Doug's Game Review Webpage

Reader Rabbit's Interactive Reading Journey , The Learning Company
G2: I paid over $100 for this program because one of my children has a hearing problem that makes it difficult for him to lear phonetically. At the beginning of May, I saw this on a discount isle for $29. This program claimed to be an 'intuitive teaching system' that learned your childs week points. Didn't see it happen. The activities were repetative, the system disappointing, the results unnoticible.
T5: Plug-and-play istallation, required no tweaking, takes very little drive space, good sound.

Reflux, Inverse Ink
G3: Billed as an interactive comic book, this product is superior to the Marvel versions. Most of the frames are animated or carry some sound effect. This is still a linear, two dimensional, digitized, comic book.
T4: I was surprised issue one ran under OS/2; issue two did not. All in all, a good product.

Simpsons Cartoon Studio, The, Fox Interactive
G4: This program allows users to cut and paste animated Simpsons characters onto their favorite settings from the show. Music, sound effects and actual character vocals are added to create freestanding, original cartoon episodes. The contruction environment is full featured, and, as such, complicated: perhaps to much for children under ten.
T5: The bells and whistles in this program are amazing. I am extremely impressed by this baby, but felt it needed better online documentation.

Toy Story, Disney Interactive
G5: This is actually a dozen games of as much stategy as skill. Each game, or level, has a different task that must be accomplished to move to the next level. I would warn that you must have seen the movie to play this game.
T3: This is perhaps the most system demanding program I've ever owned. I've got OCR and statistical analysis software that doesn't tax my system like this puppy. Perhaps it was actually written for Win95 and they chocked it down to Win3.1 out of greed.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, Broderbund
G5: When he opened the box, and pulled out a 300 page almanac, my son nearly fainted: he thought it was the instruction book! The player is assigned a criminal he must bring to justice, in order to earn the right to pursue the super theif, Carmen Sandiego (How does she execute those crimes in five inch spiked heels-- my wife can't even walk in them?) To catch the criminal, informants give clues that the player must look up to solve. A good learning experience.
T2: Believe it or not, this W3.1 program would not run under Windows? Of course the free tech support was worth what I paid for it.

Wrath Of Earth, Softkey
G1: Got this one for $1.00.
T1: You get what you pay for.

X-Men, ToyBiz/Marvel
G3: Another of the original four disks offered by Marvel. The other three were Fantastic Four, Spiderman, and Ironman. A fifth disk chronicalling The Pheonix Saga was offered, packaged with a Wolverine character in space gear. If you find the Pheonix/Wolverine in its original packaging for under twenty bucks, it's probably a good investment-- just don't open it to run the CD.
T3: See Fantastic Four for more info.

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