CD-Roms: Hip or Hype?

I'Lladmit It: I am suspicious of anything that touts itself as the technotoy of the future. When I hear the words interactive or multimedia, a little red flag ripples in my peripheral vision. So when a bunch of CD-Rom publicists bombard me with raves about how much fun I'm going to have with their products, I purse my lips and squint suspiciously at the telephone receiver.

I identify with the hero of a certain lyric poem, a character beset on all sides by temptation and sophistry. The poem to which I am referring, of course, is that cornerstone of contemporary culture, Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham, in which Sam-I-Am, a demonic hard-sell salesman, mercilessly foists chartreuse high-cholesterol breakfast food on his unwilling victim. But Sam-I-Am is an Avon lady next to the CD-Rom flack whose voice blasts through the telephone line, all the way from the Silicon Valley:

"You'll want to play them in your house!

"You'll want to play them with a mouse!

"You'll want to play them on a screen!

"You'll want to play them in your dreams!

"Try them! Try them! You will see!

"Try them! Try them! Try them free!"

And, secretly, as these packages speed toward my mailbox, I harbor doubts.

I will not like these CD-Roms.

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The initial offerings meet or even fall below my dismal expectations. These discs seem to have no purpose other than to prove that yon can put lots of stuff on a CD-Rom. (Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Cookbook, anyone?) Most fall prey to the kitchen-sink syndrome. ("Damn thing ain't full yet? Throw in some more! Yeah, more Quicktime videos, that's the ticket. Who cares how it relates? That's what hypertext is for!") Fascination with the medium for its own sake is rampant, and software developers overcome by multimedia hype have released some really bogus products. Hence the term shovelware, Silicon Valley slang for a product slapped together without much thought or content and flung onto store shelves in hopes that hype will carry it.

Case in point: Woodstock, the 25th anniversary CD-Rom. "It's an even better trip on CD-Rom!" yells the packaging. An op art button announces that a Groovy Paint Feature is included. Little peacesign icons call attention to other features: "Dig previously unpublished Festival images! Paint your screen with psychedelic designs! Sing along with on-screen lyrics!"

I continue reading the label with an airsickness bag close at hand:

"Woodstock Lives Forever!" (Like MTV and Pepsi would let us forget.)

"It's never the same twice--no matter how much you tune in, turn on or drop out. It changes, man, far out! Do your own thing! Pick your favorite performer. Check out the headlines of the times. You're in control!"

Sorry, but anyone who is sitting at home in front of a computer screen mouthing Woodstock karaoke off a CD-Rom is anything but in control. But then, obscuring the line between life experience and computer screen is Woodstock's modus operandi: "Maybe you didn't make it to Woodstock. Or just don't remember being there. It doesn't matter." Of course it doesn't. It's an even better trip on CD-Rom!

Hmmph. I turn up my nose, leery as ever.

I will not like these CD-Roms.

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But then I see discs that have, oh yes, a point. A purpose. Planning. Some directorial vision. Actual thought, blessedly on the rise among CD-Rom developers, makes a tremendous difference. To illustrate, allow me to compare two titles that deal with the same subject, New York City.

Exhibit A: New York, NY, a Chamber of Commerce-style treatment of the Big Apple (Aris Multimedia) designed to let the armchair tourist "visit famous landmarks, stroll the avenues, shop for bargains without spending a dime and experience the hustle and bustle that makes New York the city that never sleeps!" Stops include Times Square and Rockefeller Center, and there's a jazzy soundtrack by the guy who scores Baywatch. It's an unmitigated yawn.

Exhibit B: Hell Cab (Time Warner Interactive), a whirlwind tour-cum-adventure game by Pepe Moreno, author of DC Comics' graphic Batman novel Digital Justice. Hell Cab begins in a hyperreal, comic-book rendering of Times Square, complete with illuminated billboards and Sony screen. A Raymond Chandleresque voice-over intones, "Welcome to New York, the Big Apple, the town where anything goes. You've missed your connecting flight and have time to kill. So why not hop in a cab and take in the sights? There's only one problem: You've just gotten into the wrong cab." The sky bursts into apocalyptic orange flames behind the Hell Cab logo.

The voice-over continues: "Maybe you didn't notice the 666 on the license plate. Maybe you didn't see the devilish gleam in the driver's eye. Either way, there's no turning back. You've just entered the Hell Cab." The Sony screen in Times Square comes to life with video footage of a landing strip viewed from an airplane window. It cuts to a frenzy in the baggage-claim area and a hellish rush through garishly lit airport corridors. Quick cuts and grainy hip shots convey an overwhelming sense of panic and claustrophobia. In other words, it's a typical New York airport experience.

