Everyone one knows Gary Larson's "The Far Side." We've seen Far Side mugs, read Far Side Gallery collections, worn Far Side T-shirts, and pasted our favorite Far Side panels in our offices. And now we can own "The Far Side Screen Saver Collection" from Delrina.
Delrina has used their Intermission Engine software to give Larson's images an animated home on the Windows screen. They chose 14 of his images to animate and bring to brilliant 800 x 600 resolution full-color life. This ain't no flying toasters, folks.
Delrina's graphics artists have added dramatic colors that lend texture to the bizarre and funny landscapes that populate the Larson world. Chickens hold a messy and noisy egg fight, bison herds balloon, and the flames of hell scorch the screen in 256 beautiful colors.
Concerned with security? There's a password protection option, as well as "sleep now" and "don't sleep" corners. This lets you send your computer to bed at a moment's notice, or keep it from blanking while you're getting some coffee.
The Far Side Collection was easy to install. I just went to the Program Manager's Run command and selected the Install program on disk 1. This collection is BIG, and loading it took almost an hour. When fully installed, it takes up at least 7 megabytes of memory.
Though these modules are animated, you won't know it unless you plan to sit and stare at your screen. The action is usually fairly subtle and very slow.
I ran this on a 386 DX - 25 with 4 megs of RAM. The screen defaults to a 'loading' screen for several seconds while the actual screen saver is loading into memory. If you want your computer back in operation during this loading phase, you have to wait for the program to finish loading, so that you can tell it to go away again! Good thing it has a "don't sleep" corner.
Some, but not all, of the screens have sounds to accompany the animation. These sounds are few and far between, and if you don't have a sound card, you won't miss them. I was also unable to find the option that turns sounds on or off so my only solution was to turn the volume down completely.
Since I modem quite a bit, I wanted to see how the Intermission Engine handled during a session of up/downloading. When your COM ports are open, but not necessarily doing anything, the Far Side Collection doesn't load. You just get a black screen.
If you use DOS much, you will also find that the Intermission Engine won't play modules in the DOS mode. It will function to blank the screen, but that's it.
The Far Side Screen Saver Collection is cute. The modules are amusing to look at,but the space it takes up is too much for me to justify. After all, Windows COMES with a screen saver package! While Flying Windows isn't the most entertaining of images, it gets the job done, and doesn't use up valuable hard drive real estate doing so.
Reviewed by Sara Schwartz for NautilusCD September, 1994.
