Card games on computers have always been popular with software houses, but this version has the added dimension of the seductive Mindy to play against for clothes!

The actual Poker game is a quite traditional version of five card draw. The computer (Ossie) deals you and Mindy five cards each. You then bet against each other on the drawn hand until the best are equalised, follow this by rejecting the cards in the hand you do not want in an attempt to better your hand. Then there is a final round of betting until they are equal again, at which time the hands are laid down with the best hand winning. At any stage you may either STAND (do nothing with the cards), BET or FOLD (concede the hand). Recognised Poker hands are used; in descending chronological order these are the Straight Flush, Four of a Kind, Full House, Flush, Straight Run, Three, Two Pairs, Pairs and Highest Card.

After loading the screen presents you with a dancing card with legs, hands and head. This is Ossie, who spends a lot of time like some fairground shouter, tempting you to play with Mindy (cards that is). Pressing a key results in Ossie saying, Okay, let's play. Mindy says you'll play for her dress and she'll play for your shirt. On the left your five cards are drawn and displayed and the betting starts.

To get Mindy beginning to undress is quite hard work, since both of you start with £150 and only when that has gone will she start shedding at the rate of £50 per article. The programmer has ensured that she is reasonably well dressed, so there's quite a way to go!

CRITICISM

• If they are well done, card games on a computer can be fun, especially as they offer the opportunity to a solo player to enjoy two-handed games. This one has the added spice of being strip poker, although cheating is possible as the computer obviously cannot monitor your state of dress! The screen layout is clean and simple with Ossie using speech balloons to prompt the game at its various stages. Occasionally Mindy will interupt to use the balloon with comments like You've just lost your shirt, or expletives of a mild manner if she loses a large pot of money. Some of her phraseology leads me to suspect that though she may be someone's wife, Mindy is clearly no lady.

The input routine for betting and changing cards is simple, but I did feel the response speed could have been improved quite a bit. Obviously the striptease element of this game resides on how well the graphics of Mindy herself are drawn. Colour is only used on the left of the screen for the playing cards and these are perfectly adequate in detail and size. For the rest, all is black and white. The line drawing of Mindy is about as good for its size as you could probably get on the Spectrum, and manages to make her look reasonably attractive, if a bit solid of face. More animation would have helped and should be possible, but perhaps the producers felt that this would make the program too expensive for the likely number of sales it will achieve. There is a limited market for card games on computers—this one is a good Poker implementation—it's largely a question of whether Mindy will help extra special sales. Clearly it should not be sold to juveniles over the age of eighteen, nor to Miners.—Review in Crash, April 1985 (66%)

Links

• World of Spectrum
• The Girls of 64