REVIEWS
Winnie The Pooh
In The Hundred Acre Wood
James V. Trunzo
Requirements: Commodore 64 with a disk drive; or an Apple II-series computer with at least 48K RAM and a disk drive.
Winnie The Pooh In The Hundred Acre Wood is a graphics adventure game designed to be played by a seven-year-old (or any Winnie the Pooh lover), and the biggest and most pleasant surprise is that a child can actually play it! One of the first releases from Walt Disney Personal Computer Software, by way of Sierra, Winnie The Pooh is truly an adventure game for children.
The program stresses such diverse skills as creating and reading maps, logical thinking, and reading comprehension. However, this learning is hidden beneath delightful graphics and an intriguing challenge (for a youngster). A blustery wind has blown through the Hundred Acre Wood, scattering the belongings of the beautifully rendered A. A. Milne characters far and wide. It is the player's job to locate the missing articles, identify their owners, and then return them.
Sierra has struck a laudable balance between making the game too easy (and thus boring) or too difficult (and thus frustrating). Except for directional movements, children are not expected to type in the kind of commands normally associated with adventure games, so they don't have to wrestle with the program's vocabulary and syntax recognition.
Sierra has added several other touches to aid youngsters. The Wise Owl is always available in case they find an object they cannot match to a character. A map of the Hundred Acre Wood also is available, although players are urged to make their own map, as well, to keep track of certain objects (only one object can be carried at a time). Finally, the text of the game contains little hints-again, without being so obvious as to dilute the enjoyment and satisfaction a youngster gains from successfully completing a piece of the puzzle.
Winnie The Pooh is a game that a youngster will play more than once. The program scatters the lost objects in different places for each game, and has variations that make it more than just a seek-and-find game. The instructions are simple and concise, and the program is almost completely error-proof. One impressive feature is the ingenious way Sierra built the save-game feature into the program. For starters, no data disk is needed, eliminating the need to swap disks. And the actual procedure is made so easy (you have to look in the toybox in the playroom) that any seven-year-old can do it without trouble. Winnie The Pooh is one piece of software that lives up to the promises on its box.
Winnie The Pooh
in The Hundred Acre Wood
Walt Disney Personal Computer Software
Sierra Inc.
Coarsegold, CA 93614
$39.95