Requires: 040 or better processor, System 7.1.x or higher, double speed CD-ROM drive, 16 megabytes of RAM, 20 megs of hard drive space; connection to parody website requires MacTCP 2.0.6 or later, or Open Transport 1.1 or later, 14.4 or speedier modem, subscription to internet service provider, and Netscape Navigator / Communicator 3.0 or greater or Internet Explorer 3.0 or greater.
Protection: None
PowerMac Native: Yes
Rating: Three and a half Joysticks
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Microshaft Windblows proved a welcome surprise. I must admit that I have been somewhat hesitant to open a Parroty Interactive title since my first encounter with the company after their CD-ROM PYST. PYST engaged in saturation-bomb advertisements, appearing everywhere and seeming to be a low-cost dead-on parody of Myst. Instead, the title (to myself and the friends I later donated the CD to) PYST seemed static, uninspired, and the worst crime of all possible proportions for a humor product, deadly dull. At that moment (and with my PYST CD becoming the gift of choice at White Elephant parties for months to come) I had sworn off Parroty Interactive titles, thinking them as glossy packaging with little content.
Congratulations, Parroty. You proved me wrong and I couldn't be happier. Microshaft Windblows shows the company's designers have come a long way since PYST. Microshaft Windblows proves to be fully interactive, sometimes humorous and on occasion downright funny.
The GATES of Heaven
Bill Gates is the Man We Love to Hate. No product or company serves as better fodder for late-night humor material than Microsoft. Microshaft Windblows takes aim at their flagship OS by creating a minor story line, a few interactive games, and some occasionally wry and one or two downright cunning parodies of the software industry.
You begin by booting up "Windblows 98," which has a cute animated title sequence that parodies the Windows 95 startup screen (though I felt had it done the moving line at the bottom of the screen the parody would have been more dead-on.) Once there, you get treated to a long video introducing our two narrators, Meg (a beautiful corporate executive assistant's assistant to the assistant to Bill Gates) and Graham (a janitor who idolizes Gates and was a kid hacker). The frame story is that these two created a parody of windows - Meg to "get even" and Graham because he wants to poke "gentle fun" at his idol . . . and because he has a crush on Meg. The "tour" can be divided into five parts: the humor areas under the icons on the right of the desktop, the "mini-games," the frame story videos and requirements, and Internet Exploder.
Plug and Players
The frame story develops that you must find the "Access codes" to get to each "new material" stage of Windblows. You click on the email icon, read an email, and then try and get a computer term out of a two or three word clue. (For example, one of my favorites - though puzzling at first - was the clue "Pamela Anderson's Breasts." The password: Silicon Valley.) You only get clues after you have gone through each one of the gags opened up at each "level."
These gags can be found on the left-hand side of the desktop, divided into different sections by icon. The Campus Cam emulates grayscale security cameras placed in the Redmond Microsoft campus. MSTV - Microshaft TV - is a compilation of TV show parodies with celebrity voice impersonation voice-overs while a slideshow of some extremely good caricatures of the parody show scenes play. The Reject Bin shows products that Microshaft beta tested and then dumped. Bill's personal outlook has entries from Gates' fictional email, journal, and daily planner. You get 1 or two of each of these areas per "level", and must look at all of them in order to get the next email to get the password to proceed to the next level. Each level changes the desktop in the background.
Okay, nice descriptions, you say. Are they funny?
Think of Microshaft Windblows as a Saturday Night Live in recent years. Some of the sketches may make you smile, a rare few are extremely funny, and a few have funny ideas but they run too long, and some just miss the mark entirely. The Campus Cam had some very clever ideas - the technical support call that comes in which is emulated through Macintalk and is supposedly Professor Stephen Hawking calling because he is lonely was just downright brilliant. Both technical support actors are very good in all the sketches they do. There are a series of three "church of Microsoft" type sketches, of which two have good ideas but only one, a wedding / merger ceremony between Microsoft and Apple, really ends up playing out as extremely funny. There are also a series of break room skits and exercise room skits, none of which really stand out, though the idea of a programmer mistaking a stair climber as a "foot mouse" had potential. The biggest problem here is not only the inconsistent quality of the material but the sense that the Parroty Interactive team was on a limited budget for these and only had a few locations where they could shoot, so props are minimalist. The church sketches would have been tremendously more entertaining if they had actually gotten permission and re-dressed up a real house of worship, and especially would have been a LOT more valuable to have confessional booths for the confession sketch.
MSTV really shines. Whoever did the art on these has dead-on ability to nail the celebrities in question, and integrates the computer components into their sketches with great accuracy. The sketches are often lively and have some real flair, especially Xena: Code Warrior.
The reject bin has some really good sarcasm toward MS products - MS Word-Up, a translator for street language, may be politically incorrect but it is inspired. My favorite is the Naughty Net Nanny: The filtering program that brings you ONLY the smut on the net.
