Richard Scarry's How Things Work in Busytown

The Good
Ah yes, Richard Scarry! The one that defined my early 2000s childhood! My brother and I watched the Busy World of Richard Scarry TV series on VHS, and we've read his books too! I also had fun with the Richard Scarry CD-ROMs, but this is the one I forgot about, but I gave it a shot on my Performa 580CD running Mac OS 8.1 just for memories sake.

How Things Work in Busytown is the second entry to the Richard Scarry games created by Paramount Interactive and Novotrade in 1994. The first from that series (titled "Busytown") was remade in 1999 by Simon and Schuster and Boston Animation. I'm pretty sure the second didn't earn a remake though... oh well!

The activities are easy to follow. One example is that I recycled paper, plastic and metal to make toys from the recycling plant activity, then I moved on to the toy factory activity just for that. The activities have some visual guidance with a colour-changing star icon to show what to do next in an activity. As a bonus, you can listen to all the music in either the Studio or through a regular Audio CD player! But when you start and activity, it plays a snippet of that tune.

The Bad
It appears that the mouse control is a bit slow for some, mainly because it takes a little longer to move from one location in an activity to another on a single screen. Also, the developers forgot about the keyboard or joystick control being implemented in the game, so your only option is to use a mouse.

The Bottom Line
Although the slow moving mouse control really is cumbersome for younger children, this is still a good title to have! Richard Scarry was part of my childhood, and my brother and I have already read his books, watched the animated TV series on VHS, and played the CD-ROM games. I was a former PC user, but now I have like nineteen vintage Apple equipment, and I played the How Things Work in Busytown game on my Performa 580CD running Mac OS 8.1! It was a great trip down memory lane for me! And I think this still is a great piece of history in the educational computer game market of the mid-90s! I recommend it!