Shareware CD 4 - Zenobi Software œ2.99

The latest shareware compilation CD from Zenobi contains two
directories, one labelled Remake and the other Shareware.  Apart
from this, there is no documentation or instructions - for œ2.99,
I would say this is fairly understandable but occasionally
frustrating.

Remakes has 29 sub-directories, all of which have appeared
previously on other machines. I remembered a few of the names,
like Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner.

One of the best remakes was Pacman 3D, a very nice variation on
the original theme. The board rotates slightly in 3 dimensions
while you play, but apart from that, it is a fairly faithful
rendition of the original. Pulsoid is a form of Breakout where the
bouncing ball is replaced by a snake and all kinds of weird and
wonderful bonuses are up for grabs. And what about Chuckie Egg? I
vaguely remember the original and though the remake on this CD is
fairly basic, it is quite playable.

I didn't have much luck with some of them, and I felt this was
probably down to lack of instructions. Blazing Trails had two
EXEs, both of which gave a loading screen with Start and Quit
options, but neither option could be accessed. Jet Set Willy
loaded, but the screen was strangely corrupted and I could only
get out of it by using Ctrl-Alt-Del. Manic Miner was the same.

The Shareware Folder has another 16 sub directories. One of these
is an excellent aquarium screensaver. The unregistered version only
has one to three fish, depending on your machine and graphics card,
but the yellow tang, its companions and the tank are so realistic
that I am going to register once the author makes it compatible
with Windows 2000 which I'm planning to install.  Warning, you
need a good 3D card to run this screensaver successfully. Invasion
is a very nice shoot 'em up and Rocky Racers is an insane rocket
ship dash along an asteroid lined race track.

There are also some really bad programs. Goobie Squash springs to
mind. This was a very surreal game and didn't grab me at all. Even
Invasion gave an Invalid Directory message when it tried to create
its own installation directory because it defaulted to the CD
without telling you!

All in all, this CD is a very mixed bag. Some of the programs are
so good that they are worth the cost of the CD on its own.  Others
aren't worth the effort of installing them.

Contact Zenobi at the usual address to order a copy of this or any
of their other CDs.

                                                  Sue







                              - o -