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Written for the 48K Spectrum, Alpha-Beth is an educational/arcade game which is designed to make learning fun.

Basically, it's a quiz game but answering the questions is quite novel.

You are shrunk down to the size of a pea (in fact, you are a little schoolgirl) and faced with a giant keyboard and VDU. The questions are printed across the VDU and you have to answer them by leaping from key to key pressing the right letters to form your answer. Once you have printed out your answer, you have to make a mad dash for the Enter key to see if it's correct.

Things are not all rosy though, as you are chased around the keyboard by the school bully and an object which changes in relation to the questions. If you bump into one, you lose one of your six lives.

I had trouble loading as the inlay said LOAD " " and it wouldn't load until I entered LOAD " " CODE. Once loaded, you are presented with a menu and, on asking for instructions, I received about three pages in half a second.

I rang the company to ask if my copy was a 'special' just for reviewers, but they confirmed it was a production model.

Other options on the menu included one to save and load your scores from previous games. Another option enables you to select which operating keys you would like to choose or another to use a Kempston joystick.

There are several girls' names listed with scores of 1,000 by each one but not being able to read the instructions, I was quite baffled by them.

Once you have answered all the questions, you can go out and buy Alpha-Beth (Gen) with a database program so you can write your own questions. Also, there are to be pre-recorded databases on various subjects to be released. These can be loaded from the menu.

The game itself, I would imagine, is aimed at the 8 to 15 year olds.

Other games from A&F are Jungle Fever, Cylon Attack and Chuckie Egg.