It was only a matter of time before Garry Trudeau the man who mocked the Newton with "Egg Freckles" and made the homeless Elmont an online force (lunatic@street.level) went electric. The newly wired Doonesbury, recently released by Mindscape, comes in two flavors: Doonesbury Flashbacks: 25 years of Serious Fun, a CD-ROM compilation that includes every panel of the strip's quarter-century run, and The Doonesbury Election Game: Campaign '96, a hands-on role-playing take on presidential politics.
Election Game demands political savvy: you join the fray as a campaign strategist for the candidate of your choice. Pat Robertson and Norman Schwarzkopf anyone? The party-agnostic CD-ROM then has you plot a campaign drawing on polling histories, demographic studies, and policy briefs � a file of videotaped speeches by past presidents is on hand to supply inspiration. A companion Web site (www.doonesbury.com) allows you to stay abreast of current issues and share your successes and failures with fellow politicos.
Having read Doonesbury long before I could get half the references ("What's Watergate, Dad?"), I particularly enjoyed Flashbacks. The disc provides a lens through which you can view the strip's history or take a more personal jog through the backstreets of the past. One example is Trudeau's dead-on skewering of aspiring lawyers everywhere as the young Mike and J. J. turn to comfort each other after briefly considering law school (an outlet nearly every college grad pondered in the '80s post-crash recession).
Perusing Trudeau's gallery of magazine covers is akin to thumbing through a zeitgeist flip-book. From Newsweek to Mother Jones, the style and subject matter reflect not only how his characters have grown and changed but the shifts in society at large, from the laid-back commune to the laptop and beyond.
Doonesbury Flashbacks: 25 Years of Serious Fun Windows CD-ROM: US$40. The Doonesbury Election Game: Campaign '96: $30. Mindscape Inc.: (800) 234 3088, +1 (415) 897 9900, on the Web at www.doonesbury.com.
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