A trip down the Nile via Egyptian sailing craft known as a felucca can set you back $1000 for a five-day trip, and savvy travelers recommend you pack plenty of Pepto-Bismol. Discovery Channel’s Nile: Passage to Egypt CD-ROM, on the other hand, costs considerably less and won’t upset your stomach.
Nile: Passage to Egypt, based on a Discovery Channel documentary, tackles a big job. It not only takes the user via felucca the 4000 miles from the Blue Nile and the White Nile to the Mediterranean, but it also tries to span the 5000 years between the glory of ancient Egypt and its modern-day culture. Even more challenging, the CD-ROM tries to appeal to kids (with five built-in games), teens, and adults. That’s quite a lot of water to cover.
Fortunately, like its subject, the CD-ROM has a lot of depth. It’s marred only by lapses in its navigational tools and a few other glitches. For instance, as you begin, your tour guide, Sarnia, sits in the felucca and explains the tools at your disposal. There’s everything an adventurous traveler needs, such as a journal, compass, and map. You can interrupt Sarnia — but there’s no rewind; if you want to hear a section again, you must start over.
The journal lets you record your impressions, a handy feature for kids doing reports. A camera lets you snap pictures and save them in your journal (stored on your hard drive). Unfortunately, the pictures won’t print because Discovery Channel acquired limited rights to the photos.
The compass tells you which direction you’re heading. You can spin a full 360 degrees, viewing landmarks on the riverbanks. Hot spots in each screen sparkle; clicking on a hot spot plays a short description of the landmark. If you want more info, click on the media player. It displays pictures (lots of these) or videos (not enough of these) that go into more depth on a specific topic. In this regard, the CD-ROM is nicely layered, helping you delve into information as your interest dictates.
The map lets you navigate along the river, picking your destinations. This is a nice tool (stops include Aswan, Luxor, and Lake Tana), bur it reveals another navigational drawback. Every time you start the CD-ROM, you’re back where you started. There are no bookmarks, so you can’t return to exactly where you left off. Similarly, you can’t quit without backing up through layers of information and clicking the Quit icon on the felucca’s prow.
The Last Word Navigational and licensing nitpicks aside, Nile: Passage to Egypt is a nicely rendered trip down an ancient river, suitable for armchair travelers, history buffs, and students alike.
Baldwin, Howard. (October 1995). Nile: Passage to Egypt. Macworld. (pg. 93).
The Discovery Channel
Games
out of 10 (0 vote)
25 / 
2014-08-21 / 
6a275cb9c1a05429ba39d0606f1b8bee6fb78f14 / 
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Nile.toast_.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
