Hasbro Interactive Quadra 840AV, PowerMac 8500/150 Tonka Search & Rescue Reviewed by Martha Engber Have your kids take a drive through Tonka Search & Rescue (ages 4 and up), where my bet is they'll have a grand time saving people and making repairs using backhoes, cranes, dump trucks and other cool Tonka vehicles. Gameplay When you enter Search & Rescue you meet a robust Tonka Joe, dressed for rescue, who introduces you to the dispatch center, which is the screen from which you can choose any of the five main activities, each introduced by a character. Hallelujah that two of the five characters are women with one, Rudy Forest the zookeeper, being a minority and the other, Suzy Sparks, being in a non-standard job for a woman (she's in charge of the garage). That was a big plus for me, the mother of a 6-year-old daughter. The activities themselves seem to be legitimate in terms of number, work required and length of time to complete. Kids can go to Suzy's garage, where they can equip and customize fire trucks and other vehicles. Choosing "Coach Blaze" means you'll get a tour of the Tonka Academy where three skills are taught; fire fighting and rescue using a helicopter or motor boat. The meatiest activities, however, are the three missions, which are disaster scenes that the player must clean up and rebuild. One revolves around the burning dock warehouse. The second deals with the aftermath of an earthquake at a zoo in which animals have been set loose, cages wrecked and roads cracked. In the last, old New England fisherman "Nate Cod" takes you through a flooded neighborhood where neighbors need rescuing. For each mission kids accomplish, they get an award certificate from the print center along with a newspaper article featuring their heroism. They can also print out Tonka team member badges, license plates and sheets of patterns to cut out and assemble into construction sites. Envision your computer area awash in paper. Graphics and Sound The graphics don't attempt to be photo quality, but rather feel like colorful cartoons that are not too busy to look at. The lion stretches, the St. Bernard pants, the river water runs and gurgles. Best of all, each scenario has a number of faceless little people, some of whom are victims while others are members of the rescue crew. For example, if during firefighter practice at Tonka Academy you don't put out a manufactured blaze with some speed, the little firefighter helpers sit down and start playing cards. If you wait long enough, they'll curl up, go to sleep and snore. In terms of detail, the pilings at the harbor have algae growing on them, the power drill in the garage zips loudly like a power drill, the flags wave in the breeze. When you click on vehicles, their engines start and continue to hum until they drive off the screen after completing an activity. Difficulty The program literature says it encourages kids "to use problem-solving skills, rescue know-how and imagination to get missions accomplished." I didn't find this to be the case. Each mission scenario begins by telling kids what to do first and brings them the proper vehicle. It would be better to have a selection of four vehicles at the top of the screen in order to give kids a chance to figure out which is the best vehicle for the job. Telling kids which jobs to do and when gives them little chance to problem-solve or prioritize. What the program does well, however, is teach persistence and task completion, which leads to my next point. Interface The program excelled at what I called the Patience/Frustration Factor, which is both good and bad. My kids had a hard time maneuvering the vehicles sometimes because it requires a sense of perspective. Take the helicopter at the zoo. You position it in a place you believe to be above the lion, yet when you drop the rescue basket, it lands two inches below the lion. That means you have to move the helicopter up and try dropping the basket again so it gets close enough so the lion will jump in. The same goes for using the backhoe to pick up boxes and pipes on the dock, etc. It's frustrating to start with, but I found it gratifying that my daughter had to try again and again before getting it right. Besides, once a kid learns the feel of the vehicles, it's a lot easier the second time. Keep in mind that you should run the program on a machine with a fast processor. otherwise is really tough to maneuver the vehicles. That's what I found by trying it on my Quadra 840AV (too slow) then on my PowerMac (just right).