Internet & Interactive

A Totally Mad CD-ROM. Broderbund has released Totally Mad, a seven CD-ROM compendium that documents the history of Mad Magazine, a humor magazine that specializes in parodies and spoofs in comics format. It began as a full color comic book, but switched, in September 1955, with its twenty-fifth issue, to a black and white magazine format to avoid having to be approved by the newly established comics code authority. Mad was originally published by EC Comics, which in the early 1950s also published comic books such as Tales Of The Crypt and Vault Of Horror. The comics code authority was created in part to squelch horror comics. Instead of fighting the new organization, Mad publisher William Gaines decided to cancel all of his comics books, with the exception of Mad, which became a magazine and hence avoided the jurisdiction of the Comics Code Authority which did not apply to magazines. Gaines' decision eventually made him a very rich man. Included on Totally Mad are the entire run of issues up to 1998 from almost 50 years of Mad's history, video clips of staff and artists, songs, audio recordings, and even some animated cartoons. Back issues can be browsed issue by issue, and page by page, or you can search for articles by subject or artist. The animated cartoons include several Spy vs. Spy cartoons from the current syndicated TV show, Mad TV, and humorous animated interstitials, drawn by Sergio Aragones, which pop up unexpectedly as you browse through issues. Perhaps the best feature is being able to print out every issue of the magazine. Some of the early color comic book format issues (#1-24) appear a bit yellowish or faded when printed, but this is a minor complaint. This set is a collector's dream. It requires Windows 95/98. You may also need to adjust your graphic accelerator setting to prevent the program from locking up or freezing. The retail price is US$69.95.

Penn & Teller Guest Star On WhirlGirl. Magicians Penn & Teller guest starred on the September 10th episode of SHO.com's WhirlGirl, Showtime's animated online series about a sexy, 21st century cyber-heroine. "We saw Penn & Teller's wise-guy approach to magic and their cult-like appeal as a perfect fit for the WhirlGirl audience," says WhirlGirlcreator David Williams of New York-based Visionary Media, producer of the series. "Besides, who else but Penn & Teller could pull off the 'Throwing-Knives-at-a-Super-Heroine-On-A-Roulette-Wheel' stunt?" The WhirlGirlguest spot was the Internet acting debut for Penn & Teller, who have been entertaining audiences together since 1975 and have appeared on numerous TV shows and movies. "In all of my inter-dimensional travels, intersecting with WhirlGirl, if you know what I mean, was one of my happiest coincidences," says Penn Jillette, the speaking member of the act. The WhirlGirl episode, entitled "Beating the Odds," is set in a futuristic Las Vegas, and has been available since 1:00 pm ET on Friday, September 10. New WhirlGirl episodes appear each Friday at 1:00 pm ET on SHO.com. For those of you who wanted to follow in Penn & Teller's footsteps and guest star on WhirlGirl, SHO.com did offer a Win a Role on WhirlGirlSweepstakes. The winner will be awarded an all expenses paid trip to New York to star opposite WhirlGirl on the season finale. While the contest did end on September 13, we can always hope for another sweepstakes next season.

To learn more about WhirlGirl and Visionary Media read Lee Dannacher's "The Big Apple's Silicon Valley," in the August 1999 issue of Animation World Magazine.

Adam Sandler Makes A Cartoon. On Friday, September 3, The Peeper, a cartoon by Adam Sandler, based on one of eleven skits on Sandler's new comedy CD, Stan and Judy's Kid, released by Warner Brothers Records on September 23, premiered at various websites including www.adamsandler.com, the official Adam Sandler website. The six-minute short, about a voyeur with low self-esteem, was created by Web animator Tom Winkler of Doodie.com fame. Winkler has also worked on The Simpsons and The Critic. The short was created using Macromedia Flash. Adam Sandler was a cast member of Saturday Night Live from 1991-1995, and star of recent hits such as Big Daddy and The Waterboy. He has also had several hit comedy albums such as "They're All Gonna Laugh at You." His best known song is "The Hanukkah Song."

Sega's Dreamcast.

