It's not easy for children (or even adults) who live amid the gardens and parks of clean-air suburbs to understand why the earth needs saving. The best way is to go to an unspoiled part of the earth, experience its wonders and watch what happens as people move in.
Next best is to get there in your imagination. Good computer games are the biggest imagination stirrers we've seen. We've found several great games for junior high scholars through senior citizens. Best new: They all come in Macintosh and IBM-compatible versions.Way back in mid-1990, we told you about SimCity, an excellent and very entertaining city planning teacher. In the game, you play mayor and planner. You can build and manage the city of your dreams.
You'll find out fast why every solution brings more problems and why changes that benefit one group usually threaten several others.
With SimCity's sequel SimEarth, there's an even bigger challenge. You can play creator. Beginning with a lifeless void of air and water, see what happens as you create continents, life forms and, eventually, intelligence.
Beware. If you don't think fast, intelligent life makes a real mess of your planet.
Maxis, the maker, calls both programs toys, not games. The point is well taken. You can lose by turning a city or planet to dust, but there's never any time when you can say, "I won."
If you'd rather, you can select a ready-made scenario. Seven planet models, in various stages of development, include early and late Earth, Mars and Venus.
Each simulation comes with one large problem to solve. Strategic thinking is rewarded. The game's big, helpful manual has tips and techniques to start you along.
Each game teaches a wealth of earth science information. In just one exploratory session, we couldn't help learning that mountains form from volcanic action, air composition changes as life evolves, and civilization dramatically speeds up planetary change.
Purists might point out that scientists don't all believe the game's basic Gaia Theory premise, that each change on a planet affects everything else. Many formulas programmed in to keep the game's planets evolving are also based on debatable assumptions, such as that nuclear energy is bad and intelligence is an evolutionary advantage.
But we're not purists. We think anything that teaches as much as this game does, and so challengingly and enjoyably, is worth shouting about.
The bad news for most home computer owners is that the IBM-compatible version needs 540K free RAM, and both Mac and MS-DOS versions are much easier to play with a mouse. There's a Windows 3 version. It requires a mouse and 2M RAM.
Each package lists for $70. For where-to-buy information, call 800-336-2947. Note to teachers: A school edition comes with a strategy guide that helps you stay a step ahead of students.
Eco-Adventures in the Rainforest also comes in school and home editions. It's an interesting, challenging trek through a generic rain forest. As we move from scene to scene, four tools help us examine, move or take what we see.
To keep us involved and alert, each adventure begins with an assignment such as finding a dying species. The game's goal is to stay alive, score lots of points and complete the mission. A map helps you find your way.
Like most adventures, the scene's littered with traps such as biting snakes and drowning pools. It's easy to miss clues unless you stay alert and investigate thoroughly. You must think fast, too. Ingenuity is rewarded.
The game's educational aspects sneak in three ways. First, there's a moral to every story line. In a typical adventure, you're in a race with lumber lords chopping down trees.
Second, each adventure ends with a press conference where you field questions about what you saw.
Third, for every plant or animal you investigate, a sneaky text box flashes on with facts about its place in forest ecology.
There's also a book about rain forests in the package. But it's so unimaginatively written, it'll put most gamers to sleep.
Eco-Adventures costs $50-$60 for home, $80-$95 for school edition. (Full-color versions cost more but are worth it.) The Oceans Edition is No. 2 in the series. If you can't find either one locally, phone Chariot Software at 619-298-0202.
Earthquest and its sequel Earthquest Explores Ecology are also good classroom teaching tools. They come with large compendia of facts, pictures, maps, charts and tables.
The first package shows the Earth's geography and some of its long history. Through a bevy of quizzes and some seek-and-find games, students are hopefully stirred to look up facts and remember them.
The second program explores Earth's ecosystems (such as deserts and grasslands), its composition (such as carbon and water), its life forms and food-energy cycle. Its games are more varied and feel less like schoolwork and more like fun.
But compared with SimEarth, premises are simplistic - for instance, that the Earth runs fine if you just leave it alone. We much prefer the same maker's Time Treks.
Time Treks also contains a large backbone of archived facts. Here, they concern the history of the world and man. What saves this package - in fact, what makes it hard to tear yourself away - is its simple Jeopardy-type game.
The game's slight story line involves archaeologists and tyrants. Your goal is to open 30 "time tiles," each covering a "time door." Each tile you select brings a different kind of challenge, but each one boils down to knowing a historic fact.
If you can get 16 right answers, you win lots of points. If not, you lose. Simple as that.
The teaching comes in the ease with which you can look up answers in the program's "archives." And there's incentive, too, in extra points for several right answers in a row. Students and adults will learn a lot and, just as important, have fun.
Time Treks' $60 Mac version is on sale at local stores. Davidson will release the IBM version in October.