Native Trails both educational, entertaining

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Review

When I consider value for money in software aimed at younger users, I much prefer a product that has both educational and entertainment value. Native Trails by Eagle Software definitely meets that standard. Native Trails also caught my interest because it is targeted towards a specific audience -- those who want to know more about Aboriginal history and lore. To me, this is a refreshing alternative to a lot of the 'shoot-em-up' mass-market software, where the prime objective is pressing the fire button as many times as you can.

In Native Trails, a traveler journeys from Canada's West Coast to the East. The journey takes the traveler from village to village. At each village the traveler is presented with a brief text giving some fact

about life in the village. For example, one text described living in

plank houses, while another explained some different reasons for totem

poles.

Then the traveler must solve a puzzle, or perform a test of skill, or

answer a question related to the preceding text. Some of the tests include doing math -- division or multiplication -- or solving anagrams. One puzzle was an on-screen version of that age-old memory test, matching pairs. In Native Trails, the hidden pairs are scenes depicting totem poles, fish, wolves, trees and the like. On successfully matching a pair, the student hears an appropriate sound, such as a bird's song, or the swish of a hooked fish as it is pulled from the water. I can honestly say that I've never heard a clearer digital wolf-howl! To me, the multi-media effects are the strongest and most pleasing features of Native Trails.

In many way, Native Trails has similar qualities as Sierra's Dr. Brain series, with a touches of Carmen San Diego thrown in. There is also obvious attention to details in Native Trails. All the villages are

shown with Aboriginal names. And, if you need help anytime, you can ask

the ever-watchful Owl.

While my first impressions of Native Trails were very positive, I have

to admit that after a while, I found the information to be a bit

limited. If the software is aimed at a younger audience, say the grade 4-5 level, it might be right to keep the tests a little simpler. However, in that case, some of the skill tests might be a little bit hard.

On the technical side, Native Trails requires Windows 3.1. The demo took up 6 meg of hard disk; the complete software requires over 30 megs. It ran easily on my machine, a 486/33 with 8 megs of RAM and

local bus video card. The graphics are excellent, and the sound clips, coming through my Ad-lib/Soundblaster card, are terrific.

The program was easy to install. The only technical issue arising

during installation is that the graphics should be set to 256 colors.

The software recommends if you should change your configuration. It allows you to disable some of the graphics which are known to cause lockups. As well, it lets you run without making changes and risking a

general protection fault. This is what I chose, and the demo completed

just fine.

Overall, I think that Native Trails is well worth a look. The demo is

available though Eagle Software Inc., 7 Cherry Dr., Dartmouth, Nova

Scotia, B3A 2Z1: (902)463-1961. Suggested retail price for the full

edition is $79.95 on floppy disks, or $69.95 on CD-ROM.