Dog Odyssey And Fisher-Price Wild West

Posted on July 23, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

As always, I have a huge stockpile of educational games that are conspicuously absent from MobyGames. DJP Mom and I continue to answer the call. Tonight, I attacked 2 different, early Macromedia Director games. In both of them, I felt that something was missing. Like, animations. Both games wanted archaic versions of Apple QuickTime that I was unwilling to install. Some games fail to run if they don’t get their desired versions of QuickTime. Tonight’s pair just silently refuse to play animations which makes certain junctures a bit confusing.

The first of the pair is Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey. Wishbone — apparently the canine star of a late-1990’s, PBS-produced TV show — finds himself washed up on an island where a city is burning in the background (turns out to be Troy). Pieces start falling into place and he figures out that he seems to have taken on the role of Odysseus in Homer’s classic epic.

Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey — Wishbone wonders

This could have proved to be quite an educational experience (I don’t know much about the literature). However, the game kept throwing this error:

Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey — Script error

That’s “Script error: Handler not defined … #FileIO” (reproduced textually for the benefit of search engines). That prohibited me from getting too far into the tale. Too bad, too, because the credits go on for pages. A lot of people really wanted to make this game successful.

The second game is Fisher-Price Great Adventures: Wild Western Town. It’s by Davidson & Associates, which strikes me as familiar. Ah yes: They were responsible for another Fisher-Price licensed title: Learning in Toyland. The first thing to understand about this game is that the game assumes that you might not know how to read. Also, the installation process offers an fascinating bit of nostalgia:

Fisher-Price Great Adventures: Wild Western Town -- Modem registration

Ah, modems; remember those? Anyway, you’re a deputy, the bad guy goes by the name of Bandit Bob and his dastardly crime is hiding gold bars all over town. Your job is to find the gold.

Fisher-Price Great Adventures: Wild Western Town — Finding gold bars

Along the way, there are a number of minigames and other activities, as is customary. This one is the Barrel Boot:

Fisher-Price Great Adventures: Wild Western Town — The Barrel Boot activity

You get to drop barrels into this automatic boot device and launch them at random citizens — and you’re the deputy lawman, remember. Hitting a target always has comical, good-natured results in this kids’ game. I didn’t get the full effect with a number of the targets. The screen would temporarily blank and I could tell that the game was trying to invoke the QuickTime Player to handle a more detailed animation.

See also:

Fisher-Price: Learning In Toyland

At MobyGames:

Ohio Distinctive Software

Posted on July 22, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

This weekend’s trip to the thrift shop yielded not 1, but 2 separate CD-ROMs from an outfit known as Ohio Distinctive Software.

I assumed it was just another in a long line of defunct software outfits. But as you can plainly see from the link, they’re still quite operational. And they have a huge catalog of titles for me to scavenge from various spent sources at bargain basement prices (certainly not for the prices they expect on their site).

These are educational software titles through and through. True to form, the manuals contained on the CD-ROMs present a classical academic conundrum — how to turn in source material as your own work. In this case, the manual perfectly, neutrally describes its game in a manner ready for inclusion into MobyGames. My difficulty will be coming up with my own rewording.

Not a big problem, though; the manuals are far more detailed than is absolutely necessary and I think I can express the games in simpler terms. The first game is GeoRunner. It revolves around a trademark ODS character named Blit (memo to game companies: don’t task your programmers with creative endeavors such as mascot naming or else you end up with something like ‘Blit’). This is a little alien dude whose only raison d’être is to get captured. He’s basically a serial captive. He gets captured so much that there is a governmental agency named the Blit Rescue and Tracking Squad (BRATS, I guess) devoted to getting him out of binds (motto: “U Findum Freeum”).

Your method for freeing him? You have to track down keys in different countries. Collect enough keys and unlock Blit’s current cage. Then he skateboards right into another cage. Don’t think about the setup; it’ll only frustrate you. In order to find the countries that hold the keys, follow the clues that the game gives. In the easier levels, these clues are very straightforward (“Go to El Salvador”). In the more advanced levels, they become trivia about the country (“Go to the country that used to be called Abyssinia“).

