Chronicles of African Wildlife, Untamed Africa

• Platform:      Windows 98 / 2000 / Me / 95 / NT, Macintosh, Linux, Unix
• Media: CD-ROM
• Item Quantity: 1

The centrepiece of the software is a gory but fascinating, two-hour-long video of Kenyan wildlife doing its thing. Start up the film, sit back, and watch buffalo being hunted, hyenas scrapping with lions, gazelles skipping through acacia groves, and so on. This video is narrated by John Hurt at his lugubrious best; the accompanying music is lush and atmospheric; the graphic quality is pretty good; a pleasing feature is that the viewer can enter or leave the film where and whenever they like.

To flesh out this savannah-based soap opera, the French software makers have also included some intriguing ancillary aspects. Access the section "Characters", and you can follow the fates of individual animals such as Mary the Rhino or Simba the Lion (yes, the names are a bit Disney). Click on the "Discovery" section and learn about each species, their diets, physiology, life cycles, and so forth. Other features allow you to follow your own "footprints" around the two CDs, to study individual ecosystems and habitats, and even send an e-postcard with a picture of your favourite hippopotamus. And, let's face it, you can't do that watching the BBC. --Sean Thomas

Manufacturer's Description
As told by John Hurt: A collection of full-screen "interactive movies" on CD-ROM for discovering the African wildlife of the Masai Mara in the Serengeti National Park (Tanzania).

Through these interactive movies, you can follow the adventures of Douma the cheetah, the Talek brothers, a pair of cheetahs who spread terror throughout the savannah, Simba the lioness and also Haraka the baby elephant. Discover Douma's babies; see Simba wounded and no longer able to hunt; watch Haraka having a mud bath...

Watch all of these animals in their daily lives and habitat, giving birth, playing, hunting and fighting. You will participate in the learning process: see how Douma teaches her babies to hunt. Discover their habits, such as the gazelle playing dead to escape a predator.

Discover the revolutionary technology of full-screen "interactive video". Move your mouse pointer over the animated images and call up on screen the name of the character and its species. You can interrupt the film at any moment. Click on an animal, and a detailed file appears about the species and the movie characters. Follow their adventures throughout the various episodes. Monitor all the film sequences related to them or their species. Also discover other animals, other characters. To directly access a film sequence, you can initiate a search on John Hurt's narrative text.

In the laboratory, various animated sequences provide you with the essential characteristics of each species: speed, size, weight, daily food consumption, life span, gestation time, number of births per litter, number of litters per year, territorial roaming, etc. Compare species. In ecosystem, analyse the relations that animals have to each other: the predatory relationship between the cheetah and the Thomson gazelle, the competition between the hyena and the lion, or the symbiotic relation between the rhinoceros and the oxpecker. Finally, in the video album, a real editing tool, you can learn the basics of montage. Select various sequences of the movie and put together your own documentary on elephants, cheetahs and hippos.

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