TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES WORLD TOUR  
                          (a colouring book)

by
Trevor Jones

BIO: Amiga A500, one external drive, 1meg., 1084S mon. Starcursor joystick and Agiler mouse.
     Family;    One wife and four children under six.
     Interests; Graphics, animation, authoring programs and (of course)
               "educational" software for children under six.


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THE PROGRAM.

   Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles World Tour is a colouring program aimed at
  the pre-schooler.  It is suitable for 512k users (come on shell out the $69
  and go for a megabyte) and runs under kickstart 1.2, 1.3 and 2.0.  The
  packaging recommends for ages 3 & up.

   The program self boots and is normal AmigaDos so the first thing to do is
  make a working copy and put the original in a safe place away from the
  kids.

   Using the program is relatively straightforward by double clicking on the
  disk icon then on the program icon.

   The main screen, (check out the Turtle_pic with this review to see what
  the screen looks like and what the MIX colours are) has a control panel
  across the top.  The arrow buttons move forward and backward through the 30
  pictures that are available to colour.  There is also Print, Erase (which
  looks like a white house brick), Quit (which is a red blob) and Undo (which
  looks like someone who has just had Leonardo shove his sword where it's not
  welcome).  Below the picture is the name of the part of the world our
  turtles are visiting and the colours available to choose from.  The chosen
  colour is a large square to the right of these.  The last button is MIX.
  This when clicked mixes the current chosen colour with all the others.
  Click again and you return to the normal colours.  This process can be
  repeated for each colour (see the Turtle_Pic for an example of this).

   To colour the picture you click on the colour you want and then click on
  the space in the picture you want filled with that colour.  An interesting
  feature with this program is once you have coloured your picture and move
  to the next one it will remember your colours because it will write to the
  disk (so leave it write-enabled - don't panic! it's not your original).
  When you return to the picture the pointer is taken over and the picture
  recoloured space by space as you left it.  To clear the saved colours click
  on Erase and a requester will ask if you really want to.  Click YES and you
  have a clear picture ready to colour again.


MENUS.

   There are two pull-down menus available.  The first controls the printing
  options and should be set before you click on print.

        The options are;

  Picture only ( the default setting)
  Picture with calendar
  Picture with description
  Picture with message
  Sideways picture only
  Picture with banner

   The program appears to have been put out in a hurry as it is not fully
  tested or bug free.  The calendar, description and banner options don't
  seem to work.  I have not tested the message option which utilises Notepad
  for you to prewrite a message that is then printed with the picture.  Also
  I haven't tried a coloured picture on a colour printer.  However the
  pictures print OK using Picture only and even better if you select Sideways
  as this prints it larger almost filling an A4 page.  I suggest you set the
  preferences to smoothing ON to reduce jagged lines.  Then you can print the
  pictures for your children to colour in hardcopy!

   The second menu controls the pallet and shows the description of the
  current picture which is a short list of facts about the location of the
  picture.

        The options are;

  Change crayon colour
  Use original crayons
  Show description

   Change colour brings up a palette panel with three sliders to mix your own
  colours.  Thus apart from the 22 colours available (or 484 colours using
  MIX ) you have access to the full 4096 Amiga colours to mix yourself.  Also
  each picture has its own palette so allowing you to save different colours
  to each picture.

   Show description ( or right Amiga D ) displays the information about the
  current place the Turtles are visiting.  There are also other keyboard
  equivalents available.  Right Amiga M will MIX/unMIX the pallet, right
  Amiga E will erase, right Amiga S will quit, right Amiga P will print,
  left/right cursor arrows move forward/back picture and various letters take
  you directly to a new picture e.g. A takes you to Australian Outback.


WHAT's MISSING.

   The manual uses pictures of dinosaurs and doesn't match the actual
  program.  The program also seems to have been meant to be two disks with
  the second being a sound disk.  When you clicked on the Title of the
  picture a description and sound effects would be heard.


USER INPUT.

   To spice up the loading a bit I customised the startup-sequence. On
  loading WorkBench the computer will say something like, "carabunga Byron
  and Roxanne, please colour in my pictures and have fun".  To achieve this
  you load the startup-sequence file in the S directory into KindWords or any
  Wordprocessor (I actually use Succinct [Ed: by George Knight, on MD21] for
  this type of editing as its very small, easy to use and ASCII only) and
  save it as ASCII.

   After the line System/Setmap USA1 add the line, "Mount speak:" without the
  quotes.  Then after the line LoadWB add the line, "Type S:Welcome speak:"
  again without the quotes.  You then open a new file in your
  wordprocessor/text editor type in what you want the computer to say and
  save it as ASCII with the name Welcome to the S directory on your Turtles
  disk.

   Finally you will have to copy a few files to the Turtle disk.  Copy from
  your WorkBench disk Narrator.device and Mountlist in the Devs directory to
  Devs on your Turtle disk.  Copy the Speak.Handler in the L directory to L
  on the Turtle disk.  Copy Translator.library from the libs directory on
  your WorkBench disk to the libs directory of the Turtle disk and copy Type
  and Mount in the C directory of your WorkBench to the C directory of the
  Turtle disk.  Before doing this though you should make s ome room by
  deleting some files such as the unused printer drivers.

   You can use this technique on any of your dos disks to add a spoken
  message on startup.


CONCLUSION.

   This program was retailing at $59.95.  For that price and especially
  without the sound option functioning together with all printing options not
  operational, forget it.  However my copy was on special at Computer Spot
  for $6.95 and at this price I can live without sound and the printing
  limitations.  My 6 year old's attention is not kept for long but he doesn't
  colour in for long anyway.  My 4 year old daughter will sit for hours
  carefully colouring in the pictures.  Being able to print sideways gives
  you 30 A4 pictures they can colour when away from the Amiga such as
  travelling.

   If you can get this program for under $10 I would recommend it.  Its
  printing ability, descriptions, adjustable palette and memorised coloured
  pictures add to its appeal over other colouring books.  Certainly my 4 year
  old daughter Roxanne recommends it.



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