Bill's Outlook tends to be rather flat, with one or two inspired moments and a mostly flat representation everywhere else. The famous "Bill Gates' Secret Diary" published on the internet not only did it first but did it better.
While not having access to all of these features at one time does give a sense of progression to watching the sketches, and gives the title some sense of structure, it also ends up forcing you to go through all the material on the CD. If you only found the MSTV very funny, for example, you would still have to see all the other parody areas before you could gain access to see just the MSTV areas.
Mini-Games: What, no Solitaire?
Separate from the humour skit areas are a series of mini-games on the desktop. The most noticeable is the Billigotchi, a very clever idea wher you have to raise a virtual Bill by giving him money, talking to him, and spanking him when he is naughty. Like the Tomagotchi that it parodies, the Billigotchi is a cute idea but damn annoying. There is no "off" switch until the stupid little bugger dies. One problem is that he continues to die in "real time" even while you are playing the other games or watching the skits elsewhere, which makes keeping up with this virtual Bill tedious. As you pass from the very last password and get the Bill gates puppetmaster desktop, the Billigotchi will then turn into the "Final version of Bill" - if you kept him extremely happy he is a software mogul, if you let him stay dead, he is a hobo. Sadly, there is no way to see these final sequences except just after you type in the final password.
The other games have a similar hit and miss value. PinBill is an operational pinball game - much to my surprise, it really is a very playable game, though one questions how funny it is to constantly shoot a pinball up Gate's nostril. However, in most humour titles, these parodies rarely actually makes the games play like games, and PinBill is to be commended for its play-a-"Bill"-ity.
Of mixed success is "Win Bill gates' Money." While a nice knockoff of You Don't Know Jack with Microsoft themes and with Steve Jobs as your host, I expected this to be knock-down funny. The questions often were as funny as I had hoped: the alternate wrong answers are a hoot, but the Jobs character didn't have as many really clever script zingers for right or wrong answers. My absolute favorite was the overdrive section (which mimics the YDKJ Dis or Dat question) where you were asked to differentiate if a term was a computer application, a sexual position, or both. Suddenly the terms Ram Doubler and Stuffit took on a whole new light!
The Roll Ahead is finely crafted but a dull actual game. Something of a cross between Candyland and Monopoly for juniors, you move your miniature Bill Gates or Steve Jobs around a board, with the possibility of buying a few spaces and placing corporations on them. The game is slow and really rather inane as a game, but the Chance / Community-Chest type of cards often are funny, so it is worth playing just for that.
Microshaft Exploder, the weakest of the bunch, is a space invaders game. Neither original nor inspired, it just is. As the police say, "move along folks, there's nothing here to see."
Internet Exploiter
I had the impression from reading the documentation that Internet Exploiter would somehow use my normal browser but give it an aaron-like look and feel of the Microshaft theme. Sounded cool to me. Also didn't happen. All the "Internet Exploder" does is send you to the Microshaft website, which you can get to on you own without the games' clunky interface to get you there. For example, it forces you to quit your browser if it is running in order to take you to the web site. The website itself is cute, but there's not a lot of new material on the site that isn't already covered on the disk. There are a few items that you can ONLY get to through the Microshaft program, but these are not all that exciting. There are downloadable items but all are for (surprise!) Wintel only - even the desktop patterns are placed in self-extracting ZIP files, so they cannot be used by Mac Users. Ugh. I do suggest visiting their Easter Eggs section before you start playing, because since each desktop has one Easter Egg, and you cannot access lower levels once you go to the top levels, you will want to try these first.
In Summary
Microshaft Windblows is a mixed bag. I was impressed that the games of PinBill and Win Bill Gates' Money were actually quite functional and entertaining. Some of the skits and ideas were very clever, and some of the little bits like the sarcastic little Start Menu and some very clever desktop background parodies made me smile. On the negative side, though, the developers rely far too often on the repetition of a few gags (how many references of "The Road Ahead" do we have to hear?) and there are more misses than solid hits on this title. These flaws notwithstanding, Microshaft Windblows proves that Parroty Interactive has come a long way from PYST. I should note here that one of my fellow reviewers at IMG loved PYST and the review we published was very favorable. I personally cannot agree with that reviewer's sentiment, but I can recommend Microshaft Windblows for people looking for some moments of knocking the Redmond gang.
Pros
• Some skits are very funny
• MSTV area extremely well-done parody of TV shows
• PinBill and Win Gates' Money MiniGames fun
• Cool small Easter-Egg like funny bits.
• Reasonable price per gag ratio
Cons
• Internet Exploiter a clumsy way to send people to a web page; downloads are all for PC only
• Billiogotchi dies on you while you are exploring other areas of the title
• You are forced to go through ALL of the humor skits to see all of a certain area.
• Many skits drag on too long or are not punchy enough; some good ideas executed poorly.
Publisher Information:
Name: Parroty Interactive (a division of Palladium)
