From PEOPLE Magazine
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The recently released Windows 95 operating system will almost certainly make major money for Microsoft, but it has also spawned a host of training products. A sampler:
Friends' stars Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston bring their familiar patter to Windows class. (Perry: "I've lost entire papers in college because I just zoned on the file name." Aniston: "I've lost entire relationships that way.") Fast-paced and informative, the Video Guide lets you learn Windows from the safety of your couch without even logging on.
If you like your humor at a puerile level, try this CD-ROM in which a group of stand-up comedians (no big names here) give helpful—if silly—instruction on Windows features like the task bar and the recycling bin.
Microsoft's Web site offers free online help. The slick Windows area is brimming with the latest product information and simple answers for Windows questions like how its vaunted Internet connection will work.
DUST
Things don't look promising when you first arrive in Diamondback, a 19th-century frontier town. You are friendless and worse yet, gunless. But the 36 hardscrabble inhabitants of the game Dust will lift your spirits. Ask them questions and hear the cheeky replies from citizens like town physician Dr. H. Rodham. Be careful of what you say and do, because the game reacts to your decisions. The objective is to immerse players into the life of the town. While you can explore the interiors of over 20 buildings as you move through Diamond-back, they are not as detailed as one might like. But for those craving action, Dust does have plenty of traditional Western gunslinging. And, in a nod to politically correct gamers, there's always a nonviolent solution to the confrontations. Dr. Rodham's handiwork, no doubt. (CD-ROM for Mac & PC, Cyberflix, $69.95)
BURIED IN TIME
As Agent No 5, a time-traveling Temporal Security officer, you are accused of altering the course of history. The game Buried in Time, the sequel to Journeyman Project, sends you on a thrilling ride hurtling through the ages in an effort to prove your innocence. Travel to one of Richard the Lion-Hearted's castles on the day it fell to the Normans (the graphics are superb). In each setting you will find clues as well as historical information. For frustrated novices, the game's producers have even included a character who acts as a guide through the more difficult sections of this smart and complex adventure. (CD-ROM for MAC & PC, Sanctuary Woods, S64.95)
>Bill Appleton
HOLLYWOOD IN KNOXVILLE
BILL APPLETON'S PARENTS THOUGHT he was nuts when he gave up a graduate fellowship in 1984 and moved into their basement to work on programs for a new computer called Macintosh. But 18 months later, he had created World Builder, software for creating Mac games, and also found a new obsession. "I wanted to build a cool feature film on my desktop," Appleton says.
That's exactly what he's doing. Now 34 and the president of the two-year-old software firm Cyberflix (based in his native Knoxville, Tenn.), Appleton has created two top-selling sci-fi CD-ROMs, Lunicus and Jump Raven. His newest release, Dust (see review), is a Western. Up next: catastrophe. "You'll be a passenger on the Titanic," he says, and you'll get to do more than rearrange deck chairs.
- Contributors:
- Erik Ashok Meers.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
