| Explorers of the New World | Softkey Multimedia / Future Vision Multimedia | 1995 | |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
Follow in the footsteps of three of history's most acclaimed travelers-Columbus, Magellan, and Cortes. Complete multimedia database of 60 additional explorers. All details based on historic facts. Fully interactive, realistic 3-D environments. Explorers of the New World, a feature-laden if one-sided exploration of the European journeys through North and South America, promises a multimedia investigation of the travels, findings and impact of age of discovery. Technically impressive bells and whistles. Future Vision Multimedia incorporates a well-thought-out, well-illustrated interface to introduce viewers to the adventurers who ransacked and reconnoitered the Americas from 1492 to the early 1600s. After an introduction touting the excitement and adventure to follow, the viewer finds a landscape peopled with costumed figures, and a few standard navigation tools: a compass (onscreen through all scenes) to jump from section to section; a timeline; a searchable database of explorers; a guided tour(nicely done) to explain maneuvering through the disk; and "Impact" -- a look at how items from Europe (cattle, smallpox) affected the Americas and (coffee, turkeys) vice versa. Explorers uses videotaped live actors to portray Ferdinand Magellan (first expedition to circle the Earth), Hernando Cortes (conqueror of the Aztecs), and Christopher Columbus (1492, sailed the ocean blue, etc.). Their expeditions are traced in depth; just click on hot spots along their mapped-out routes for narration and animated sequences that highlight the voyages. In addition, some spots on the route (an Aztec temple, for instance) open up into illustrated screens with dozens of hot spots detailing the lives and habits of the sailors, soldiers and indigenous people encountered along the way. A fourth live actor offers a lowly sailor's deck-level view of life (generally nasty, brutish and short) for the grunts who peopled the expeditions, and access to a database of 60 additional explorer biographies, route maps and a handful of period portraits. You can find the information easily through Explorer's well-crafted searchable index. Type in "Cuba" and you'll get a list of all articles with that word, organized by explorer -- useful as a tool to discover which spot was trampled by the most brigands over the years. The "Impact" section sums up Explorer's virtues and vices. Handsomely illustrated, loaded with hot spots, smoothly moving from screen to screen, it economically describes how items from one world affected the other. Click on the tattooed native, and the caption "smallpox" appears. This nasty culture-killer arrived with the explorers; estimates are that half the native population may have died after exposure to it. "This greatly reduced their ability to resist the European conquerors," the narrator burbles. | ||
|
1 2 |
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
