic videostyle box. The games within are one of a series of four spelling programs under the Spellbound heading. Besieged has as its graphical theme that of a castle being attacked by the Infidel. You must get a Crusader to cross the moat and relieve the castle. This can only be done by building a bridge, the stones of which are made up by correctly spelling words. On the back of the box it suggests the age group for these games as being 15 to adult, and certainly the words encompassed in these two programs are not simple ones.\r\n\r\nEach has three difficulty levels, easy to difficult. On the two easy levels you are given a clue and below it 12 jumbled letters from which the word must be made up. On the harder level you are not given any letters to use. A correct entry results in the broken span of the bridge above being repaired by one block containing the entered letter. If the entire word is correctly spelt then the bridge is fully formed and the crusader can cross into the castle. When 10 are successfully over the Infidel are beaten. Any incorrect entry results in the letter appearing as a building block against the castle walls and an Infidel leaps up on to it. With three incorrect entries the building blocks reach the top of the castle wall and the game is lost.\r\n\r\nThat's basically all there is a the game. The reason, presumably, for having two cassettes in the package (they are both the same) is to incorporate a sufficiently large vocabulary of words to make it worthwhile.\r\n\r\nCRITICISM\r\n\r\nThe graphics work very neatly with visuals complementing the game idea in a suitable fashion. Input and response time is quite fast. so there's no hanging about. The words to be spelt and the clues given make for an entertaining as well as educational program which should prove valuable as a home teaching and revision aid. It should also make for a family quiz evening game. The use of clues adds a crossword problem solving element to the straightforward problems of spelling correctly some quite hard words. Clues like 'distinct, separate' turn out to be the word 'discrete'. And this points up another aspect of Besieged: that of forcing the player to recognise the vagaries of English spelling. Discrete and discreet, principle and principal are examples of the sort of thing we all stumble over, and this program makes the most of them.\r\n\r\nCOMMENTS\r\n\r\nControl keys: alphabet keys\r\nResponses: fast\r\nUse of colour: simple and effective\r\nGraphics: good\r\nSound: useful beeps\r\nFeatures: two cassettes in one box","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"General Rating: For advanced and not so advanced spellers, but it does require some knowledge of words.","Page":"66","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Roger Kean","Score":"","ScoreSuffix":""}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":null,"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Personal Computer News Issue 52, Mar 1984","Price":"","ReleaseDate":"1984-03-15","Editor":"Cyndy Miles","TotalPages":90,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editorial\r\nEditor: Cyndy Miles\r\nDeputy Editor: Geof Wheelwright\r\nManaging Editor: Peter Worlock\r\nSub-Editors: Harriet Arnold, Leah Batham\r\nNews Editor: David Guest\r\nNews Writer: Ralph Bancroft\r\nHardware Editor: Ian Scales\r\nFeatures Editor: John Lettice\r\nSoftware Editor: Bryan Skinner\r\nPrograms Editor: Ken Garroch\r\nPeripherals Editor: Piers Letcher\r\nListings Editor: Wendie Pearson\r\nEditor's Assistant: Nickie Robinson\r\nArt Director: Jim Dansie\r\nArt Editor: David Robinson\r\nAssistant Art Editor: Floyd Sayers\r\nLayout Artist: Nigel Wingrove\r\nPublishing Manager: Mark Eisen\r\nAssistant Publishing Manager: Sue Clements\r\nPublishing Secretary: Jenny Dunne\r\n\r\nAdvertising\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Sarion Gravelle\r\nAssistant Advertisement Manager: Mark Satchell\r\nSales Executives: Christian McCarthy, Marie-Therese Bolger, John Bryan, Laura Cade, Paul Evans, Deborah Quinn\r\nProduction Manager: Nikki Payne\r\nAdvertisement Assistant: Karen Isaac\r\nSubscription Enquiries: Gill Stevens\r\nSubscription Address: [redacted]\r\nEditorial Address: [redacted]\r\nAdvertising Address: [redacted]\r\n\r\nPublished by VNU Business Publications, [redacted]\r\n© VNU 1983. No material maybe reproduced in whole or in part without written consent from the copyright holders.\r\nPhotoset by Quickset, [redacted]\r\nPrinted by Chase Web Offset, [redacted]\r\nDistributed by Seymour Press, [redacted]\r\nRegistered at the PO as a newspaper"},"MainText":"PLAY AND LEARN\r\n\r\nColin Cohen on educational software for the Dragon, Spectrum, BBC and Commodore 64.\r\n\r\nNAME: Mr T's Number Games, Mr T's Money Box, Mr T Tells The Time\r\nSYSTEM: BBC, Spectrum, Commodore 64\r\nPRICE: £12 each\r\nPUBLISHER: Ebury Software, [redacted]\r\nOUTLETS: Mail order/Retail\r\n\r\nNAME: Wordpower, Besieged, Wordsplits\r\nSYSTEM: BBC, Spectrum, Dragon, Commodore 64\r\nPRICE: £8.95 to £11\r\nPUBLISHER: John Wiley, [redacted]\r\nOUTLETS: Retail\r\n\r\nIn PCN 48 I mentioned there were certain conventions observed by book publishers. One of the most obvious is that in the better class of production the publisher take a certain amount of care to ensure that the pages don't fall out. This is the nearest equivalent that I can think of to a series of programs-that won't load.\r\n\r\nGOOD HOUSEKEEPING\r\n\r\nWhen I received the first series of Good Housekeeping software (it is available for the Spectrum as well as the Beeb) they would not load. Or rather, out of a whole series, only one program would load and the usual operating system fixes had no effect. All the programs had to be returned for replacement.