by Dale Farris, President, Golden Triangle PC Club
May 2001

Game Overview

SPY Fox: Operation Ozone is the third installment in the successful SPY Fox series of games from Humongous Entertainment. This time around, the coolest fox in the galaxy, SPY Fox, is pitted against poodle as kids ages 7 and up help him save the world from the dastardly Poodles Galore.

A serious situation has developed in the outer reaches of the Earth's atmosphere. A hairspray space station is blasting aerosol at the Earth's ozone layer, threatening the world's inhabitants with each passing moment. Unless the aerosol blast is stopped, the planet will be left at the mercy of the sun's ravaging rays, with the only protection coming from Poodles Galore's SPF 2001 sunscreen. SPY Fox, a cast of zany characters and an array of SPY Fox gadgets help to save the planet from complete ozone depletion.

A variety of humorous, colorful characters are enlisted along the way to help in SPY Fox's latest assignment. These include Trudy Fruit, a dedicated student studying chicle viscosity and flavor retention and working toward her Ph.D. in Gumotology, Bobby Llama the Donut Guru, the ex-donut baker who has gone to the desert to find the ultimate meaning of the donut hole, and Plato Pushpin, the scientist that built the giant aerosol can. Pushpin is the only one who knows how to stop the evil contraption.

Along with these zany characters, Monkey Penny and Professor Quack return to instruct SPY Fox from the Mobile Command Center and relay vital information for the completion of the mission. Talk balloons allow SPY Fox to question others and find clues to help him solve puzzles, and each character is a potential informant.

A super-secret SPY gadget vending machine dispenses Professor Quack's crazy spy inventions to SPY Fox. These include the SPY Grappling Granny that when squeezed, shoots out her dentures and firmly hooks to anything made of wood, just like a grappling hook; a sticky stun bun made with more than caramel and nuts, that helps get SPY out of sticky situations by stunning guards with sticky business; and the canned laughter that causes an immediate laugh riot when dispensed, useful for distracting portly police officers.

The SPY Watch is the nifty creation that when you move the mouse pointer to the bottom right of the screen shows as a clickable icon. You click the watch and find it tells real time, and when you click the Mobile Command Center button on the watch, you can communicate with Monkey Penny at anytime. The watch also is where you go to save your game, and load your saved games. Saving is a simple as dragging a screen representing your latest progress into Save Game window. Also, you can click the Fun button on the watch, to play the arcade game Radioactive Trash Collector, and Bowling, two added games built into SPY Fox.

Moving the mouse pointer to the left bottom of the screen opens the game inventory bar where you will find SPY gadgets, a pocket of items you pick up, and a collection of talk balloons you find. The talk balloons represent a character or item, and you click and drag these onto other characters to get more information about the item in the balloon.

Toward the very end of the game, after SPY Fox has foiled the giant aerosol can by tossing in the Congeal Pill, that you help Plato Pushpin create, you have an opportunity to try to capture Poodles Galore. If you click on the exit door that Poodles uses to exit, SPY Fox will follow her in a rocket ship to her secret moon base. On the moon base, you help SPY Fox solve a series of zany problems to turn off the force field that protects her base. 

During the game, if you save Plato Pushpin from being bowled over by Poodles Galore in the Bowling Alley, you can then play the added mini-game built into the SPY Fox game, the Bowling Game, that becomes accessible from the SPY Watch by clicking the Fun button.

A new feature in this game enables the SPY Fox game CD ROM disc to double as an audio CD, making it possible for kids to move away from the computer to enjoy 11 original SPY music tracks. 

Also included is another new valued-added feature. With the enclosed decoder found in every shrink-wrapped box, kids have a chance to win cool SPY prizes, including night vision monoculars, 2-way radios and limited edition SPY Fox t-shirts. In order to win, you match the decoder with the lineup of suspects on the inside front flap of the box. The contest runs through December 31, 2001, and to get a free game piece and a copy of the official rules, kids can visit the official SPY Fox web site, http://www.spyfox.com.

At a suggested retail price of $19.99, this cool game is sure to be a hit with kids.

The SPY Fox Line

Impeccably clean and sharp in his white tuxedo, SPY Fox first finessed his way through sticky situations in his 1997 adventure, "SPY Fox in Dry Cereal." After outfoxing the cow-napping criminals, SPY Fox was once again called upon to save the World's Fair from destruction in "SPY Fox 2: Some Assembly Required." This series has proved to be a hit with kids and adults, combining creative thinking and problem solving with the toughest SPY Corps' assignment, while incorporating SPY Fox's witty sense of humor.