Sega DreamCast Sets Record For Preorders. Sega DreamCast, the superconsole with a built-in 56K modem (for internet game play) is bringing the most-advanced and realistic video gameplay ever developed to consumers since it has launched on September 9, 1999, with a record 300,000 pre-orders, surpassing the previous record of 100,000 held by Sony PlayStation. The new 128-bit, Internet-ready Sega DreamCast is fifteen times more powerful than a Sony PlayStation, ten times more powerful than a Nintendo 64 and has four times the graphics processing power of the fastest Pentium II processor. In addition, Sega DreamCast is the first console to utilize hand-held gaming through its Visual Memory Unit (VMU), which allows players to swap games with friends in the home, arcade or head-to-head using two VMUs. It has a suggested retail price of US$199.

Daria Goes Interactive. MTV and sister Viacom unit Simon & Schuster Interactive are producing six CD-ROM (for PC and Mac) and PlayStation entertainment titles for MTV's Daria over the next five years. The first title, Daria's Sick, Sad Life Planner will ship this October for the PC. DARIA, which debuted in March of 1997, spun off Beavis and Butt-Head's only female "friend" into her own show. The series is about Daria Morgendorffer, a smart and sardonic teenager blessed with an uncanny ability to turn potential disaster to her own advantage. Daria's Sick, Sad Life Planner helps you keep track of important events like birthdays, tests, appointments and parties, record addresses, and keep a diary. It also includes Desktop Themes and a Screensaver feature. Daria's Sick, Sad Life Planner will be available this October for the PC (Windows 98/95) at an estimated street price of US$19.95.

MTV Forms MTVi. New York-based MTV Networks Online, a unit of Viacom Inc., has formed MTV Interactive (MTVi), a new Internet-only music company, which will include music super-brands vh1.com, mtv.com and sonicnet.com. Nicholas Butterworth, former president of SonicNet, was named president and CEO of MTVi, and will report directly to Fred Seibert, president of MTV Networks Online and Chairman of MTVi. "We think there is great value in forming a company that includes three of the Internet's best music sites," said Tom Freston, chairman and CEO of MTV Networks. The appointment of SonicNet's former President Nicholas Butterworth to serve as president and CEO of MTVi places one of the Internet industry's pioneers in the driver's seat of the Internet's top music brands. As president and CEO of MTVi, Butterworth will be responsible for the growth and development of the MTVi portfolio including vh1.com, mtv.com and sonicnet.com. Fred Seibert, president of MTV Networks Online and Chairman of MTVi, said, "Nicholas has been a visionary and an innovator in the online music industry since its inception. He is credited with building the SonicNet brand." SonicNet, the award-winning service first introduced in 1994, will incorporate search engine technologies developed by the MTV Networks Online "Buggles Project," which was announced in February. "The new SonicNet will deliver a high-quality audio and video experience together with simple, easy access to music purchasing and communities," Butterworth added. "The technology developed by the Buggles Project will be the key engine driving our new offering." MTV Networks Online includes, in addition to MTVi, Nickelodeon Online, a leading portfolio of kids and parents' destinations.

Saturday Night Fred Debuts On Cartoonnetwork.Com. The first episode of Saturday Night Fred, a CartoonNetwork.com Web Premiere Toon, debuted on August 30, 1999. The cartoon features clips from the 1963 season of The Flintstones that have been re-edited, with new voice-overs, to create new stories featuring Fred, Barney, and the rest of the Flintstones cast from that year. Viewers can either download the show as a QuickTime file, or view it as a streaming file. In both cases, it is possible to interact with the show by replying to questions whose answers determine the direction the story will take. Viewers should not expect high image quality. CartoonNetwork.com is a daily-updated entertainment destination on the Web which features original online programming such as the Web Premiere Toons.

Harvey Selects Xceed For Development Of Internet Strategy.
The Harvey Entertainment Company has selected New York-based Xceed, Inc., a marketing and communications company that specializes in interactive services, to develop a family oriented portal to exploit Harvey's brands on the Web. Harvey Entertainment owns the rights to an extensive list of well-known cartoon characters, including Casper, the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, Baby Huey, Wendy the Witch and Hot Stuff. Potential programming for the portal include Harvey's classic animation library, stories from Harvey comic books, and the creation of new content based upon its characters.

Star Blazers Episodes Offered On Internet. New York-based studioNEXT.com Corporation and Voyager Entertainment, Inc. have announced a partnership to bring the Japanese television series, Star Blazers, to the Internet. The series first appeared on US television in 1979, and lasted for three seasons. The story of Star Blazers is about a group of heroic voyagers who, in order to save Earth from invasion, journey on the starship Argo to battle the diabolical forces of Gamilon, the evil stellar empire. "There has been further interest to bring back Star Blazers to television," Barry Winston, president of Voyager Entertainment, Inc., the US Star Blazers rights holder, said. "By exposing Star Blazers to the Internet, we hope to reach the thousands of dormant fans and reach new fans who are attracted to anime in general." A total of six episodes will be available at www.studionext.com. With two episodes from each season, studioNEXT.com will stream a Star Blazers episode each week for a period of six weeks. studioNEXT.com is an online entertainment company. The Website began to offer the episodes the week of September 1, 1999.

