Cheap Awesome Animated Monster Maker Ultra (Software) (Macintosh, Windows) Price

Aimed at children in the 4- to 7-year-old age range, this program features wacky animations that encourage players to delight in the bizarre. Users can make fluffy, pop-eyed friends or gory, bat-winged nightmares, coloring each limb and hairy toe so that it harmonizes tastefully with the rest--or clashes as badly as possible. Once the monster is completed and has been assigned a brain, players can take their creation through various activities and games--a photo shoot, a judo match, and a dozen more.

Awesome Animated Monster Maker Ultra is tremendously fun, but it is an older game, and it shows. It refuses to run on anything but a 256-color video setting, so users with newer computers will have to reset their PC every time the program is played. Each of the monster body parts is fixed in one position, lacking the capacity to be flipped or reversed before attachment to a monster. Finally, the activities--while indisputably entertaining--may fail to engage children who have been exposed to more sophisticated games.

For users with older computers, though, and children who are new to computer gameplay, Awesome Animated Monster Maker Ultra offers laugh-out-loud fun, a magnificent creative outlet, and a delightfully irreverent way of bringing bedtime's scary monsters into the light of the waking world. (Ages 4 to 7) --Alyx Dellamonica