Producer: Mirrorsoft
Retail Price: £8.95
Age Range: 5-8 years

This two cassette pack contains Mr Noisy's Word Game or children learning to read, and Read With Mr Bounce for more advanced readers. The first game helps the child to understand three sorts of words which sometimes cause confusion - opposites, comparatives and superlatives. There are nine short games in this section, the first four introducing words such as tall/short, high/low, wide/narrow and fat/thin, while the next two give practice in turning these adjectives into their comparative and superlative forms. The final three games provide an opportunity to practise all the skills learned.

In all the games, words are large and easy to read and the graphics are most attractive. Read With Mr Bounce extends the skills already covered and introduces the understanding of words such as in, on, outside - the animated graphics show the meaning of each concept in a very clear way before giving the child the option of typing in the word which shows where Mr Bounce is. For this, a plastic overlay is supplied, displaying the letter keys in their lower case form. The overlay is fine for the ordinary Spectrum but useless for the Plus.

Both Mr Noisy's Word Game and Read With Mr Bounce give the child the chance to obtain a printout, and the glossy booklet contains details on how to play the games together with colourful pictures of the characters.

COMMENTS

Control keys: ENTER, 1 and 0 for the easier games, letter keys for the more complex ones
Keyboard play: very responsive
Graphics: excellent
Use of colour: very good indeed

Dave: This is one of a series of educational programs. Included in the package arc two cassettes (one for each game), an explanatory booklet, and a plastic keyboard overlay which covers the alphabet keys and masks off the Spectrum keywords.

The package is aimed at five to eight year-olds; to be realistic though, it's more likely to appeal to children at the lower end of the scale.

On the first cassette is Mr iWoisy's Word Game, which is designed to teach words like 'small', 'wide', 'smallest' and 'widest'. There are nine different games to play, each of which can be selected from the main menu.

Other games allow various combinations of reading and writing exercises ranging from matching up a picture with the correct word to choosing the opposite to a displayed word.

The second cassette contains Read With Mr Bounce, which teaches position words like 'above', 'inside', and 'on'. Again, there are several different options to teach different uses of the words.

The graphics are large and clear, and this is just about the best educational package I've seen on the Spectrum. 5/5 HIT

Ross: The colourful screen layout and large, well animated graphics make this series of educational games very appealing. The pupil is lead through a number of increasingly difficult tasks, from single key answers to full sentences. A very good educational package. 3/5 MISS

Roger: A vital training aid for the illiterati scribbling in this rag. Your Spectrum rumours allege that it constitutes Troubleshootin' Pete's favourite screentime! 5/5 HIT