Backgammon

Copyright : CP Software | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

In this game you play the cyan men and the CPC plays the red. You move your men from the top right hand corner of the board in an antic-clockwise nature while the CPC moves in the other direction.

Each point is labelled with a letter. To move from a point type the point letter and one of the numbers shown on the dice, it?s impossible to perform illegal moves. Believe it or not this spiel is taken from the instructions in the actual game - sounds boring doesn?t it.

Graphics

The very idea of converting board games to home computers is beyond us, backgammon is certainly no exception and one that should be called a "bored" rather than "board" game as you would have to be in your mid 50?s to enjoy this game today. Graphics wise it?s as basic as you would expect, only a few colours are needed and displayed, it takes a while to draw the board out on screen (written in BASIC) and as you?ll see by taking a look at screen grab #2 it?s not without coding errors. It?s enough for this type of game but not nearly perfect by any stretch.

Sound

Sound is all but dead on arrival, it?s okay though because as we continue to say throughout reviews of this type of game, sound isn?t overly important and can often lead to distraction anyway. Something would have been nice though.

Gameplay

As for gameplay, well as we mentioned earlier you would have to be nearing your pension to get any kind of enjoyment out of this game on the real thing, let alone on a computer monitor were you would be struggling to see the screen in the first place. It?s simply a matter of moving your pieces about the board by entering numbers from the dice and the column letter of the piece you wish to move, all very boring and dull.

It?s pretty obvious that the game was written in BASIC as well, we had a little fiddle with the game for a while and would you adam and eve it the game threw up an error that usually only appears in games that have been crafted from a bedroom - to be exact it says "Improper Argument" when trying to perform an illegal move in the game itself. All in all whether you love Backgammon or can?t stand the site of board games in general this is one CPC game that?s worth avoiding and because of coding errors it?s almost unplayable.

Avoid it!