Headbone Zone’s Head and Shoulders Above the Rest

Most discussions of children and the Internet seem to start with dire warnings.

In keeping with that tradition, this visit to Headbone Zone--a World Wide Web site created by the makers of the Headbone line of kids’ CD-ROMs--begins with a caution:

Be careful if you go to Headbone Zone to check it out for your kids. You might get stuck there for a very long time.

Headbone Zone is a delightful, intelligent and totally engaging site that adults as well as kids will likely find addictive.

That should come as no surprise to those familiar with the Headbone CD-ROMs, which have consistently won rave reviews. Although the Seattle-based firm is small and does not have--like the heavyweights in the software business--a healthy promotion budget or far-reaching distribution system, its CD-ROMs made it onto just about every critic’s top 10 list of kids’ software last year.

Headbone Zone is full of the company’s stock characters--kids, adults, talking animals and outer space creatures, many of whom look as if they have been dressed up in vintage clothes found in thrift stores, with bright splotches of color for backgrounds.

The site features several games. The most basic are Riddleopolis and Scienceopolis, which are nicely done quizzes. They’re fun, but not all that original; plenty of other quizzes on the Web cover a variety of topics.

Where Headbone Zone, at https://www.headbone.com, really shines in originality is with Mystery on Mars and Rags to Riches. There’s probably nothing on the Web much like them.

In the Mars game, you follow the futuristic comic strip adventures of a girl named Iz and a robot named Augie, both of whom are rock superstars on Earth. To get away from their fans, they book a vacation trip to the red planet.

While on their journey, they are called upon to answer certain questions to progress and solve a mystery. The first is: What is the name of the largest canyon on Mars?

Don’t answer all at once.

Obviously, Headbone doesn’t expect many of us to have the answer on the tip of our tongues. Instead, the game suggests the player use his or her skills in surfing the Web to find the answer.

If you are new to the Web or unsure how to use its search engines, Headbone Zone provides a tutorial.

Every week until early May a new chapter, each containing a question, will be added. If you are coming to the game late, you can easily catch up with the chapters posted since Mars began in March.

For correct answers, you get points. (There is a “hints” function, but using it loses you points.) At game’s end, top point-getters will be eligible for prizes, including a computer-printer system.

In Rags to Riches, you take on the role of the manager of a new rock band. Your business decisions will help determine whether your band makes it to the big time or ends up playing Elks lodges.

You first must decide, among several locales, where your group will play its first concert (choosing the big city, where halls are expensive and competition intense, is obviously a bad idea). You then choose what size theater to play and how much to spend on promotion.

If you manage your funds well, make smart deals on halls and let your band blossom by giving its members time off to write new songs, you’ll make a lot of pretend money.

It’s a nifty game, as well as a comment on our times when behind-the-scenes figures, a la Jerry McGuire, can be of almost as much interest to the public as rockers.

There are other games as well on Headbone Zone, but you’d better not try them all at once. The kids will need to get to the computer sometime to do their homework.

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Cyburbia’s e-mail address is david.colker@latimes.com.