Game Play Notes

SPY Fox: Operation Ozone features tons of fun for kids and their parents. Playing this game focuses on problem solving and logical use of all the crazy illogical gadgets. The design is retro-60's cartoon splendor, and each screen is filled with not only the active hot spots that are required to advance the story line, but many other interactive features that activate when kids click on these additional areas. The interactivity with the characters is also fully developed, adding many dialog lines that keep the interest level high.

The game plays in RAM, and there is no installation required. You just need to be sure you have the minimum system configuration requirements as listed below, but you will want to load this on a machine with more RAM, if you can manage it. The speed of the CD ROM drive will be key here, since you are activating files completely from the disc as you play the game.

Each time you start a new game, there will be a new combination of items SPY Fox has to find to give to Plato Platypus. This builds in variety and presents re-play value not found in many other adventure games. When the different items are required, this also means different puzzles have to be solved, which opens up the game for multiple sessions.

The scenario in this game mixes well known, humorous aspects of past cartoons, films, and television programs. SPY Fox mixes the quirky zaniness and unending surprises from Inspector Gadget, the suave sophistication of Agent 007 and the never ending creativity of gadget maker Q, the satirical wiseguy Maxwell Smart in the similarly funny television program, "Get Smart," the dry puns, and the puzzle solving prowess that is unique to SPY Fox, a unique character in children's computer games.

Adults will appreciate the many subtle, intended references to these media and entertainment genre icons, while today's hip children will also very likely respond to SPY Fox's cool manner and his never ending litany of quips and bon mots.

The gameplay is very simple, with the coder's intent clearly realized to provide an easy-to-play game that can be enjoyed without having to fumble around with all the many settings and configuration changes that are demanded in today's 3dfx games. The simplified hardware requirements mean most all systems will likely support the game, with the exception of older, legacy machines with minimal RAM. 

This means the game will in all probability play just fine, and you are not likely to ever experience any of the headaches very common with so many of today's advanced 3dfx computer games, such as lock-ups, system crashes, blue screens of death, and failure to get the game to even play at all after you have loaded all the files onto the hard drive.

With the targeted age group for this game, ages 7 and up, you would expect such a commitment to simplicity, and Humongous coders have measured up. With such young game players as the targeted market, the game must play, all the time, and also must be very easy to initially set up and get going. While most parents will want to want to be sure their child gets started right, I suspect that after a few moments of playing this game with their child, they might find themselves wanting to play along to the end, because SPY Fox is really a fun game.

The story line is simple enough, and players, even at this young age, will likely find themselves challenged just enough to continue enjoying the game play. With very young players, I suggest parents plan to play along, as the need to go hither and yon, picking up and retrieving various objects from various points in the game may, without adult assistance, be a little more than some can manage to figure out on their own.

The main character can never "die," which is a definite plus when considering computer games for this age group. For example, at one point in the game, SPY Fox comes across an area of quicksand, clearly in most all other adventure games, an area you just know you cannot enter. In this game however, if you click on the quicksand, SPY Fox does go in, but then immediately jumps up, spins around, and jumps out. In other situations where it appears that clicking the character to go into these threatening areas on the screen might not be a good idea, the character will tell you why he cannot do this, or you cannot move him there at all.

Many of the classic adventure game genre criteria are found here, including pointing and clicking to get around, finding and clicking on key characters to open up the essential dialog required to advance the game play, going back and forth to get and return certain objects, that in turn require still more coming and goings, and the always essential inventory of items.

In this SPY Fox game, however, the game item inventory is limited, so you will have to figure out which item from the gadget machine you will need, because when you get to a certain point in the game, and you find you don't have what you need, you will have to go back and swap out items. However, if you continue to click on SPY Fox, his statements provide hints to the gadget you need to have. Thankfully, moving back and forth between scenes and the screen with the gadget vending machine happens very quickly, but this is of course a function of your CD ROM speed. Playing the game with the minimally required 4x CD ROM drive will slow this down. However, with so many of today's newer machines complete with at least 32X CD ROM drives, this will help speed up this gadget getting process.

In SPY Fox, the mouse cursor shape changes, depending on what you point to. The pointer has 3 different modes.

The small outlined arrow shape means nothing will happen at this site, and the small solid arrow means you will either get some silly animation, pick up an object (activating a scene), or have a comment made about it. The small solid arrow is the general, all-purpose arrow in the game.

The large marshmallow arrow shape indicates that you can either move in that direction, or that movement in that particular direction is possible once you click the mouse button here.

