Undersea Adventure Overview.

   How do you do,

  (First, let's take a moment to remember the people in the Southern Atlantic coastline who are dealing with Dorian and pray for the safety and recovery efforts they will face.)

   After having a nostalgia blast with Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey, I decided to revisit another game of my childhood: Knowledge Adventure: Undersea Adventure.

   Knowledge Adventure was a series of computer game like programs issued in the late eighties, early nineties time frame, as a way to educate children, as well as be entertaining. Thus, the series was popular for people of all ages. The motto for the franchise was "Have Fun! Get Smart!"

  Admittedly, some of the programs they offered didn't age well. Space Adventure had a few things set for after 2000 which never happened (including people returning to the Moon in 2012). The knowledge of dinosaurs has come a long way since the release of the original Dinosaur Adventure (which was re-released later as Dinosaur Adventure 3D), while it seems the last was released on the sudden revival in dinosaur interest due to the release of Jurassic Park and Land Before Time. Other programs have held up over the years, such as Body Adventure 3D, to some extent, along with Bug Adventure, Kid's Zoo, and American Adventure (the preview shows the presidents morphing over the years, though dated now as it stopped with Bill Clinton). Topping the ones that holds well is Undersea Adventure, one of two of my favorites (the other being Dinosaur Adventure).

  Open the program on the CD or floppy disk, get into DOS in the process (in those days, some computer programs worked by getting off of Windows and into Disk Operating System, or DOS, where you had the annoying task of having to type out the program you wanted), and then you see the title screen with three electronic notes played. Then comes the video of the great white shark approaching, making one think he was in the cage see, before it goes to the other and then swims away (perfect for any too young to see Jaws). That was how the program opened.
   The game came in two versions, which I'll call the Alpha and the Beta versions. The Alpha version is the one I liked the most: it had the simplistic menu design where you are in a kind of cabin of a boat looking out. Each of the lay out items led to a particular item, such as the popcorn leading to the movies or the treasure chest to the 3D Undersea World.
   There are games involved: Can You Find Me?, What Do I Eat? and Who Am I? Each game is a trivial one where you match the food with an animal or a body part with an animal. Get all correct and you are treated to a CGI orca leaping out of the water (enough to cry out "Willy!")
    While the games are for fun, there is also the reference where you read articles about the flora and fauna of the oceans, most of which are based on Jacques Cousteau's exhaustive work, The Random House Atlas of the Oceans. There's even an introduction article on him that comes when one first enters the reference page. The reference page comes with category areas for fish, crustaceans, mollusks, marine mammals, marine reptiles, maps, the shore, and so on. Click on either of them and you go straight to one particular subject. There's also a series of red, yellow, and green buttons on either side of the picture that when pressed on results in all kinds of noises (some are just added for humor-sake). The one thing with the reference page that I couldn't figure out is how you could zoo out the globe to the point of being in space as with Space Adventure. 
    While the reference page has movies, you could watch them separately in the movie page. You can also go to the lab and see the inside of the shark, octopus, and lobster. There is also the story book, which is meant for the pre-school and kindergarten aged audience because a voice speaks out the words, and the writing is in a simplistic manner to allow things to be explained without going over one's head.
    These areas are not as impressive as the 3D Aquarium and Treasure Hunt, which use the 3D engine for movement with the mouse. The graphics are somewhat dated (being like that of Wolfenstein 3D, which came out a year earlier; yet was enough to make someone who played that game expect to see the bad guys pop out any second). In Aquarium, you start at the end of a hall and enter the atrium that resembles a flower. You then chose which of the rooms to enter. Unlike in Wolfenstein, the doors don't open and each time you go in, the music changes.
    You can see for yourself in this series of videos posted by KGrove94 on Youtube. The player in the videos is like me, and I am sure some of y'all who remember are, by starting at Coral Reef room first, then working one's way around from there. The music includes a presto obstinato for the atrium, followed a gentle sounding tune for Coral Reef and Exotic Fish rooms, pleasant harmony for the Marine Mammal and Open Ocean rooms, a somewhat Calypso beat for the Danger and Weird Fish room, while The Shore room has a tune of steel drums with the sound of waves crashing. The Aquarium is breath taking either way and is the only aquarium in the world that is open 24/7 and is all free admission (and you don't even have to beg your parents to set aside a time for a road trip to a real one).
    The set up is impressive and the dated graphics ignored, though it does seem a disappointment that each room only has pictures and never once can one see three dimensional creatures. Nor are the pictures moving. Instead, one clicks on the pictures and a text appears for a description, similar to seeing it on the side of a fish tank. One interesting bug is in both versions: you click on the wall of the Coral Reef room and the text for the Brain Coral appears. This never happens in the other rooms, something I can't explain.
    Treasure Hunt has the same set up, but this time you are greeted by a manatee named Splash (he claims he used to be a boy-a-tee, but then he grew up. 😄😄😄) You start out in an area with a center room and three halls leading to different room. Behind you is a poster of a shark, which you click and it disappears forever, enabling you to begin the game. First, you might be more conscious of the set up, so after Splash speaks, you would explore the three rooms: Kelp room, Coral room, and Surf room (Splash will sing "Surfin' USA" upon your exiting of that room). Each room has another manatee: one with a shorts, one with sunshades, and the third with a tie. In each room, you interact with an animal for some facts, each one talking as though to impersonate a celebrity (the nudibranch sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example). When you start the game, you go in with one minute worth of oxygen in the tank. You must find the treasure before it runs out, barring stops to interact with additional aquatic life along the way (though Splash says to avoid the predators).
    One thing noticed by anyone is how you come into contact with Splash and he vanishes. Why, I don't know. The beta version fixes this glitch, but since he is at the end of the game, we can assume he found a short cut.
    The beta version of the game is about the same with a few changes. The movies are expanded to have more videos, which all come with an annoying commentary at the start before the doors open to let you watch (you'd have to click to skip over it). It also gave new voices to the characters (making Splash sound younger and removing the celebrity impersonations) as well as adding a commentary to each picture in the aquarium (which only works on the illiterate and the visually impaired). Even the menu is made to resemble the inside of a submarine, which doesn't have the same personality as the alpha version. Other than that, it has no improvements on the graphics or anything else.

    Since the CDs don't work on my current computer, it is a disappointment to not bring it up again, plus it also seems unlikely to share the experience with any of my kids in the future. That is indeed a shame, because it really is a classic. So far, I am yet to hear of any HD versions or some newer releases made, one that not only updates some of the knowledge, but possibly show how far computer technology has come to enable a more realistic aquarium or treasure hunt.
     For someone who doesn't live near a coast, the viewing of the game videos is enough of a way to come close, as well as providing the nostalgia blast.