Turtles Coloring Book for Kids

Cowabunga, dudes and dudettes! They’re here.

Of course, they’re everywhere. The ubiquitous multimedia Turtles have made it to personal computer screens with Merit Software’s kids’ program, “Electric Crayon Deluxe: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles World Tour.”

An electronic coloring book, “Turtles” offers 30 different still pictures of the foursome traveling around the world. Children select a color from the palette at the bottom of the screen and, by pointing the cursor at various parts of the picture, turn Michaelangelo, Raphael, Donatello or Leonardo bright pink, yellow, green or any other color. And then back again.

For sure, a total way of life.

Print options offered with the program allow each scene to be printed out alone, with a monthly calendar, with customized comments, story quotes or fun facts from the Turtles. You can make banners too. The program doesn’t support laser printers, but it is compatible with plenty of dot matrix and color machines. (And even if you don’t have a color printer, the black-and-white printouts can still be colored with crayons or felt pens.)

But all in all this is a pretty disappointing program. The only thing a child will likely learn from it is how to “point” and “click” a mouse. That is a basic selection technique used on many computer programs and games, but it hardly seems enough to justify the special purchase of an $18 computer coloring book. In addition, there does not seem to be enough interest here to draw children ages 3 and up back to the screen for more.

Chill out and go for the pizza instead.

NINJA TURTLES WORLD TOUR Rating: **

IBM and compatibles, Tandy 16-color, also available for Amiga, Commodore 64; No copy protection. List: $17.95.

Computer games are rated on a five-star system, from one star for poor to five for excellent.