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As the 'Godfather' to a gang of mafia men, your job is to keep them all happy by making lots of money and buying arms to fight off rival gangs. You've also got to pay for police co-operation and buy 'customers' who are in need of your brand of protection.

Alex: As you might expect from Melbourne House, the graphics are exceptionally well defined; the detail is superb, right down to the cigarette smoke. There are several varying screens, each making good use of contrasting colours, and the overall display is very clear and pleasing to the eye. Added to this is the very fast response time which allows the game to proceed as quickly as the player wants it to, and the Charleston that's played in the introduction.

Alan G: The idea of interacting with a comic strip is excellent, and if you become too successful, a rival gang sends out a hitman; the cafe shoot-out that results is superb arcade sequence. Most of the game, however, is about entering how much money you want to spend on guns, bribes, customers and so on. There's also a wonderful micro movie at the end of each year's business. Superbly detailed graphics, excellent animation and choice of colours.

Alan H: The drawing of the graphics is incredibly fast; in fact, they appear almost instantaneously which is all the more impressive considering their very high quality. Equally astounding is the logic behind the game. It's consistent, but doesn't produce outcomes that are in the least predictable - every game seems to be quite different from the last. Even the title screen is very good. This game is well worth the money at £6.95.

Alex Entwhistle, Alan Grier, Alan Hunter

IN THE DAYS of lead overcoats and concrete boots, when bootleg liquor cost blood and Bogart ruled the Bronx, there was one gangster whose exploits have until now remained obscure. His name was Mugsy.

In Mugsy, the new release from Melbourne House, you play the part of a gangland leader. The game requires you to make decisions as to how much money to extort from your protection rackets, what to set aside for bribery and how much to spend on arms for your underlings.

Thus far the game is a moderately simple version of King, the land management game. Melbourne House has taken the concept and, by the use of extravagantly marvellous graphics, turned it into a minor masterpiece.

Each decision you make is portrayed in cartoon form, with the words in speech bubbles; a respectably large number of screens complement the story, in the style of old gangster movies. The pictures look to have been designed by a genuine artist and add immensely to the atmosphere of the game. At the end of each 'year' you also have an animated cartoon of an event during that year. There are only two of those short films but both are interesting to watch and they use the Spectrum graphics capacity to the full.

With so much visual display, the game must suffer from memory restrictions and there is not a great deal of variety in what happens from year to year compared to programs like Dictator by dK'Tronics. That said, Melbourne House has captured the atmosphere of old Hollywood movies so well that one tends to forget the limitations of the game and enter into the spirit happily.

Inevitably the graphics will tend to become uninteresting after they have been seen enough times but while they remain fresh they are a delight and make the game a pleasure to play.




MUGSY Memory: 48K Price: £6.95 Gilbert Factor: 8