I must confess I was learning some interesting geographical trivia. If only there were some way to achieve the same effect without the grating Blit.

The second title is Superheroes Math Challenge. Tech support time: This game reports the message: “This program requires at least 3MB of free virtual memory to run”. My 2 GB of physical RAM must not be enough. I can only guess at the logic the game (or the underlying Macromedia Director engine) must be using to make its determination. Fortunately, ODS addresses this precise issue on their website. Unfortunately, it’s incorrect. They advise the user to manually dial down their amount of virtual memory to the range of 200-400. But that’s 200 MB – 400 MB. Following their example, I set the range from 2 MB – 4 MB and the game ran fine. Just a tech note for the inevitable Googler stumbling upon this blog post. Be sure to reset the virtual memory when you are done with the game.

Once again, the manual severely over-explains the game. Basically, you choose one of 3 “heroes” (Blit makes an appearance again, but as hero instead of victim) and take them flying. The game gives you a math formula to solve. You have to fly toward the correct solution. This was the level 1 challenge:

$Superheroes Math Challenge - Adding oranges$

Honestly, all of the problems were either adding 2 oranges or 2 apples. And, umm, I still only got 4 correct on the first round. Hey, leave me alone! The controls aren’t all that responsive and there are other objects to run into. I decided to see how hard things could get and cranked it up to level 50. This covers square roots and negative numbers:

$Superheroes Math Challenge - Tougher problems$

It’s a one-trick game but it was suprisingly fun while forcing me to fly and do math at the same time.

At MobyGames:

Beauty OR the Beast

Posted on July 20, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

I moved states some time ago and while I had a good stable of retail shops dealing in spent video games in my old town, I have not found much in my current locale. That changed recently when I found a thrift store that I have occasion to visit on a near-weekly basis. Each time, I score 5-8 new CD-ROMs that I have never heard of before; many of them are unheard-of by MobyGames as well. The balance tips heavily in favor of forgotten educational titles or other Macromedia Director-based games, which fits right into my plan. It’s possible that there are other scavengers who visit the shop with more frequency and are snatching up titles with wider appeal. But I enjoy the more obscure stuff anyway.

Unfortunately, these titles are so obscure and lacking in supporting, superficial literature that it’s a gamble — but only a dollar gamble or so. Such was the case with Alien Racers which sounded like an awesome racing game. I was a tad suspicious that the CD-ROM prominently displayed Macromedia Director and QuickTime logos.

Alas, it’s just an interactive comic book.

So let’s move on with one that I sincerely hoped was not a mere storybook in CD-ROM form: Beauty or The Beast. That’s right– not a typo; it’s an ‘OR’, not an ‘AND’. The game does bear the markings of Emme, which gives me chills. This company was involved in the accursed Mr. Men and Little Miss series. But to be fair, they were only involved in the distribution, not the development.

So this game is loosely based on the classic Beauty and the Beast fairy tale. It is most assuredly not based on the popular 1991 Disney variation. According to Wikipedia, the game’s story is not strictly based on any other known variation.

Beauty or The Beast - Character selection

Your choice at the start of the game is to, as the title implies, choose to play as either Beauty or the Beast. This sets you on one of 2 adventure paths with 2 different back stories. In the Beauty version, Belle’s father is wandering through the forest, gets lost, finds the Beast’s castle, ambles inside and is summarily imprisoned. Back at the dinner table, the clock strikes 22:00, the stew is getting cold, and Belle decides to form a one-fairy-tale-character search party.

Beauty or The Beast - Waiting for dinner company

She instinctively heads straight to the castle and this is where the adventure begins. It’s a point and click adventure where she moves from room to well-illustrated room and generally finds a puzzle or minigame in each one. This was the first one I found:

In the spirit of Frogger, the player must guide all of the curiously hydrophobic amphibians from the middle to the outer edges of the fountain. Do this by clicking on a frog to make it jump. It is necessary to make the frog jump through 3 rings of lily pads moving at different speeds. Miss a pad and the frog promptly swims back to the safety of the middle. Also, they won’t stay on a pad forever before jumping on their own accord.