My computer monitor fades to black; then yellow letters appear, announcing: JFK International Airport, NYC. The Present. And lo, there I am, in a sleek comic-book version of JFK, facing the exit doors and an automated teller machine. Instinctively, I head straight for the cash machine (amazing how survival instincts manifest themselves in virtual reality). After performing the comforting ATM ritual of punching in my name and a PIN code, I am rewarded with game instructions. The object of Hell Cab is simple, I'm told: Survive the Mephistophelian cabdriver's sight-seeing tour with my soul intact. Decisions at crucial points in the game either add to or subtract from my spiritual equity, which registers on the Soul-o-Meter in the lower right corner of my screen. My decisions can also get me killed, which is a no-no, for I have only the conventional three lives.

The cab rolls up and I get in. The driver's eyes glow red in the rearview mirror as he pulls away from the curb (I swear I've had this cabdriver before). When the taxi stops, the fare is more than I can pay--hence the "special deal" wherein I gamble my soul to escape the demon cabbie.

Now that's virtual reality.

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Having nibbled at the edge of one green egg and not having keeled over with botulism, I decide to take another bite. The yolky part this time. And it's not bad.

Voyager's Freak Show, created by Bay Area rock auteurs the Residents, is by far the yolkiest CD-Rom out there. Resplendent in its viscosity, the disc is a surreal and thoroughly noir spectacle of sideshow mutants such as Harry the Head and Wanda the Worm Woman. Not content merely to view their bizarre performances, I make my way behind the carnival tent and invade their trailers to catch glimpses of their pathetic private lives. I watch Benny the Bump ease back into his Barca Lounger, his massive protuberance of excess flesh hanging limply from his chest as he channel-surfs through shattered sound bites of late-night blather. It would be depressing if it weren't so murderously funny (the screen within a screen delivers an extra jolt of irony). Freak Show's illusions fall somewhere between the Twilight Zone and Salvador Dali: Flying eyeballs and rolling heads appear, then disappear into curtains and floorboards. The result is a mixture of charm and horror.

Likewise Interplay's Battle Chess CD-Rom, which takes a page out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It's your basic computer chess game, except that each piece is a medieval character who talks, walks and performs extended battle sequences with the opposing pieces. The game opens to courtly musical accompaniment and a view from your side of the marble chessboard, revealing the golden locks and shapely derriere of the Red Queen (half Mae West, half Raquel Welch, she complains about nail breakage after slaughtering her opponents). Among the pawns and knights, there is much bloodshed and decapitation. Knights lop off one another's limbs one at a time, leaving the designated loser hopping up and down on one foot before the winner finishes him off. As an added bonus, you can take back moves and replay the good parts. If you ever thought chess was overcivilized or pedestrian, Battle Chess is the way to go.

Other star contenders in the attack-and-destroy category are Lucasarts' Rebel Assault and Cyberflix' Lunicus. The former, based on Star Wars, splices scenes from the movie between segments of game play. In true George Lucas fashion, Rebel Assault pushes emotional buttons. Who wouldn't feel a pang of nostalgia when confronted with a black opening screen and the magic words, "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," followed by a close-up of an Imperial Star Destroyer? Later, you also see the Death Star (it still looks exactly like the AT&T logo). Before I know it, I'm in the cockpit of Luke Skywalker's X-wing, saving the galaxy to the orchestral accompaniment of the London Symphony Orchestra. Hammy, yes, but satisfying.

Lunicus takes a similarly ballistic approach; namely, putting a gun in your hand and having you blow up everything in front of it. When the alien invaders loom in your sights, shoot. Play "Ahnohld," wreak wanton destruction and save the earth. Very cathartic, yah?

Jump Raven, another Cyberflix disc, succeeds on a more sophisticated (but equally violent) level, injecting twisted humor into the usual postapocalyptic scenario. The premise is this: In the wake of the second Clinton administration (Hillary's, not Bill's), New York Nazi skinheads have hijacked pods containing the last DNA samples of the earth's extinct species. Your mission: To pilot a craft through the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan, blow up the skinheads and other bad guys and retrieve the DNA pods. In other words, you can justify wholesale destruction in the name of environmental protection. What's more, the gear in this game would reduce James Bond to a puddle of drool. Your vehicle, for instance, sports four 2200-horsepower Rolls-Royce turbofan engines, an impressive arsenal of bombs, rockets, missiles, lasers and machine guns, and a killer stereo.

Jump Raven pulls no punches, and that's part of its charm. One of your options for background music is a fictional band called Planet Flannel, (continued on page 155) CD-Roms (continued from page 112) "the official band of the Grunge, an independent tribal society centered on Washington's Puget Sound. The Grunge practice a quasi-religious belief system known as the Cobain." One of your potential co-pilots is Rush Limbaugh's great-grandson, and he's black. Another co-pilot candidate is Chablis, a California bimbo who speaks Marcia, a street language that consists of Seventies sitcom references. When I interview Chablis for the co-pilot position, I ask her to assess her combat performance, and she squeals, "Like, I'm rilly, rilly lucky!" She also loves to shoot the pretty lasers.

