I See SUE

Reviewed by Cynthia A. Sorrels
Published by Simon & Schuster Interactive

Age Group: Age 4 to 8
Type: Puzzles/Memory, Science
Price: Unavailable

PC version requires:
Windows 95/98, P133, 16M RAM, CDx8

Mac version requires:
PowerPC 603e 132Mhz, 16M RAM, CDx4, OS 7.5.3

Description:

If you haven't heard about SUE, I can't imagine what you've been doing! SUE is only the largest, most complete T-Rex dinosaur ever found. Scientists have meticulously pieced her together and she's on display at the Chicago's The Field Museum. This software program is designed to educate children about SUE and the implications and questions that arise with her skeleton.

The tile game is matching dinosaur parts in a race to complete the set. The player's piece then moves through a virtual board game. At the end of this, children are allowed to print a dinosaur to color. The tile game actually becomes tedious after a short time because of the limitation of dinosaurs used. The game can be played as two-player too.

There is some information about SUE; several pages with brief information about various aspects of the findings and links to an internet site with much more information.

Features

Fun facts about various dinosaur species.
Print out dinosaurs to color.
Play the tile matching game through several levels.
Information about the SUE exhibit is included.

Technical Aspects:

We had no problems running this title on our Pentium III-500 Mhz with 128M RAM. The animated sequences ran without incident and the sound effects were not choppy. The entire SUE program takes 90 megs of a 650meg CD-ROM.

Report and Conclusions:

I wish there was more content to this program! It doesn't seem likely that kids are going to play this very repetitive matching game with a goal of being able to print pictures to color. This program is extremely limited due to a lack of flexibility - kids can't go directly to the dinosaur printables or color them onscreen and the information presented about SUE is very concise. Replayability? NOT!