This minigame stopped me dead in my tracks for the “Beauty” half of the adventure:

Beauty or The Beast - Spider and moth game

The moth is suspected to want to tell you something. But it gets caught in a massive, cooperative spider web. It is necessary to continually click on the individual spiders to knock them down to the bottom of the screen while the moth slowly makes it down to the hole near you. If the spiders reach the moth, they simply push it back to the top right corner of the screen where it has to reset its journey.

Beauty or The Beast - The Beast’s backstory

So there is also the “Beast” half of the game. The backstory here, told in a sepia tone, is that a princely figure was at his castle, minding his own horse, when a witch came along and put a curse on the whole place. My adventure with the Beast — the first task is to investigate this female interloper who has recently come knocking — didn’t last long since his very first minigame is to light 6 torches in a foyer by clicking on each. The catch is that the last must be lit before the first goes out or you have to start over again. Basically, it takes the same lightning mousing speed as the spider/moth game described above.

The game shares some major annoyances with those other games mentioned published under the Emme umbrella. Primarily, meandering, unskippable dialogue. There was also a serious flaw present in the torch minigame where it was impossible to properly quit the activity through normal means. The in-game menu is inaccessible during minigames and the escape button usually present during minigames was missing. I had to use more “out of band” Windows methods to quit the game. Poor form.

Pretty game, though. Much credit for that.

See Also:

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (SNES)

At MobyGames:

Beauty or the Beast

The Wild Thornberrys Movie

Posted on May 22, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

I didn’t want to go into this one cold so I hit up Wikipedia for the requisite background info on the Nickelodeon franchise called The Wild Thornberrys. It seems that they’re a family of nature videographers who make the rounds in the African wilderness. Somewhere along the line, the cartoon was deemed successful enough to warrant a feature-length film on the subject matter. Based on my reading of the Wikipedia synopsis, The Wild Thornberrys Movie video game works to follow the plot of the movie more or less faithfully.

The Wild Thornberrys Movie — Swimming with the dolphins

I thought that this was just going to be a series of disconnected minigames. In fact, there are 3 distinct types of activities present: minigames (7), multiplayer games (3), and the main story game. The minigames include a jigsaw puzzle, a painting activity, and a sliding tile puzzle (nooooooooo!). There is the enjoyable and eye-pleasing Swimming with the Dolphins minigame seen above, where you compete against the computer-controlled dolphins to dodge sharks and collect starfish. But there is also the baffling strategy card game called Feed The Animals:

The Wild Thornberrys Movie — Feed the animals before the poachers do

The goal of Feeding the Animals is to feed said animals before the poachers do. I’m not sure if I see the logic in that. But I understand that the poachers are supposed to be the antagonists in this tale. I came to my own conclusion, however, that any animal dumb enough to be snared by these tactless poachers probably deserves to be turned into a trinket. You know, Darwinism and all (in fact, a supporting primate character is named Darwin). To illustrate what I mean, the first challenge presented to you when playing in story mode is to save the cheetah cubs from the poachers– the poachers who are trying to swoop down using a helicopter in order to swipe the young cats.

The Wild Thornberrys Movie — Save the cheetah cubs

But then the main character, Eliza, gets carried away by the helicopter and must be rescued in a separate game. Eventually, Eliza winds up in a private British school along with her monkey and endeavors to escape. This is the section that put an end to my adventures, though I gave it a good shot. The first phase of the school game has Eliza wandering throughout her mostly vacant school dodging the occasional guard and trying to find Darwin the monkey. I actually had to draw a logical map on paper to keep this part straight since everywhere looks pretty similar; mercifully, the developers threw in numbers on the hallways and doors. The guards in this stage are beyond stupid– they pace back and forth in a straight line and only “catch” you if you happen to be standing directly in their line of pacing. Then you get sent back to the start of the level.

The Wild Thornberrys Movie — Procession of guards

Things get tougher when you find the monkey and try to escape via the garden maze where the guards are a tad more diligent. This part is segmented into several areas that must be unlocked with gate keys. The most humorous aspect is that the guards exercise strict jurisdiction over their segment and will not cross outside of their boundaries. I eventually developed some strategies, like trying to get all the guards to follow me in a strict procession as I searched for the area key, which changes position each time. The aptly-named Darwin monkey would get stuck sometimes but not to worry– he couldn’t be captured and would eventually catch up.