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Of course, no discussion of games would be complete without mentioning Myst (Broderbund). The software equivalent of a box-office smash, Myst is the best-selling title in CD-Rom history (history, in this case, meaning the past three years). The game's premise is this: Player lands on an abandoned island and has to find out what the hell happened. (Wired magazine called Myst "a kind of puzzle box inside a novel inside a painting--only with music. Or something.") Unlike most computer games, there's nothing to kill and no risk of death, but playing Myst late at night with the lights turned out can be a freaky experience comparable to baby-sitting in a creaky house with the kids asleep upstairs and a Twilight Zone marathon illuminating a darkened den. It's that good.

Myst is probably the most significant piece of software programmed for CD-Rom, because it has shown consumers and developers alike the potential of the medium. For multimedia programmers, it's the city on a hill that spurs them to match an unprecedented visual and narrative standard. For consumers, Myst is what the Silicon Valley calls a killer application--a piece of software (Windows, for instance) that convinces an avalanche of people to buy a particular piece of hardware. People see Myst and think, What do I need to buy in order to play that? NEC, a leading hardware manufacturer, is now shipping it with all their Multi Spin 2V Deluxe packages.

On a more practical note, CD-Roms have serious (read: nongame) applications as well as toy value. In fact, reference materials were initially the raison d'être for CD-Roms. The medium is God's gift to reference because its capacity is immense. Consider such space-saving title as Phone Disc's Power Finder, for instance, which cross-indexes every listed name and telephone number in America. (Now you can find a name to match the number scrawled on that napkin that mysteriously appeared in your coat pocket while you were busy carousing.) Similarly, DeLorme's Street Atlas USA is a CD-Rom containing every interstate highway, avenue, alley and residential cul-de-sac in the U.S., cross-referenced to area code and phone exchange. And the Playboy Interviews CD-Rom contains more than 300 Playboy Interviews in glorious hypertext with pictures and sound clips (such as Jimmy Carter's confession about lusting in his heart).

On one CD-Rom, you can have at your fingertips the American Heritage Dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, the Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, the Hammond Intermediate World Atlas--but wait, there's more--the People's Chronology, the World Almanac and the Book of Facts 1994. It's the Microsoft Bookshelf CD-Rom.

And it comes with this amazing set of Ginsu knives.

Clicking through the atlas, I peruse maps with pop-up windows of national flags and sound files of pronunciations and national anthems. I discover that the national anthem of Tunisia bears a striking resemblance to Pop Goes the Weasel. It's a small world. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised to find that a minuscule island nation in the South Pacific has cribbed It's a Small World for its national anthem, prompting an international copyright suit and subsequent covert invasion by Disney.

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Books have also made the leap into multimedia. Some succeed and others fail miserably. The difference between the former and the latter is that good CD-Rom titles use the text as a jumping-off point, adding information that (a) is not in the printed version and (b) is actually worth knowing. At its best, CD-Rom allows an author to layer text, graphics, video and sound into a tasty, nutritious media torte. For example, Art Spiegelman's Complete Maus CD-Rom, published by Voyager, combines the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus books with preliminary material, color sketches, audio samples of Spiegelman's father narrating his experiences in Nazi-occupied Poland, maps, documents and transcripts. Ultimately, this CD-Rom is about the process of producing the Maus books; it's not simply a translation of their content.

Voyager has produced good, highbrow multimedia books such as Maus, Marvin Minsky's The Society of Mind, Stephen Jay Gould's On Evolution and Shakespeare's Macbeth, which incorporates performance clips by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Hey, it's good for you. And it puts less stress on the tendons than Jump Raven.

CD-Rom is like Frosted Mini-Wheats that way: combat candy for the kid in you and "lit-rah-cha" for your adult side. The key is to build up a well-rounded bookshelf of discs so that your brain atrophy is offset by educational titles. Most CD-Rom drives come bundled with discs and the salesperson may offer you a choice from a selection of reference volumes, entertainment titles and games.

If I were buying a CD-Rom drive now, I'd try to sweeten the deal with Microsoft's Encarta (far and away the best CD-Rom encyclopedia out there) and Bookshelf for reference, Jump Raven, Freak Show, Myst and Hell Cab for entertainment, and Microsoft's film guide Cinemania for edutainment. (I'm a movie buff--your mileage may vary. Sports Illustrated's Multimedia Sports Almanac is the equivalent for athletics.) Beyond that, I'd go for Rebel Assault, Peter Gabriel's Xploral, Microsoft's Art Gallery, Compton's Jazz: A Multimedia History and--

Oh, did I say something about not liking CD-Roms?

You see, it all depends on how they're prepared. I'll take mine green.