Take The Hot Seat

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BBC Mastermind is an excellently packaged set which contains two cassettes and a fairly good booklet, and is compatible with both the Electron and the BBC Micros.

As the title obviously implies, it is an implementation of the BBC TV series which people either seem to love or to hate. Even if you are one of the latter, I've started this review so I'll finish...

The awful theme is there, as are the famous words which introduce each competitor. A specialist subject is asked for, which is fine so long as you are into either sport and games or TV and films!

Otherwise it is necessary to buy another cassette - BBC Mastermind Quizmaster - which will allow a series of questions on another specialist subject to be written and stored for future use.

A problem would appear to be that the question files couldn't really be considered to be very fair, as they are bound to differ in length, complexity and difficulty. Maybe that wouldn't matter too much if the competitive element wasn't important, such as at a friendly party, but then I would be inclined to use one ofthe other excellent quizzes produced by Ivan Berg, such as the superb Royal Quiz.

The other option is to wait for the promised question files to be released, which will presumably widen the range of subjects available.

However, returning to the cassettes as they are at present, the implementation is quite superb. It remains very faithful to the original and you can almost imagine Magnus speaking the words that appear on screen.

Phil Tayler