`PARENTWARE' TITLE OFFERS KIDS LIMITED CHOICES.

Byline: Mike Langberg Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

``Build-A-Book with Roberto'' is a prime example of what I call ``parentware'' - a children's CD-ROM that appeals to Mom and Dad with glossy promises of meeting the educational needs of preschoolers, but fails to deliver either entertainment or education.

There's a lot of parentware clogging the market these days, and I'm sure many of these well-meaning titles are finding their way into homes. But I'm convinced most of the disks are retired to the closet after only a few hours of play.

``Roberto'' is centered around an interactive story about a lonely young hippopotamus shown in limited cartoon animation, with narration by the kindly Auntie Goat. The story always begins exactly the same, with Roberto sitting under a tree and deciding to join his friends at the pool for a game of hippoball. When Roberto gets to the pool, he's told there is no room for him to join the game.

The CD-ROM's target audience of children ages 3 to 6 then gets to make a decision. Roberto has to pick one of three responses - such as ``I might take the ball,'' ``I could ask nicely'' or ``I could tickle them.'' Whichever move he makes, Roberto doesn't get invited into the game, and children face a second set of three choices. If they pick a socially constructive response, they end up in the pool. If they opt for a negative response, they have to try again.

Going through this process takes about three minutes, after which Auntie Goat takes an additional two minutes to read the story from beginning to end. Children can also print out their stories, either as black-and-white coloring-book pages or as a full-color storybook if they have color printers.

The only variation in the story is the different choices confronting Roberto. The pledge of ``100 original stories'' appears to be based on the CD-ROM offering a hundred choices, but these choices all occur within the framework of Roberto's attempts to get in the pool.

The developers tossed in three other activities. ``Hippoball'' invites children to click the mouse to bounce a red ball among four hippos; ``Masks and Puppets'' lets children print the outline of seven hippo masks and 10 hippo puppets expressing emotions such as ``happy,'' ``sad'' or ``frightened;'' and ``Song and Dance'' presents Roberto performing nine songs that only run 15 to 30 seconds each.``Build-A-Book with Roberto'' was developed by Theatrix Interactive Inc. (http://www.theatrix.com) and is priced at $35.

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Photo

Photo: Roberto, a young hippopotamus, is the star of the CD -ROM ``Build-A-Book with Roberto.''

Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service