WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - The San Diego Zoo Presents: The Animals!

It would be really easy to sit here and dump on The Animals for a few hundred words. After all, not only is this a lame "edutainment" title, but it perfectly presents exactly why this kind of software never belonged on the Sega CD in the first place - what with its limited color palette and postage-stamp sized videos.

But that would be a bit unfair. You kind of have to take yourself back to the early 90s, and really think about where CD-ROM was as a medium back then. These little silver discs represented a brave new world of computer and video game softare. No one seems really certain exactly what to do with them at first, though large databases of interesting information seemed a logical choice given the massive amount of storage they had.

Remember, video - even crappy, tiny, grainy video - was not really something you saw too often on a computer screen back then.

And when you do a bit of digging, you realize that this particular bit of software was actually a landmark event. It was one of the most successful, early CD-ROM encyclopedia programs, selling over 3 million copies in its first three years. The developer - now-defunct Arn

owitz Studios - was well known as a pioneer of educational and teaching programs back in the day.

The Sega CD version (along with the 3DO version) are basically just products of a new technology trying to find its way. When you think about it, most of the early CD console libraries pretty much fit that description.

That being said, though, the transition from PC program to Sega CD disc was obviously a pretty rocky one. This game cries out for a mouse in order to navigate the slightly confusing Zoo Map front end. And when you get into the sub-menus, it's still pretty slow going as your little dude, "Ping," ambles from one entry icon to another.

Not to mention the extremely grainy video and images you get to look at. I've never seen the PC version of this program, but I've got to believe the VGA/SVGA images and video were a lot prettier than what the Sega CD's extremely limited color palette could offer.

Publisher Mindscape is still around, though you'd be forgiven for never having heard of them, as they're mostly doing more edutainment sofware nowadays (a lot of it on the DS). The publisher was a bit more prominent in the 16-bit days, though. And while researching their history for this article, I was reminded that they are actually the group that brought the seminal Wing Commander PC game to the SNES, and touched off my subsequent love of the series. I actually bought a 3DO when I learned that Wing Commander 3 was coming to that system. I also based my first computer purchase largely on whether it could run Wing Commander 4.

So I'm totally not certain whether I should love Mindscape or not...

Next Up: One of the greatest games of all time - Batman Returns.