January 12, 2005

Topics Presents Dinosaurs (**** out of four) is a set of 4 CD-ROMs that offers a vast amount of information on just about every aspect of dinosaurs. The set also includes Dinosaurs of North America, a wall map from National Geographic that contains illustrations and text describing many of the more common dinosaurs and shows where they were found, a map of the earth as it was 74 million years ago and locations of the dinosaurs by the period in which they lived. The CD-ROMs are:

Walking With Dinosaurs, based on the television series developed by Discovery Channel and British Broadcasting Corporation, contains outstanding videos, animations, backgrounds, sounds and narration to portray dinosaurs with amazing detail in realistic settings. The production starts from the earliest days of the earth (hundreds of millions of years ago) and covers the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. Click on any period (or move the time bar) to see an overview of that period, or click on a specific dinosaur to see descriptions and videos about the creature, its life and habitat; click on other options to find more information about its food, family tree, fossils and more. This program can keep you mesmerized for hours with its beautifully portrayed dinosaurs in their natural habitat.

The program also includes a truly fun option called "customize your PC," which lets you create dinosaur wallpaper, screen savers and even dinosaur icons, cursors and sounds for your PC. Use some of these options, and you can have a dinosaur tooth for a cursor and a dinosaur roar when you click on a wrong element!

The program also includes dinosaur activities, such as Fossil Hunt and Building a Dino Skeleton, and help is available to guide you through it all.

Dinosaur 3D was developed in partnership with the Berlin Museum of Natural Science and presents the evolution of prehistoric reptiles in 3D. There’s a dino dictionary, dino facts and other information that can also be printed if you want. The information covers four periods: primeval times, Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic. An overview provides information on mythology, discovery of dinosaurs, a family tree, extinction and much more. You can search for species by periods or by specific species; just click on what you want to see, and you’ll find illustrations and comprehensive information about it. Updated information is available online.

The Living Dinosaur Project is a game-style quiz about many facets of dinosaurs and covers facts from the origin of the word dinosaur to early paleontologists to dinosaurs themselves. The game is lively and fast-paced and a fun way to learn some amazing facts and other types of information about dinosaurs.

Encyclopedia Britannica Profiles Dinosaurs is filled with extensive information about the dinosaur world. There’s also a dino family tree, timeline and web links. You can browse through a listing of notable dinosaur experts, eras, geology and dinosaurs, search for specific information to find articles, images, multimedia and a family tree or use the on-screen keyboard to browse through topics alphabetically. There’s a good amount of help for writing reports, organizing the information and more, so anyone writing a paper on dinosaurs will find this disc especially helpful.

You’ll find a great deal of dinosaur information here, and it’s all at a very reasonable price.

Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile (****) is an empire creation program that gives you the chance to build a mighty city and society based (mostly) on the historical facts of Ancient Egypt. Start with simple hunter-gatherers living along the life-giving Nile River and direct them into various occupations such as farmers, brick makers/layers, shop keepers, civil servants, elite citizens and more. Carefully balance the numbers in each occupation for the society’s needs, place their homes, shops and such for the best interaction and watch as they build, shop and live their daily lives.

As your society becomes more specialized and stable, help will be need with an educated class of scribes, priests and others to increase culture and prosperity. You’ll want to extend beyond the boundaries of your city to trade with and/or conquer the surrounding lands, and soon you become pharaoh--building monuments for all eternity. That is, if you use your people and resources wisely.

You can play the game from the beginning or pick and choose various scenarios. A scenario editor is available if you’d like to tweak a few items of play. The 3D graphics depicting Ancient Egypt are very good, and camera zoom and motion is exceptional. An interesting feature is the ability to select an individual and then have the program automatically pan to track the person in his or her daily life, up close and personal, listening to their conversations and watching their interpersonal interactions. But don’t watch too much because the game keeps moving, and you have to keep track of many items such as having enough farmers to raise grain, enough shops to sell goods, enough priests to help worship and such.

The extensive options available are outlined in a printed 45-page manual and in tool tips, on-line help and an exceptional tutorial.

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