I couldn’t get past the segment where I had to hop on a bicycle and hightail it out. It’s not easy to pilot the bike and I never got much opportunity to practice before getting caught and sent back to the start of the stage.

Through it all, I have to give this 2002 title proper credit– it’s very well engineered, very colorful, very well-animated, and reasonably fun. In fact, I may even revisit it someday to play through to the end, since I didn’t even get through half the levels of the story mode.

At MobyGames:

The Wild Thornberrys Movie

Let’s Ride: Corral Club

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

I picked up another girlie game from the same office store that usually supplies such titles. This one is Let’s Ride: Corral Club. It’s a horseback riding game. The game’s mere existence might not be so outlandish; that there is an entire series of Let’s Ride titles, more so.

Let’s Ride: Corral Club — Horse Configuration

First, you customize your girl’s appearance. Girls are the only option, eliminating any doubt of the series’ target demographic. Then it’s time to trick out your pony as seen in the screenshot above. Then choose one of 3 game modes: Practice, Competition, or Pasture.

Practice allows you to rehearse the one task you have to perform in this game: maneuvering your virtual equine organism around 3 barrels. The game guides you with arrows in this mode, but offers no such guidance when you leap hoof first into the actual competition:

Let’s Ride: Corral Club — Replaying Horse Action

Competitive times are are well under 20 seconds and get tighter as you reach higher levels. I don’t mind telling you I became extremely proficient at rounding those barrels. You wouldn’t believe how many different competitions there are in the game: Local, City, County, Sectional, Regional, State, National. I didn’t play long enough to see the Planetary or Galactic stages.

Can this possibly be all that there is to the game? The cliche that immediately springs to mind would be, “one-trick pony”. I proceeded to the Pasture stage. This presented a no-pressure romp around the same 3 barrels. However, it then offered a different barrel course called slalom:

So the game mixes it up a little bit. I have no idea if this arrangement ever comes into play for the main competition, though. And I wonder what can possibly comprise all the other episodes of the game? Barrels in daring new arrangements? Hopefully, other series titles at least feature jumping. And you know that I’ll probably be the one to find out sooner or later.

Hello Kitty Dream Carnival

Posted on April 6, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

Remember when I wrote about that South Park episode that featured World of Warcraft and I said that I would likely be analogous to the Butters character playing a Hello Kitty franchise game? Did you think I was joking?

I present Hello Kitty Dream Carnival. I was buying a new office chair at the same office supply store where I procured My Fantasy Wedding and Bratz: Rock Angelz some months back. They’re firmly equal opportunity in their game selection and had 2 different Hello Kitty titles. The other one is Cutie World, but that has already been entered into MobyGames by — who else? — kiddie game-playing comrade DJP Mom.

So there are 8 games/activities, par for the course for this type of game. I just knew there would be a memory/matching game. To its credit, this game’s matching activity is better engineered than most — Ferris Wheel Friends:

Hello Kitty Dream Carnival — Ferris Wheel Friends

This is the first time I have encountered a word search in computer game form. I have to admit that this actually challenged me, if only because I was up against a timer that resets when you find a word.

Hello Kitty Dream Carnival — Pen Pal Word Find

I can’t believe I actually developed a strategy for beating this kid’s game: find a word in the list and put off circling it until the timer is almost up while searching for another word in order to maximize the time.

This was my favorite game: Penguin Plunge. Adjust the drop height and the angle of deflection of the trampoline and try to land the penguin in the tube. Sometimes there are other goals, such as a hoop to jump through or airborne treats to collect on the way.

Hello Kitty Dream Carnival — Penguin Plunge

Not a bad little 1/2 hour screenshot recon.

Gaming Pathology

Piles Of Games, Copious Free Time, No Standards

Category: Windows Games

Dog Odyssey And Fisher-Price Wild West

Ohio Distinctive Software

Beauty OR the Beast

The Wild Thornberrys Movie

Let’s Ride: Corral Club

Hello Kitty Dream Carnival