This game may have the Mario brand, but it’s also a very comprehensive typing tutor. It only had one fault I could find, it wouldn’t let me skip ahead to more advanced levels if I felt I was advanced enough to start further ahead. I had to go through each of the easy levels to see what was happening up ahead.

The first step is to create yourself a profile. Give yourself a name and choose if you want to play as Mario, Luigi or Princess Peach. Then you’re off starting your lessons.

There are five lessons, each contains different sets, such as numbers, letters, top keys, bottom keys, symbols and the entire keyboard. Each lesson is themed, the first being standard Mario head-butting blocks, plus under the sea, in the castle and typing a letter (of gobbledy-gook).

I’m not a huge Mario fan, but I did enjoy this typing tutor. It was addictive and it worked damnit! It’s a really good typing tutor. If you want to refine your skills so you can get that super-secretary job, or you want to be able to say more on IRC in a shorter span of time, then definitely have a turn with this. It’s abandonware, so it’s free. And one of the best free ones out there I’m sure.

This is another one of my bought ‘games’. Its not really a game, its more of an educational application. In Cartooners its all about making cartoons. There are no real game elements in this application, its just letting your creativity flow.

When you start Cartooners, you get into the main menu where you can choose a couple of options. Look, Play, Create and Quit.

Look
In ‘Look’ you are at the theatre, you can click on the tickets to play a short movie. The movies already listed are the default movies which came with the application. These movies show off what you can do with the software.

Play
‘Play’ is about the same as the ‘Look’ option, however when the movie ends when you just watched one, you dont return to the theatre, but you stay in the editor where you can edit the movie and add bits.

Create
‘Create’ is the most interesting option, here you can do whatever comes to mind, to make the ultimate cartoon. When you start ‘Create’, you’ll start in a blank screen where you can start making your cartoon. First of all you can load scenes. The scenes can be anything from the default list, but you can also load your own pictures, saved from LBM files. I just loaded the ‘graveyard’ setting and added a bunny to the scene. You can place the bunny everywhere in the scene, but it makes the most sense when you put him/her on the ground. You can set it just far right, one pixel away from the border and you can make it ‘Act’. For instance, you can make the Bunny hop into the view. Then press record and it starts recording frame for frame in (faster than) real time. When it has hopped past from right to left and off the screen, you can slide the frame marker back to the beginning and press play. Now you see the bunny hop from right to left, your first cartoon has been made! To add music go back to the first frame and select a tune from the ‘Music’ menu. Select the ‘spooky’ music and press record again until your bunny has hopped out of the screen again. Now when you slide the frame marker back again and press play, your cartoon will play with spooky music playing This is just an example of what you can do with Cartooners.

There are lots and lots more actors to play around with, that can do (act) different things, like dancing and flying and landing and walk and move in all sorts of ways. You can load more than one scene, switch scenes as you go, add sound effects and music, work in multiple layers and add scenes and actors of your own. Speech and exclamation balloons help you with clearing up things. Its just a program to let your creativity run wild.

Its lots of fun making your own cartoons, but its too bad you cant add digital effects and the program only supports LBM files. However the program does support CGA, EGA, VGA, Tandy and various soundcards: Adlib, CMS Gameblaster, Roland MT-32, PC Speaker and Tandy.

It will keep you entertained for a while, but it wont last long anymore these days.