Disney Launches The Walt Disney Family Museum Website.
A website devoted to Walt Disney has been launched at http://disney.go.com/disneyatoz/waltdisney/home.html. The site covers Disney's entire career, and features clips from Disney's animated and live-action films, as well as family photos and home movies. Much of the site's content can also be found on the Pantheon CD-ROM, Walt Disney: An Intimate Portrait of the Man and His Magic.

Netscape Carries Two Animated Series By Mondo. San Francisco, California-based Mondo Media, Inc. has announced a one-year deal with Netscape Communications, a subsidiary of America Online, Inc., to provide Netscape's Netcenter Web site with two weekly animated shows which will be presented under the banner of Mondo Mini Shows. Like, News is written and directed by Don Asmussen, a regular cartoonist for Time and George magazines, and features a sarcastic teenager with a nose ring who "interviews" newsmakers such as Saddam Hussein and Al Gore. Thugs On Film, created by Dan Todd, features, after a long credit sequence, two thugs "reviewing" a current film. The shows are available now and new episodes appear every Friday at netcenter.com/netcenter/unreel. Mondo Mini Shows are developed using Macromedia Flash. Founded in 1988 and based in San Francisco's "Multimedia Gulch," Mondo Media is a new media company that creates and distributes digital animation for the Web, television, film, interactive games, and the emerging interactive television markets.

Steven Bornstein. Photo by Steve Fenn.

Disney Names ABC President Internet Group Chairman. The Walt Disney Company's Buena Vista Internet Group (BVIG) has named ABC Inc. President Steven Bornstein as chairman. Bornstein will oversee BVIG's previously announced plan to merge with Infoseek, an internet search engine, to form a single Internet business called go.com and issue a new class of common stock to track the performance of the new enterprise. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of the 1999 calendar year. At that time, Bornstein, who is currently a member of the Infoseek Board of Directors, will be named president of go.com. Bornstein will head an experienced team of Internet executives as the merger of BVIG and Infoseek is completed and go.com is established. Key team members include Steve Wadsworth, president of BVIG, and Patrick Naughton, executive vice president of products for Infoseek. Bornstein noted that BVIG and Infoseek already possess an unmatched array of Internet assets. In January of this year, the two firms launched GO Network, which combined Infoseek's user reach, services and Internet search engine with Disney's global brand awareness. BVIG is responsible for creating and operating a broad array of family, entertainment, news and sports Web sites, including: Disney.com, a kids and family site; Family.com, a parenting resource; ABC.com, the TV network's Web site; ABCNEWS.com, a news site online; and ESPN.com, a sports site.

The retail debut of Sega Dreamcast.
Courtesy of Sega.

Dreamcast Debuts With A Glitch. Tens of thousands of gameboys in the US and Canada flocked to retail outlets early on the morning of Thursday, September 9 as the Sega Dreamcast videogame console was made available for the first time in North America. As Sega expected, sales for the console during the first 24-hours set a new record for biggest 24-hours in entertainment retail sales with a total of $97,904,618.09 (about 500,000 players at a retail price of $199). The previous record was held by Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, with its $28 million boxoffice on its first day of release in May 1999. Several retail outlets opened their doors at 12:01 am to allow consumers who just couldn't wait until normal store hours for the chance to get their hands on the new videogame system. KB Toys held one of five midnight retail Sega Dreamcast launch parties at its store in Atlanta, Georgia, featuring the cheerleaders from the Atlanta Falcons, a football team. Other events took place in San Jose, California, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Las Vegas, Nevada and Toronto, Canada. However, for some new DreamCast owners the celebration did not continue for long after they discovered that some of their Dreamcast games would not load. The titles include "Sonic the Hedgehog," "Ready 2 Rumble," "Blue Stinger," "Hydro Thunder" and the DreamCast web browser disc. Jennifer Walker of Access Communications, Sega's PR firm, said that "the affected software equates to .9 percent of first and third party games and .9 percent of web browser discs." According to Walker, Sega has identified a defective batch of software and it is being replaced. Sega Dreamcast features an advanced 128-bit architecture that is designed to evolve and grow with advances in technology and the changing needs of the consumer market. It is built atop a 200 MHz Hitachi SH-4 CPU and the NEC PowerVR 2DC 3D graphics chip, the most powerful 3D technology ever developed for a console system. The Hitachi SH-4 gives the Sega Dreamcast 15 times the power of a Sony PlayStation, 10 times the power of a Nintendo 64 and four times the graphics processing power of the fastest Pentium II processor. It is also the first console to enter the market with Internet capabilities. Its built-in 56k modem ensures full Internet functionality, including chat, e-mail and browsing through the Sega Dreamcast Network, an online gaming portal accessible only through Sega Dreamcast. Sega will introduce full online gaming for the system early next year.