When the pointer activates the animation or comments, this is where you will find just some of what makes these SPY Fox games so much fun, especially for the little ones. Repetitive clicks produce numerous different animations, as well as sounds, making the game fun for those who just want to click all over the screen to stimulate these interactive actions.

There are also NO deviously hidden mapped images anywhere. In so many adventure games, it is many times clear that the coders purposefully strived to make finding clickable points on the screen as difficult as they could, thinking this adds to the "fun" of the game. With this targeted age group however, Humongous clearly understands that building in fun is more important than how impressive is the game difficulty. Hard-core gamers are not the target of this game.

Since Humongous has become such a standard for children's computer software, this has resulted in these games being of special value with children with special needs. This principle drives the feature in SPY Fox that allows the gamer an option to display text within the game. This way, children can read what the characters are saying.

Once in the game, you just press the spacebar, and click on Options, and then place a check in the "Display Dialog Text" box, and return to the game. This option of turning on text is currently only available in the latest titles from Humongous, SPY Fox 3 and Freddi Fish 5. In the future, this option will be standard.

About Those Walkthrough Solution Guides

While I don't ever hesitate to also buy an accompanying solution guide with all adventure games, in the case of this SPY Fox game, focused on young children, the difficulty level is not that high, and I suspect most children will be able to complete the game with little assistance. The younger the child of course, the more parents will want to help them with the requisite problem solving steps.

The challenges and puzzles in this game are all designed with the targeted age group in mind, and the main character will always say something about the placement of various objects on other mapped images or characters. If certain objects are necessary, or certain gadgets are required, you will likely figure this out, especially if you click on the characters over and over again. This repetitious clicking on characters opens up still more dialog files that are designed to provide the gamer hints about what object will be needed to get past a puzzle. In SPY Fox, players will have fun just be clicking all over the many screens to open the added animation and sound effects.

Note that in SPY Fox, there are NO devious puzzles that require the gamer to first figure out a sequence of moves, in a certain order, and then to proceed with moving in exactly the correct order, such as were found in the famous games "The 7th Guest," and "The 11th Hour." This is not an adventure game for adults, or for those who derive pleasure from spending hours and hours trying over and over again to get the correct steps in the correct order, in order to open a door or a box or something else. The gameplay here is clearly coded for the 7+ age group, meaning the puzzles in the game are a lot of fun to decipher and are not overly frustrating.

The company does provide access to game hints at their Web site, listed below.

Game Features

Super game for players ages 7 and up
Younger players can manage with parental assistance
Main character can never "die," so you never have to start over
Colorful cast of humorous, unique characters
Beautifully developed background screens
11 original songs included
Vast array of special spy gadgets
Talk balloons to ask questions and find clues to help solve puzzles
SPY Watch for saving/loading game
2 additional games built into the game
Minimum system configuration requirements
Fun-filled gameplay highlighted by hip humor and wisecracks
Creative mix of colorful screens, characters, and unique story line
Super interactivity fills all screens with zany sounds and animations
Younger players will have fun clicking all over the screen for all the action
Simple, 2-d game design that maximizes fun

Targeted Customers

The targeted age group with this super game is children 7 years and up. I think this is a pretty good start, while of course older children may think it too simple. However, Humongous has built a good story line in this game, meaning the main character has to move around from screen to screen looking for and retrieving various different key objects, using different SPY gadgets at different times in order to get these key objects. So, the difficulty level may overwhelm the very young players, while I think most players around age 7 will likely think that they are having fun, while solving these problems and puzzles. The game is certainly well developed and designed to meet the abilities of most players at the targeted age level.

Install and Setup

The game does NOT install as you would expect, but instead you play the game in your RAM from the CD ROM disc. However, the game does create a folder on your hard drive called "hegames." Within this folder, another folder will be specifically created for the game you are playing, such as "SPY Fox: Ozone Operations." Each saved game file takes up approximately 1.5MB of space.

When you save a game, files are created within that folder. If you want to delete your saved games, just delete the .sg? and the .art files. This should not affect the game at all, and you will not be able to access any previously saved games.

The save/load feature also is nicely built into the game, making it very easy to save game progress, and loading a saved game worked great.

I loaded the game on a Win 98 SE machine (P III-850, 256MB SDRAM) that had a Creative Labs Annihilator 2 video card (an nVidia GeForce 2 GTS board), a Creative Labs Live X Gamer! sound board, a MS Intellimouse, DVD Drive with MPEG 2 hardware decoder, Cambridge Soundworks FPS 2000 speaker system, 2 seven-port USB hubs, Logitech joystick, and the game worked fine with these boards and the latest drivers for each. My CD RW drive served well as the CD ROM drive.

