Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 112

C8 0 O) 3 fiL Worms With Attitude The Warner brothers Yakko and Wakko and their sister Dot wreak their usual havoc in "Animaniacs Game By Gene Emery A WAR going on being fought with Uzis bazookas baseball bats and shotguns also being waged with priceless Ming vases plummeting sheep and old women who wander around complaining about the price of tea before exploding What do you expect in a game in which the combatants are slimy creatures with no arms and no legs but plenty of attitude? Welcome to Worms 2 (MicroProse Windows 95 $36 800-695-GAME gamesdesignworms2t a strategy game in which you maneuver on a bizarre landscape use a crazy assortment of weapons and try to do more damage to your slithery opponents than your opponent can do to you when his turn You can play against the computer against another player at your PC or against lots of players over a network or the Internet Much of the charm of this game comes from the fact that the little creatures sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks gone bad and slugging it out with weapons both high-powered and ridiculous that sometimes backfire The game lets you customize just about everything from the cartoonish terrain to air drops of new weaponry You also can name the individual worms on your squad and there are entertaining little cartoons of the worms that pop up when you first activate the program It may take a little while to master some of the weaponry and not very reassuring when the game comes with an eight-page booklet of to correct or clarify the 40-page instruction booklet But if you spend too much time with these worms be hooked Gene Emery writes for Variety hand and quick reactions Our favorite game by far is in which Wakko must defeat via his burps the robot army that has overtaken ACME labs As you advance levels become more mazelike with blocked-off areas that can be entered only after players find hidden keys and switches As the robots become more deadly so does ammunition load up on everything from soda and chili to tacos and baked beans to blast away at the Terminator-style On the final level you face off against The Think Tank who is holding The Brain (from and The captive In Balloon Dot and Wakko bounce Yakko on a trampoline to burst anvil-laden balloons over the head of Baloney a parody of you-know-which PBS dinosaur who threatens to Yakko to death with his bear-hug squeeze have a funsy-onesy good time trying to stop the annoying Baloney before he hugs again Dot gets rid of the bad guys in her nightmares by blowing lethal kisses at them in (maybe they should have named it Big but if the baddies come into contact with Dot before she freezes them with a buss she loses a life Three deadly collisions and a goner is reminiscent of Ultra though less sophisticated in which you use the mouse to help Dot aim and hit a ball through a miniature golf course And players race Yakko on increasingly rapid vehicles through an obstacle-courselike warehouse to collect movie props in Shop 100 percent satisfaction offers an exchange or refund if purchasers are not completely happy with Game But the company must be pretty sure not going to take them up on it After all in the opening theme music Yakko Wakko and Dot sing: developers would like to buy a really snazzy yacht put all kinds of games in here to tie your mind in knots and zany animations that will leave you seeing PC users require Windows 95 486 66 MHz or faster processor (Pentium recommended) 16MB RAM 2X CD-ROM drive Macintosh users require Power Mac with 16MB RAM System 71 or better 2X CD-ROM drive In "Worms you can play against the computer another player or lots ot other players on a network or over the Internet By Ronnie Gill STAFF WRITER WHEN tried lots of software games you reach a point where every new CD-ROM seems to be derivative of something played before But when the program is designed well familiarity need not breed contempt So it is with Animaniacs Game Pack! (suggested retail $20 800-545-7677) by Funnybone Interactive Just how addictive is this compilation of arcade games based on Steven multi-Emmy Awardwinning cartoon series? Suffice it to say we had trouble storing it long enough to start writing this review For the uninitiated the Animaniacs are the Warner brothers Yakko and Wakko and their sister Dot who have been banished to the water tower on the Warner Bros movie-studio lot When the siblings are loose they wreak havoc in the lives of those unfortunate enough to be nearby Although the software is targeted to ages 8 and over its satiric humor is written to appeal to both kids and adults The latest water-tower escape lands them smack in the middle of your computer screen where they set up the icons for five multitiered games The concepts behind these contests win any awards for originality but the graphics are bold and bright the animation smooth and fluid and the action fast and furious requiring a deft NEWSDAY WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 25 1998.