BigTop Productions' Pathetic Attempt at a New-Age Multimedia Title
A Review of The Groove Thing
by Casey Muratori
The Groove Thing is Big Top Productions' attempt to commercialize on the ever-popular computer- driven oscilloscope. It can be best described as a bouncing-line screen saver that uses CD audio to control its pace. Sadly, this is the extent of the product.
Installation of The Groove Thing was painful. It requires you to install
QuickTime for Windows onto
your system, even though there is almost no video content. In fact, the only
QuickTime video that is ever
played in The Groove Thing is a five-second spinning Groove Thing logo that
flashes by when you start the
program. Certainly, the option should have been made available to skip the
install of the whole QuickTime
system and forego the useless introduction animation. What's more, unlike
most well-behaved multimedia
titles, it installs all its DLLs directly into the Windows system folder,
which makes it almost impossible to
completely uninstall by hand. It provides no uninstall utility.
Once installed, The Groove Thing places an icon in your program manager that
launches into the main
application. The program presents you with a sizable window in which various
splotches of color move
around roughly in sync with the music it plays off The Groove Thing CD. The
music on the CD is actually
quite good, and in my opinion, is the only redeeming value of the entire
package.
Across the bottom of the window are sets of indecipherable picture buttons
that, in one way or another,
control what type of patterns are displayed. One set controls the size of
the "brushes" that are smeared
around, one controls how closely packed the patterns are, one controls the
colors used, and so on. The
most important buttons are a row of triangles that control what style of
drawing occurs - it can be 8-way
symmetrical line art, grid-style squares, shrinking and expanding crosses, or
a host of other methods. Each
time you select one, the music changes slightly to go with the new pattern.
That is pretty much it - there's
nothing more to it.
The Groove Thing did not hold my interest in any way. If I wasn't reviewing
it, I wouldn't even have
bothered to try out the various buttons. The graphics are totally
unimpressive, failing even to reach the
quality of the similar and more interesting public domain program Cthugha,
which is also a computerized
artistic oscilloscope. The creators clearly had little or no Windows
programming ability, since their sound-
playing code causes a series of "skips" in the middle of the music when the
CD drive tries to read both the
music data for the song and the sound FX for the buttons - if there was any
mood to be had in Groove
Thing, this surely ruins it.
I cannot recommend Groove Thing for any use whatsoever. It is not entertaining, nor is it informational or relaxing. I think the concept is a solid one, and a well-made program of this type would certainly be welcome. The Groove Thing, however, just doesn't cut it.
Multimedia Cafe Scorecard
| Product: |
The Groove Thing |
| Company: |
Big Top Productions
|
| Cost: |
n/a |
System Requirements:
n/a
Breakdown:
Entertainment Value 1
Educational Value 1
Concept 2
Depth 1
Interface 2
Overall Score:
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