Price

$19.99 (super bargain!)

Minimum System Configuration Requirements

Windows
Windows 95/98/ME/2000
Pentium 133
32MB RAM
(Note that the game really requires a minimum of 20MB free RAM. With the additional RAM required first by the operating system, this is why 32MB is listed as the minimum.)
No hard disk space required for install
(Game runs entirely in RAM from CD ROM files)

Mac Machines
Mac System 7.5.5
Power PC 132
32MB RAM
No hard disk space required for install
(Game runs entirely in RAM from CD ROM files)

The above system configuration requirements indicate the minimum system configuration requirements, and as any experienced gamer knows, you just don't ever want to load and run any computer game on minimally configured systems. Computer games are notorious for taking over machines, and this is why users will need to be sure and close out all their other open files, before playing this and any computer game.

While this computer game certainly does not challenge hardware like most of today's state-of-the-art 3dfx video and 3d sound game software, nevertheless you will still want to strive and play this game, and any computer game, on the highest end machine you can manage.

Since this game also runs entirely in RAM, then you know what this means. You will want to try and have more than the minimum RAM listed here, since the operating system will first eat up a lot of your RAM before you load the game. Even though you do not install any files, you will still want to be sure your RAM supply is adequate to first meet the needs of your OS, followed by the resource needs of this game. So, I would suggest 64MB RAM as the bare minimum to assure successful gameplay.

About Humongous Entertainment, Inc.

Established in 1992 and owned by Infogrames, Inc. (http://www.infogrames.com), Humongous Entertainment is well known for producing excellent interactive storytelling games on CD ROM for kids. Many of today's more well known computer game characters come from the creative minds of Humongous staff, including such names as Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam, Putt-Putt, and of course, SPY Fox.

The company develops interactive games such as Junior Adventure, Junior Field Trips, Big Thinkers, Junior Arcade, and Humongous Sports, all with a definite creative and very humorous twist. The programs from this company can always be depended on to encourage kids to explore, discover, and have fun.

Infogrames, Inc. is a leading publisher and distributor of video games for consoles (Sony, Sega, Nintendo, and Microsoft), personal computers and Mac machines. The company's award-winning software titles include the very successful Alone In The Dark series, Driver, Deer Hunter, Test Drive, and Unreal. The Humongous Entertainment division leads in producing children's entertainment software and the Mac publishing label, Macsoft, is the number one publisher of Macintosh entertainment software. Infogrames, Inc. is a majority-owned subsidiary of France-based Infogrames Entertainment SA and serves as the headquarters for the company's operations in North America.

Infogrames Entertainment SA was founded in 1983, and is a global publisher and distributor of video games for all platforms, as well as interactive digital television, mobile smart devices (WAP, HDML), and in-flight entertainment systems. Infogrames Entertainment SA recently acquired Hasbro, Interactive, and now owns a line of software based on many well-known licenses, such as Monopoly, Jeopardy, Tonka and Atari.

All the many super Humongous Entertainment games for children are very reasonably priced and designed for ease of use by the identified age groups. While having fun playing these games, children are also developing various skills, such as problem solving, cause and effect, and logical reasoning and deduction.

The programs are always colorfully designed and filled with clever, witty remarks sure to get a laugh out of most children. While many children in the age groups can likely play these games solo, most parents will want to work with their children and get in on the fun, while further strengthening their bond with their child.

I think the affordable price points for these games represent a very important strategy of Humongous that has helped them achieve their success. When you consider the very expensive proposition to invest in the coding and other very expensive costs to develop and produce a computer game today, I think it is quite remarkable that this company markets their products at such a reasonable price.

With the easy-on-the-pocket-book price of the game, the various paths gamers can take when they restart the game, the always fun things that the player can stimulate with their mouse clicks, the snazzy sound effects and the fun dialog, these games are a super bargain for parents looking for computer game software for children in the targeted age groups.

In today's hotly contested market for computer game software, finding the right game for young children can be very difficult. Humongous Entertainment's lineup can always be depended on for a good game at a reasonable price that children will surely enjoy.

Contact

Ms. Jen Martin, Communications Manager
Humongous Entertainment, Inc.
3855 Monte Villa Parkway
Bothell, Washington 98021
425-951-2182
425-486-9258
FAX 425-486-9494
(800) 499-8386
jenm@humongous.com
http://www.humongous.com

You can also order from other retailers or online vendors.