The Mouse That Didn’t Roar

Once again, Capstone delivers a promising new game that doesn’t live up to its full promise.

“An American Tail: The Computer Adventures of Fievel and His Friends” is presented in two parts. Each part takes place separately and are based on Fievel’s adventures in New York (“An American Tail”) and out West (“An American Tail: Fievel Goes West”). The games are part adventure and part puzzle. Assorted puzzles include a matching game, scrambled-picture puzzles and a mock shooting gallery.

Our young testers were clamoring to try the game. They loved the movies and they wanted to love the game. They actually loved maneuvering around the screens and looking at the pictures. But the story was too hard for the 7-year-old to read, and the 9-year-old thought it was dumb.

Since it was too complicated for the younger kids to play alone, we thought we’d try it out as a “quality time” candidate. The problem is, the game is not of the quality to improve your time together. Although we ran into a couple of minor program bugs, they weren’t game-stoppers. The game-stoppers were the puzzles that couldn’t be solved by the target audience. Although there is no age range advertised on the game anywhere, we would assume it would include any kid old or young enough to be interested in the movie.

In addition, we have become used to a certain sophistication in the graphic animation quality of games. If you talk to a character and they walk off the screen to meet you at another location, you don’t expect to turn around and find them in the same place next time you pass by. You expect to be able to control the speed of reading introductions or skipping them altogether.

This game had lots of promise and looks beautiful. But your kids will probably get more for your money by going back to see the movies again.

An American Tail

Rating:

IBM & compatibles; DOS 2.1 or higher; 640K RAM.

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