Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 131

WEEKEND MAG FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1997 Game Help 1 -v-i- plj" J0 jUMJJl i aw! II 1 tfr 'iww'. nir "Finty Flush" is lectured in Microsoft's H7 I HoHoHo.com Santa's gone cyber ami is now accepting your Christmas wish list via e-mail. Of course, he can't actually answer it himself, he's way too busy. These days, the jolly one has a personal assistant who checks his mail and then forwards you a personalized Christmas response. "Rudolph will be answering letters right up until Christmas," says Lara Edge, director ot online graphics for the "Welcome to Santa's Workshop" Web site created just for kids.

"Welcome to Santa's Workshop" (www.santas-work-shop.org) is only one of many Christmas home pages on the Internet helping out Santa this year. The home pages range from religion-oriented to silly. Here is a sampling of Internet sites designed to help plan and enjoy Christmas. (None carry any formal endorsement) Tired of the same old Norway Spruce year after year? Arizona Cyprus got you down? Try the National Christmas Tree Association's Web site (www.christree.org) for a com- prehensive Christmas tree guide. "A Religious Christmas" is offering the chance to experience the joy of the nativity through art, music, drama, sermons and essays (www.execpc.com -tmuWstHohrVxmasmain.

htm). Assembled by St. John's Lutheran Church in Brookfield, this site has a link to every conceivable religious holiday site on the Web. Experience the culinary delights that helped President Clinton wean himself off fast food. Sample the White' House holiday recipes as prepared by White House Chefs Walter Scheib III and Roland Mesnier on first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's "Holiday in the White House" page (www.whitehouse.gov WHEOPFirst See exactly how long you can procrastinate before you are forced to buy gifts for your inlaws with Christmas.com's "World Famous Countdown 'Til Christmas" (www.

Christmas, comhtmlcountdown.html). Enter and win a $500 credit at the Readers Digest online store at the "Christmas with Readers Digest" Web site (www. rdchristmas.com). The site also offers recipes, holiday stories, crafts and home projects. Send an American Lung Association Christmas Seal via e-mail to a friend or loved one (www.christmasseales.orgindex.

html). Tim Yeadon, Scripps Howard Puzzle games can test your skill or drive IITCH GITMAN again when a Qube rolls over a Microsoft Entertainment rrL ri MITCH GITMAN .7 A you crazy middle of the split scr middle of the split screen where you and your opponent (human or computer) get to go at it witn familiar Capcom fighting characters. PlayStation, Rated K-A (kids to adults). Capcom Entertainment, www.capcom.com 408-774-0400. Tetrisphere: How do you ramp up Tetris to take advantage of the graphics power of Nintendo 64? For Nintendo it meant making the field a rotating, three-dimensional, multilayered sphere.

Plop puzzle pieces onto the sphere and move them around on the surface in order to create a match with other pieces, thus removing them. Try to reach the core by peeling away layer after layer like an onion before time runs out. Nintendo also has a new Tetris Plus out for the latest "pocket colors" version of the game system that helped put Tetris on the map, Game Boy. Nintendo 64. $60.

Rated K-A (kids to adidts). Developer: H20 Entertainment. Publisher: Nintendo of America, www.nin-tendo.com Free-lance technology writer Mitch Gitman can be e-mailed at mgitman(ti usa.net. nHttwi ee-3 tcccccc Puzzle Collection. marked square Really, though, the trick is to destroy the glowing-green Advantage Qubes, which will also eliminate all the Qubes surrounding them.

IQ is as imposing a game as it looks. With the lightning-quick thinking required, be prepared to finish the first few games scoring anIQ ofO. PlayStation. $35440. Rated K-A (kids to adults).

Sony. www.playstation.com 800-345-SONY. Lose Your Marbles: Losing your marbles is literally the objective of this game, which can be played from the Windows 95 desktop. Race to line up at least three color-matching marbles to make them vanish trom your grid before they jam it. Line up five same-colored marbles and they not only disappear from your side, they reappear on your opponent's side.

Lose Your Marbles comes with a guarantee: if you purchase the game at a retail store and you don't think it's better than Tetris, you can send it back to SegaSoft for a refund. Windows 95. $20. Rated K-A (kids to adults). SegaSoft.

www.segasoft.com 01 IJJJ Pack: The Puzzle Collection: Pajitnov makes his Microsoft debut with this collection of 10 games. He designed four; the rest are by Moscow software studio Mir Dialogue. The nice thing about The Puzzle Collection is its variety. The 10 tests span the difficulty scale, though they generally have easy instructions. Some require rapid-fire decision-making, others intense strategizing.

"Spring Weekend" makes you match cute and colorful plant and animal patterns by rotating hexagonal groupings in as few moves as possible. In "Charmer," the goal is to charm snakes out of their pots by controlling position and type of flute; at the same time, catch falling pot lids that will shut in the snakes Windows 95INT. $35. K-A (kids to adults). Developer: Mir Dialogue.

Publisher: Microsoft. www.microsoft.comgames Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo: This home version of last year's hit arcade game drops linked pairs of gems from the top of the screen. You have to move and rotate the gems to form groups of the same color. Try to remove blocks of gems before they fill the screen. The "Fighter part comes in the By Special to the Post-Gazette In 1984, Alexey Pajitnov, a graduate student al a Moscow computer academy, deved an animated electronic puzzU: Geometric shapes descend the top of the screen, and the player has to sort them into layers.

Pajitnov's creation, Tetris, went on to sell a reported 40 million copies in various forms, making it the best-selling video game cvr. A lot has chared since 1984. The Soviet empi; has crumbled jnd Pajitnov is n. 'v in Redmond, workinp. I that present-day empire, Microsoft But one asn't changed: puzzle video still show the strong influenc.

Tetris. This year's crop of onic brain teasers flings nr three-dimensional objects o' sorted color and shape. Intelligent )'. Qube for the 1 tiny human sta: structure of cu. the top layer oi toward you in tions.

To avoid gc; ven off the ede. destroy each Qui. squares you're si; the button, In Intelligent dtion, you're a on a massive Qubes). And Les is rolling nig combina- crushed or have to by marking the on with pressing i i i.