Seldom has Amiga Format seen a more appalling educational game. It's an Amiga port with absolutely no tweaks at all, and even as an Amiga game you'd wonder what they'd done with the other half of the disk.

It starts with Barney tucked up in bed, and you click on him to rouse him. Then he goes to the wardrobe, and you have to click on his red shirt to help him dress. Then you must decide whether the dear bear should eat a hearty breakfast or skip it. As he's too young to have a hangover we assume he'd want to stuff his face with sugar-coated Weetocrispypops, and sure enough we were told a good little bear always eats well. Remember, kids: good morality is a good diet!

Then Barney goes to school where there's a blackboard on which you click to access three different games: a 'how many' numbers game, a 'pick the letters' spelling game and a colouring book.

Wow. Dragsville. Look in the Deja Vu PD library for some good AMOS stuff instead, eh?

This is probably one of the worst programs ever. Three mouse clicks during an allegedly interactive intro get Barney out of bed and into school via a lesson on eating breakfast.

At school, he can click anywhere on the blackboard to choose one of three deeply trivial 'educational' sub-games. We haven't seen companion title Barney Bear Goes Camping yet, but we don't really want to either.

Um alle Klarheiten restlos zu beseitigen: Dies sind zwei unterschiedliche Programme für ein und denselben Zweck - nämlich dem, Kids zwischen drei und sieben Jahren als Lernhilfe zu dienen. Wir nehmen allerdings schwer an, daß Ihr alle schon zählen, buchstabieren und Formen erkennen könnt, weshalb Ihr uns hoffentlich auch diesen Doppel-Kurztest versteht.

Hüben wie drüben gibt's hübsche Bilderchen und (im Unterschied zu den Amiga-Originalen) umfangreiche aber englische Sprachausgabe. Da man den Sinn solcher Software getrost bezweifeln darf und es hierzulande ja kaum Erstklässler mit Englischkenntnisse gibt, halten wir die Teile für ziemlich Überflüssig.