WHAT'S HOT AT EPCOT: DISNEY'S VIDEOGAMES FOR THE FUTURE

WHAT'S HOT AT EPCOT: DISNEY'S VIDEOGAMES FOR THE FUTURE

FEATURES

MIKE HOWELL

EPCOT, the billion-dollar dazzle opened by Disney last October, stands for Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow. You may or may not agree with Walt's heirs that the communities we'll one day find ourselves in will include hunks of zero-gravity lettuce and diversions like trips back to the days of the dinosaurs, but there's strong empirical evidence that tomorrow's communities-like today's—will still have video arcades.

The Quarter-Gobbler of Tomorrow is located in CommuniCore East and CommuniCore West, two kidney-shaped pavillions located in EPCOT's "Future World" section, right behind the Bucky Fuller globe that you see in all the ads. According to Disney press releases, CommuniCore is a place where "industrysponsored exhibits ease bewilderment with emerging technologies." What they're trying to say is that the various "interactive" exhibits in CommuniCore—of which the video arcade is only a small port-are supposed to prepare everyone for the Computerworld ahead. But hell, Kraftwerk was two years ago and the most striking aspect of the land of tommorrow's video vision is just how passe it is.

That's probably an unavoidable result of the other guiding principle of Future World's exhibits: Education. Thrills and motor reflex overload take a definite back seat to more cerebral pursuits—like guessing which state led the nation in wheat exports or blender production or somesuck. There's little evidence of the imagination that was Disney's calling card (although to be fair, CommuniCore is primarily designed by Sperry, not one of the most lignthearted of corporations). From a game player's point of view, the most intriguing thing about Disney's arcade games is that they're played on "touch screens." No more buttons to jab or joysticks to slam: game start, instructions, and all the (admittedly limited) actions are governed by touching specific places on the screen itself. I'm wary of this innovation coming to my neighborhood—would you like to play a touch screen game after a guy eating a steak bomb greased up the screen? Hopefully, the Disney people hove some Glass Plus on hand.

So what are these games that will make us comfy with technology? Mostly a major snooze for anyone who's played anything past the original Pong. Get Set Jet Game challenges you to load the correct baggage and passengers on a plane while reacting to five "safety check" signals. Educational only if your dream is to become a sky cop. If you're setting your career goals a little higher, try The Stars And Stripes Forever, where you have to "place" the different red and white stripes (don't forget the field of blue and the stars!] in proper sequence to "manufacture" American flags. My wife Joanne, who at one time supervised piece work by the disabled, was a big winner on this one: it offered her a job in a San Juan flag factory. I retaliated bv showing off my command of useless information on The Great American Census Quiz, a bank of screens that lets you pick a bland subject and then asks you a series of multiple-choice auestions, like "Which city makes the most long distance calls?" A piece of cake for any Jeopardy junkie.

The only game that has any chops at all is the Compute-A-Coaster, where a country-talkin' beaver reminisces about how his grandaddy built roller coasters. ' 'Course, we have to build 'em more scientifically now," he says, and invites us to construct our own coaster with computer-aided design. Choosing from long inclines, ioop-de-loops and other fun stuff, you touch-assemble an outline. If you get too frisky, a little red “Danger Warning'' beeps and the computer won't put that section in place. But the best part is when you've positioned all your sections: your perspective pulls back, and the outline fills out into a full computer drawing of your creation, Suddenly, you're in the front seat of a roller coaster car and away you o! The computer simulates the entire ride—slowing down when you're climbing and whipping you through the loops. “Best ride I've had all day," says the beaver as you roll to a stop. Not Space Mountain, but it can give your stomach a bit of a turn.

What do you learn from all this “educational" hardware? First thing you learn is that Sperry sure isn't Sega or Nintendo. But more importantly, you learn that Sperry and Disney haven't been keeping an eye on the population. People wouldn't be put “at ease" by this stun, they'd be put at complete rest! The influx of high-powered computers into people's lives has come fast and hard, and most 7-1 1's have more challenging electronics than CommuniCore's flag factory. When computers are a big item at Toys R Us, it's pretty easy to figure out that nobody's scared by the machines anymore. It's difficult to tell how well these games are doing what Disney and Sperry intended because that job doesn't need doing.

It's too bad, really, that in the midst of all the imagination that went into Watt Disney World,

EPCOT's video games—an opportunity to let imagination run wild—are tied down to a Children's-Museum-ofScience mentality. Take a ride with the Beaver, then do what we did: hop the monorail to the Contemporary Resort Hotel, dash across the lobby and get in line for one of the TRON games.