The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Cookbook (Compton's New Media)
When you buy this CD-ROM, you are buying, among other things, a postage-stamp-sized interview with Jerry Lewis. Is this really something you want in your house? How 'bout a fawning summary of Ivana Trump's post-Donald accomplishments? Cher on haute cuisine? Any of Brooke Shields's recipes? Do you really want to hear Robin Leach braying "EXCELLENT choice!" whenever you click on something?
And the cookbook! Here is what the "Cooking Tips" section tells us: "Herbs can be used in place of salt. You can cut fresh herbs with scissors and pound dry herbs with a mortar and pestle." That's it. That's all of the cooking tips. Eat hearty!
Tony Quinn's Virtual Galaxies (Wayzata)
The copy on the jewel box promises "a dazzling journey into the virtual worlds of Tony Quinn." It should have promised "a sampler of what Tony Quinn was able to whip up while he was learning how to use his illustration and rendering programs," because that's what this is. One picture of canned cling peaches after another. Really.
And then there are the flying dogs. Well, they're more like brightly colored collections of cones and cylinders and spheres arranged into the rough shape of dogs. Doglike shapes that move over fractal landscapes in an approximation of flight for almost twenty seconds at a time! Bad synthesizer music!
This is exactly what people who don't quite know why they're spending a couple of grand on a multimedia PC are afraid they're going to get stuck with.
Dinosaur Safari (Creative Multimedia)
This sounds obvious, but apparently it is not: if you design a program for children, a child – or, at least, an adult – should be able to understand it.
In this program, you zoom into the past, voyage through weird landscapes, and from time to time animated dinosaurs crawl into your ken. Some of these dinosaurs are very nicely done.
But what, apart from showing off animated dinosaurs, is this program all about? It's hard to say: there is a story line about going back in time to take photographs for the National Chronographic Society, and there is some business about "energy crystals" that suggests that there might be a game of some kind going on here, but it's terribly obscure.
USA Today: The Nineties, Part One (Context Systems)
This CD-ROM gives you all of the excitement of reading back issues of USA Today with none of the inconvenience of being stuck in an airport between planes.
Animal Kingdom (Aris Entertainment)
This is a CD-ROM full of multimedia clip art. There's nothing here but photographs and short videos of animals. Cool if you want to use a picture of a screaming baboon for your Windows wallpaper, or if you're putting together a presentation that just won't fly without footage of mountain goats.
This also contains many reusable clips of New Age music – the less said about these the better.
The Interactive Adventures of Seymour Butts (Interotica)
Digital re-creations of surgically modified drug addicts performing joyless sex acts for a nation of consumers: this sounds romantically cyberpunk, but it's just smut. Grainy, jerky smut with a video image the size of a playing card. This program is actually less interactive than your VCR – it doesn't even have a "rewind" button
Compton's New Media: (800) 862 2206, +1 (619) 929 2500. Wayzata Technology Inc.: (800) 735 7321, +1 (218) 326 0597. Creative Multimedia: +1 (503) 241 4351. Context Systems Inc.: +1 (215) 675 5000. Aris Entertainment: (800) 228 2747, +1 (310) 821 0234. Interotica: (800) 865 9000, +1 (310) 453 5068.
STREET CRED
VR Means Voice RecognitionJust Zap It!
CD-ROMs That Suck
