The Everything You Want to
Know About Sports Encyclopedia.

By Creative Multimedia. The Everything You Want to Know About Sports Encyclopedia is an interactive reference source full of information and trivia on nearly 60 sports played around the world. It is packed with slides, video clips, trivia questions, and a puzzle challenge that will most certainly keep viewers coming back for more. Recommended for upper elementary through high school. Rating: content, very good; entertainment, excellent. $29.99. On CD-ROM for Windows PC.

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• Content
• Educational Merit
• Special Features
• Ease of Use
• Installation Details
• Other Reviews
• Thank you, student testers!

You name the sport, and you can most likely find it in this CD-ROM. For example, some of the more familiar sports found on this program include baseball, basketball, tennis, track and field, soccer, golf, football, volleyball, and swimming. Also included are some of the lesser known sports such as windsurfing, billiards, fencing, sleddog racing, polo, lacrosse, rowing, shooting, handball and weightlifting. For each sport there is information on history, famous athletes and coaches, rules, statistics, terminology, and addresses to write for more information. [Top of Page]

Sports Gallery: The setting is an underground sports gallery owned by a mysterious character named Professor Von Schmelder, a rocket scientist and cryogenist, who is also an avid sports fan. The walls of the gallery are blocks of grey stone, and the floor is bare concrete.

The viewer travels through this gallery by clicking through five different screens. In the foreground of the first screen, which is the main screen, is the Professor's talking robot who serves as the guide for the program. In the background of this screen is a man frozen in a block of ice who is the subject of one of the Professor's cryogenist experiments. This character shows up later as Frozen Marv the host of a quiz section called Ultimate Sports Trivia.

Each of the remaining four screens are filled with sports memorabilia that comprise the Professor's collection. Each object in the collection represents a different sports topic. Doubleclicking with the mouse opens up the section of the encyclopedia that covers that sport.

The main screen for each sport has an attractive still photo that can be activated by doubleclicking the mouse. In the background is a page from Professor Von Schmelder's sports notebook. The Table of Contents is in the center, and to the upper and lower right of the screen there may be a television for viewing video clips and/or a slide for slide shows.

Ultimate Sports Trivia: Frozen Marv, in his red plaid jacket and black bow tie, rattles off trivia questions so fast the viewer doesn't have time to wonder how Marv got unthawed from the block of ice. There are over 500 trivia questions to challenge the user. Frozen Marv gives whimsical praises for right answers, and mild ribbing for wrong ones.

Puzzles: Scattered throughout the encyclopedia are puzzle pieces that have been lost from the Professor's gallery. It is up to the user to find the pieces and put them together to complete the photographs of baseball great Ty Cobb and 1936 Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens. Sounds easy, but it is not. Viewers should expect to spend a lot of time searching through the encyclopedia for these missing pieces.

Additional items: Viewers can store up to six of their favorite sport sites in the bookmark option. They can save their progress in the puzzle search by logging in their name before quitting the program. A search index helps users locate items quickly. Finally, there is a glossary that is helpful in explaining terms from the Encylopedia. [Top of Page]

Navigation: There are four ways the viewer can get to the information on the different sports: from the underground sports gallery, from the index, from the search tool, and from the bookmark option. Viewers activate sports items, video clips, and slide shows with a double-click of the mouse on the selected items. To reduce screen clutter on the Professor's main room and the gallery gallery, labels are only visible when the cursor passes across an item or area that has a link.

Additional comments: Sometimes the cycling times when moving to a new selection is very slow, and sometimes the video clips instead of running smoothly, play with a start-stop action. Again, the ReadMe file has some troubleshooting tips for correcting these kinds of problems. [Top of Page]

Installation: The computer does not need to be restarted after installation of this CD-ROM. [Top of Page]

	Ken: "It's loaded with cool sports facts and 
	      tough trivia questions..." 
	
      Jacob: "It was very informative - I could even 
	      use it for a report or a project.  It's 
	      great that you can learn about any sport 
	      you like." 

Comments from student testers:

	"Cool!"

	"This is a fun way to learn sports facts."

	"I liked the mini TV best."

	"I'd give this four stars!"

	"I don't really play sports games, but this was fun!" 

I want to thank Danialle Moyal from Casis Elementary School, Sara Moyal from O'Henry Middle School, and Nicole Bernard from Hill Country Middle School for volunteering to be student testers for the GSLIS Multimedia Review Project. They were able to get some relief from the July heat by spending a couple of hours in the always cool GSLIS multimedia lab. Of course they might have preferred a trip to the cool waters of Austin's Barton Springs instead.