Lucas Learning Releases Star Wars: Pit Droids. Lucas Learning Ltd. has released Star Wars: Pit Droids, a Star Wars Episode One-based puzzle game. Players must direct an endless row of pit droids toward appropriate goals, and prevent them from falling off the edge of the world. Players can play the puzzles at random, or work from location to location to achieve a high score. There are eight game levels, six game environments, and more than 300 puzzles. The game is compatible with both PC and Mac, and has a retail price of US$29.99.

MIP Interactive Industry Spotlight Set To Debut. The MIP Interactive Industry Spotlight debuted the week of September 20, 1999 at www.mipinteractive.com. The Spotlight will be bi-monthly and the on line session will last one business week. Each Spotlight will explore specific program genres or territories with articles, executive viewpoints, programming highlights, special e-mail sections, bulletin boards, statistics and logistics, reviews and interviews, and more. The first Spotlight will feature "The Science of Programming Children's Blocks."

A Disney Infoseek Executive Has Been Arrested. According to Reuters, Patrick Naughton, 34, of Seattle, Washington, executive vice president of products at Infoseek Corp., the Internet media site which is part of Disney's Go Network, was arrested on Thursday, September 16, 1999 on the Santa Monica Pier, an amusement park area in West Los Angeles. The arrest came after he met a female FBI agent who had arranged to meet him there, according to Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. He is charged with interstate travel with the intention of having sex with a minor. Naughton was arraigned on Friday, September 17, and released after posting a $100,000 bond. Ironically, Norton's arrest came just days after Disney launched a warning about children talking to strangers on the Internet on its British, French and German websites. On March 8, 1999, Naughton is alleged to have started posting lewd messages under the screen name "HotSeattle" in an Internet chat room to a male FBI agent who was posing as a 13-year-old-girl. It was this girl that Naughton expected to meet at the Santa Monica Pier. Naughton is a Disney veteran who was formerly with its Starwave Web development operations. Sources say Infoseek fired Naughton immediately after his arrest. Disney is in the process of combining its diverse Internet holdings under a single company known as Go.com, which will include the Disney Store, ESPN.com and ABCNews.com with Infoseek's Web search engine and other Internet functions. Disney Online is the No. 1 most visited site among kids and their families on the Internet, according to July statistics from Web market research firm Media Metrix. Naughton's arrest comes as part of wide ranging undercover sting operation investigating the Internet by a southern California task force known as Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement (SAFE).

Humongous Releases Blue's Treasure Hunt. Bothel, Washington-based Humongous Entertainment, creators of children's software, and Nickelodeon, are releasing Blue's Treasure Hunt, a Blue's Clues CD-ROM learning adventure for preschoolers. Based on Nickelodeon's primetime special that aired in March 1999, Blue's Treasure Hunt follows Blue's ABC Time Activities, Blue's Birthday and Blue's 123 Time Activities. In Blue's Treasure Hunt, kids aged three to six team up with Steve and his Blue's Clues pals to help search for the treasure chest that holds the keys to the Land of Great Discovery, a captivating place filled with treasures and surprises. During this original adventure, preschoolers help Steve, Blue and friends find and solve new Blue's Clues; collect a series of treasure scrolls hidden by a lively new character, Treasure Bug; play learning games; meet delightful friends and explore enchanting locations. Blue's Treasure Hunt is available now on hybrid CD-ROM for Windows 98/95 and MacIntosh for US$29.99.

Judith Cockman reviewed Blue's ABC Time Activities, Blue's Birthday and Blue's 123 Time Activities in the August 1999 issue of Animation World Magazine.