\r\n\r\nIt would seem that all National Magazine's resources have been concentrated on protecting the tapes against copying - indeed you are even warned that attempts of copying may affect the tapes themselves.\r\n\r\nMy major complaint is that some of the programs start in Basic while others are in code. While it is not expected that a child should start the programs on their own it seems quite reasonable that they should be able to use them unsupervised subsequently. This is made difficult because some of them are loaded with CHAIN\"\" and others with *RUN. There is nothing on the tapes to indicate this and the parents' handbook is printed in a type small enough to make PCN's small ads look large.\r\n\r\nApart from this annoying idiosyncracy the programs - have common features. There is Nat Mag's own 'Mr T' who does a neat little dance if you get something right, and turns some fairly odd colours if you have a load error (there was only one on the replacement tapes). All the programs have a common title page and the block numbers count back to zero through the lengthy load. There are also common parent screens.\r\n\r\nNumber Games is a pre-school teaching aid. In the first stage the spots jump off a ladybird and then have to be counted back on again. A nice touch is the way the ladybird is animated and walks off the screen when the child gets it right. A later version requires the child to go count the spots and then tap the appropriate number key as opposed to the earlier version in which the learner counts the spots out loud and taps 'N' once for each spot.\r\n\r\nOther programs on the tape draw large numbers of the child's choice on the screen and have a splendidly-animated elephant eating a number of buns.\r\n\r\nThe Money Box program seems to be a perfect example of what a micro is not good at. The graphics are simply not up to depicting the different coins on the screen and even the relative sizes are not clear. All its other failings relate to this. Alphabet Games draws groups of letters on the screen. You choose which group, depending on any problems the child may have. I have to say that I preferred the Chalksoft version (PCN 16) and the parent screen that came with the program was not the one described in the documentation. I do, however, feel that one is entitled to expect the BREAK key to be adequately trapped (it is not trapped at all and the program can't even be owed) just as ESC can be used to take one back to some form of menu (it is).\r\n\r\nAfter all if one really needs to BREAK or ESCAPE this can always be done by a final option on the menu.\r\n\r\nOur favourite was Mr T Tells The Time. We especially liked the way in which numbers fell off the dial if you try to put them in the wrong position on a good old-fashioned analogue clock. Unfortunately, the real problem with telling the time is the minutes rather than hours and this is beyond the scope of the program. A good word can be said for one aspect the documentation - all the programs, come with suggestions for further related activities.\r\n\r\nWILEY/SULIS\r\n\r\nThe second batch of programs comes from academic publishers John Wiley who have a very good reputation in the higher education market and are marketing software produced for them by Sulis of Bath. I admit that my very high expectations were sadly disappointed. Having cut my way through the adhesive tape that implied at least a short, sharp sentence in the Tower if I even thought of copying the programs, I was rewarded by two of the three loading without error, while the third could be loaded with *OPT2,0, though I had to use my back-up recorder for them all.\r\n\r\nWhile the lengthy load goes on the screen displays another copyright warning - it's a pity as much effort did not go into on-screen documentation. For instance, ESCAPE is trapped, but while BREAK is not, the program can be OLDed.\r\n\r\nThere are all the usual options of difficulty in Wordpower and several different ways of playing each game. In one way or another you have to match opposites, similies, collectives, adjectives, nouns and synonyms. The graphics are totally without imagination, the sound bored me and all but half of the program consists of DATA statements.\r\n\r\nIt's also irritating to have 'The right answer is...' displayed every time you enter the correct word.\r\n\r\nBesieged is for the dedicated anagrammer - the best one can say is that the anagrams are often very difficult indeed; I suspect too difficult for most secondary children. Up to ten letters may be shown, but as few as four are sometimes needed.\r\n\r\nWordsplits invites the child to match the second half of a word with the first. It is probably the best of the bunch, though like the other two it has boring sound and graphics. None of them do anything that could not be done better by a book of the same price or cheaper.\r\n\r\nVERDICT\r\n\r\nAll six programs were grossly over-packaged. Of the programs in this review only one of the cassettes could be removed from its box without resorting to a screwdriver each time I wanted to use it.\r\n\r\nIt seems to me that no-one would spend about £10 on a book that taught as little as these programs. In particular, book publishers have long since given up binding books in this price range as expensively as the average program. The inevitable conclusion is that too much of the final price relates to the packaging and not enough to the contents. More effort needed.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"37","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Colin Cohen","Score":"","ScoreSuffix":""}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":null,"CompilationReviewScores":[]}]}]