Houston Chronicle Review

Nutcracker software delight and fine introduction for kids
By ANNE REEKS
CHRISTMAS is still a comfortable couple of months away, but that's no reason to delay one of its signature joys, Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, particularly when it's playing at such a convenient location -- the family computer.

The Nutcracker Music Game (Ages 4 and up, Music Games International) showcases the composer's music while engaging children in a collection of ingenious auditory puzzles. It's a splendid blend of fun and learning, sensory stimulation and rational thinking, Old World atmosphere and new technology marvels

A little talking horn welcomes kids to a pretty, cluttered game room, with antiques, stuffed animals, instruments, a phonograph, books and pictures strewn about. Moving the cursor over different areas, children discover what leads where. There are nine music games embedded in the old-fashioned scene, and each yields one of the keys needed to free the prince from the evil spell that turned him into a nutcracker.

A pair of paneled doors takes kids to the main game, which the software maker likens to jigsaw puzzles put together with sounds instead of sights. Children listen to the Overture, Flower Waltz, March or five other pieces from The Nutcracker and then figure out which instruments to drag and drop onto the stage to recreate the composition. On stage, instruments turn into Nutcracker-related animations (ballerina, toy soldier, train) that move to the music.

Though deceptively simple, it takes a keen ear and much experimentation to get the correct combination. By hitting a "listen" button, kids can go back and forth between how their chosen instruments sound and the way the piece is supposed to be, adding and switching instruments and eventually homing in on the four that solve the puzzle.

In this way, kids learn to distinguish the sounds different instruments make and to appreciate them, alone and in concert. That's no small thing, even for grown-ups. Aside from "getting it right," children can fool around with different instruments just for fun.

Elsewhere in the room are similar puzzles based on Tchaikovsky's The Children's Album; an orchestra game in which kids listen to a sound, pick what makes it and eventually fill a stage with the whole orchestra; Funky Monkey, a repeat-the-notes challenge that involves a simian vibraphonist; the Nut House Game, where children listen to a Tchaikovsky tune and then search for a warped version of it behind funhouse mirrors, and more music-related diversions. Some are easier and thus accessible to 4-year-olds, while others, including a trivia game, are better suited to slightly older children. A music encyclopedia (partially narrated) and books about Tchaikovsky and The Nutcracker ballet would be best read by a parent to a younger child.

Old-fashioned black discs turn around and around on what looks like an antique Victrola while pure 21st-century sound issues forth. Cool. All the more choice is the chance to explain albums to the CD generation.
Altogether, the Nutcracker Music Game makes for a great multiage, multigenerational experience, just like the holiday classic on which it's based. The music sounds rich and true -- not synthesized or digitally denatured. Visually, it's also a treat, colorful, graphically distinctive and whimsically animated.