Children's Software Review of:
Jurassic Park III

I immediately went to the Jurassic Park Institute Web site. This site is all about dinosaurs with a lot of information that enables the student to learn more and to learn accurate information about dinosaurs. This Web site has a dinopedia, dinotainment, dino guides, dino of the day, dino trips and activities. (Fig. 2) There is also Dino News that has information about dinosaur findings and other information about dinosaurs. I took the link to Dino Trips and was amazed at how many parks there are that have connections to dinosaurs. These are not theme parks — but rather state and national parks where dinosaur fossils have been found and it is possible to see museums or do some other type of information gathering. Big Bend National Park here in Texas is on the list. Big Bend does not have a museum, but there are interpretive trails and maps and Big Bend is the sight where the remains of pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus were found. The activities section has a lot of different activities that are geared towards children.

My next excursion was into the Fossil Digs game. I found fossil digs to be a lot of fun as well as very educational. The game is dino egg cracking and the goal is to correctly answer 6 out of a possible 8 questions about dinosaurs and the age in which they lived. The game opens with a dinosaur nest of eggs and questions on the right. You click on an egg to crack it and a baby dinosaur comes out. You then select an answer to the question, click on answer and if you are correct, you receive a dialog window saying “Congratulations” and providing more information about the answer. As you get correct answers, the baby dinos line up under the question bar. If, however, you get the answer wrong, your baby dino gets eaten. The questions are not easy — they provoke thought, and require reasoning and information.

Two games are included on this demo disk, but one — Dino Defender — does not have any instructions on the demo disk and I found it very difficult to determine the goals. The second game is Danger Zone and has fifteen different games for one or two persons to play. (Fig. 3) This second game teaches spatial concepts, shapes, matching of like shapes, matching of like pictures and generally uses a love of dinosaurs and adventure to ready children for learning in school. This game also teaches eye-hand coordination, as well as sharing if it is played with another child. If a second child is not there to play, one person can play against the computer. One game is trying to get across a gorge where a bridge has broken. The player must rev up the engine to the correct speed to make the jump without falling short or going too far and without hitting any flying pteranodons. In my efforts to get the speed correct, I got knocked down by a pteranodons and fell short and into the gorge. Neither one of these games is labeled for any age group but I think that children as young as six or seven could play the Jurassic Park Danger Zone.

Although I did this review from a demo disk, I am impressed with the learning skills that are included in something that appears to be pure fun. These software programs can be installed on a personal computer or a Macintosh. System requirements are a Pentium 233MHz or faster, Windows 95 or above, 64 MB RAM and 30 MB hard drive space as well as 800x600 monitor, 16X CD-ROM, keyboard, and mouse. On the Jurassic Park Institute web site as well as on Knowledge Adventure, there are notices stating that the movie is rated PG. The games appear to be purely general audience.

I believe that I have seen Jurassic Park software for students at CompUSA and at Best Buy. Time prevented me from going by any store to check out their stock. This software is available online for $29.95 from Knowledge Adventure. You also may call the company toll free at 1-800-5457677 or order by mail from 

Knowledge Adventure, Inc.
4247 S. Minnewawa Ave.
Fresno, CA 93725-9345.