Pony Express Rider
Reviewed by Jason Levine
Published by McGraw-Hill Home Interactive

Age Group: Age 8 and Up Type: Social Studies Price: $39.95 US

PC version requires:
486-66 8 MB RAM, 15 M 2x CD-ROM, Windows 95, Direct-X

Mac version requires:
Version not available.

Description:

Lasting barely 20 months, the Pony Express was one of the briefest and most romantic episodes in the brief and romantic history of the American West. Until 1860, it took 26 to 30 days to get the mail from New York to California. Established by three private businessmen who set up a system of 500 horses and 190 relay stations between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California, the Pony Express's 200 riders made the 2,000 mile journey in just 10 days. They carried a half-ounce letter for only $ 5. The roster of riders included names that have also become legends of the West, such as Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill Cody.

Beginning as it did in April, 1860, the Pony Express carried the news of the most tumultuous events in American history to the West. Westerners first learned of Abraham Lincoln's election, the succession of the Confederate States of America, and the firing on Fort Sumter from Pony Express riders. But even in the 19th Century romance gave way to technology. On October 24, 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph line was completed, and within a month the Pony Express ended its operations forever.

Saddle Up!

In Pony Express Rider, youngsters take the part of a newly recruited rider. Starting at one of three difficulty levels, which effect the frequency and difficulty of obstacles and tasks that are encountered during rides, the basic object of the game is to complete rides between designated stations within the allotted time (which always seems to be by sundown).

The rides, however, turn out to be action interludes for all the educational lessons that the program provides in the various towns along the trail. Pony Express Rider makes extensive use of full motion video (which explains why the program spans 3 CDs) to deliver its lessons in highly entertaining fashion. Instead of wasting disk space on meaningless cut scenes (there are just a few small ones), the program very effectively uses live actors to draw the player into the story.

Virtually all the acting was done using a blue screen technique with the scenery hand-painted in later in a watercolor style. Although this method sacrifices some realism in the look of the scenes, it's surprisingly effective. The acting is good enough and the care in which the acting was mated with the painted scenes professional enough that the kid's focus remains on the actors and what they're saying, rather than being distracted by the surroundings.

Interaction with the actors consists of clicking on them and listening to what they have to say. It may also occasionally involve giving or taking objects (usually messages) from them. Navigation throughout the towns is easy and intuitive. A gloved hand points in directions that can be traveled and at objects that can be examined.

Pony Express Rider is a pure Windows 95 program that installs easily from the autoplay menu. It can be uninstalled either from its own installation menu or from the Control Panel. Since the program writes only about 10 MB to the hard drive, all the full motion video plays from the CD. The trade-off is some long loading times between sequences, even with a quad-speed CD-ROM drive. The program uses Direct-X and comes with the version 2 drivers. Thankfully, the installation routine checks for existing drivers and does not overwrite a more current setup.

Agent of the Union

In order to make its lessons in U.S. history and geography entertaining, the program takes full advantage of the fact that the Pony Express operated under the shadow of the impending Civil War. Early in the program a federal agent recruits the new rider to help expose a Confederate spy ring that is plotting to intercept a Union wagon train of arms headed for a Nebraskan fort. The rider helps foil this plot and later helps capture the ring leader of the Rebel spies. If this seems farfetched, it should be noted that the Pony Express really did play a key role in preventing the commander of the Army's Department of California from turning over his arsenal to the South before he himself joined the Confederate Army.

While keeping tabs on plotters the rider will also meet and learn about runaway slaves, pioneers enduring bitter hardships in the hope of finding a better life in the West, and the plight of the Plains Indians. It should be noted here that Pony Express Rider takes a distinctly '90s or "politically correct" view of these issues. The program is crystal clear that, as far as it is concerned, the Union was on the side of the angels in the American Civil War. Those who maintain that states' rights, and not slavery, was the underlying cause of that war will find no comfort in Pony Express Rider.

The program's approach to American Indians is similar. The rider is admonished to treat all Indians encountered with the utmost respect. The maltreatment that Indian tribes received from the federal government (and Confederate attempts to exploit that maltreatment) is dealt with frankly. If any fighting with Indians is to be done in this game, the rider must initiate it. There is, however, no real violence in the game, so parents need not worry on that score.

On the Trail, or the Mouse that Couldn't Shoot Straight

With all this wonderful content, I was really prepared to love Pony Express Rider. And I did, at least until I actually started riding. There's nothing wrong with the horse riding sequences themselves. It's a bit disappointing that the ride, which is viewed from horseback, takes up a rather small window on the screen. Otherwise it's graphically OK. The horse itself is also fairly easy to control with the arrow keys on the keyboard. The rider accelerates the horse by holding down the up arrow. (Don't hold it too long or you'll find yourself in disfavor for abusing the animal.) The left and right arrow keys are used for steering and the space bar is used to jump over obstacles. The down arrow key slows the horse or backs it up from a standstill. The problems come with the various challenges that rider encounters along the trail. Semaphore or Morse coded messages that the rider must decipher aren't a problem. The journal that the rider can access at any time gives ample information for the simple decoding that's required. The problems arise when the rider must use his or her gun. As noted above, there's no real violence in the game, so nobody actually gets shot in the gun play. Instead, the rider might get ambushed by rebel-sympathizing outlaws or encounter pesky critters like rattlesnakes and bears.

If it's an outlaw ambush, the rider has a certain amount of time to shoot the hats of one or two outlaws and scare them away, before they relieve the rider of horse or mail. Failure simply means starting that particular ride segment over again. The problem is that the mouse control in these sequences is so vague. It's easy enough to aim the gun with the mouse cross hairs against the bad guys who pop up and down like shooting gallery figures. What's frustrating is that most of the time when the rider clicks the mouse trigger, nothing happens. You can click the mouse button five, six, even a dozen times before the gun actually fires. By then the target is usually gone, and it's only out of pure luck that the rider ever wins one of these encounters. I can't imagine kids in the programs recommended age group (9 - 14) having the patience to put up with this for long.

The vague mouse control also hampers the encounters with dangerous animals. As in the outlaw sequences, the rider uses the gun only for the purpose of scaring the animal off. (There's nothing in this game that PETA would find offensive.) But you have to move the mouse pointer so slowly in the rattlesnake encounters lest you be told that you "spooked" the critter that it's positively agonizing. Similarly, you're supposed to scare the grizzly bear off by shooting in front of it, but the program seems to define "in front of" as aiming right at the poor animal.

It's almost certainly unrealistic to hope for a fix to these control problems in a patch, since patches are rarely, if ever, forthcoming for kids' programs. But perhaps we can take a small measure of hope from the fact that the CDs in my review copy of the game are marked "Version 1.0." Obviously a lot of time, care and effort has already gone into Pony Express Rider, and it would be a shame to see it brought down by a technical glitch. But without a fix to these mouse problems, I just can't imagine any kid having the patience to see Pony Express Rider through to the end of the trail.

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