Picture the scene... a crowd has gathered around someone who has collapsed in the street and various onlookers are offering advice. "Loosen his collar", "Give him some brandy", they say.

Suddenly, a tall (well, maybe not) figure with a stethoscope hanging out of his pocket pushes his way through the crowd. "Let me through," he says authoritatively. "I've played Microbe and Adventures In Flesh."

Far fetched, of course, but in fact both these games are medically accurate, although both can be played simply for fun. They represent two quite different approaches to the same subject, that is the human body, but both use the "Fantastic Voyage" type of scenario.

Previous Next

Microbe is designed as an "eduventure" which combines adventure, arcade, strategy and simulation qualities. It comes on a double-sided disc, one side of which is the game and the other side is a demonstration program.

It is essential to watch the demo at least once in order to understand what is required.

Four manuals are provided, each corresponding to one of the crew functions - captain, navigator, technician and physician. You'll have to read these, too, especially if more than one person is playing.

With a single player, the computer provides most of the information, but with several players much more use must be made of the manuals.

If you specify your background as "gamer", the sub's physician will provide you with diagnostic and treatment information. However, "student" and "physician" players are provided with less information. Three skill levels are available.

You can also select the type of cases to work on. The default option of "health/safety" provides patients who are children or young adults injured in the home or in a driving accident.

"Medicine" cases are generally older people with either medical emergencies, like heart attacks, or injuries sustained during various attacks.

It's impossible to do justice to a game like Microbe in a page or two of review. Firstly, the range and variety of graphics means we could devot a page to screen dumps and still not show everything.

Secondly, the complexity of the game parallels the complexity of its subject matter. Thirdly, the difficulty means that a lowly reviewer like myself could spend six months getting far enough "into" the game to achieve a reasonable score.

The fact that the game is medically accurate means that it could be used as a teaching aid. However, it would be a fairly progressive medical school which encouraged its students to spend the necessary amount of time playing the game.

There's so much competition to get into the profession that colleges don't need to worry about motivating their students. Presumably then, Microbe is intended primarily as a game - after all, the games market is much bigger than the medical education market. As such, it should appeal to anyone who likes complexity and difficulty.

Previous Next

When I first saw the title Adventures In Flesh, I thought "say no more, nudge nudge, wink wink". However, it's not at all like that. Like Microbe, you are travelling through the body in a miniaturised submarine. But Adventures In Flesh is more like a traditional adventure game.

For a start, it's text-only. It comes supplied with lavish documentation - a Human Anatomy Colouring Book from Dover Publications!

After the initial surprise of being provided with a colouring book (but no crayons, I might add). I must admit I found it a very useful reference book. Of course, if your knowledge of anatomy is up to scratch, you might not need it.

The adventure format means that you can Look Cell, Go Artery and generally behave as an adventurer. However, there is an important additional command: Diagnose.

Rather than have to race to the brain to remove a tumour, you must explore the whole system in search of symptoms. You must use these clues to diagnose the eleven ailments with which the patient is suffering, these having been chosen at random from a larger possible set.

A random element also provides hazards as you move around. This means that even if you know where you are going, there might be a surprise or two in store. Although random, the hazards are biologically valid for the location in which they appear.

I found Adventures In Flesh far more "accessible" than Microbe and consequently learned more from it in the same amount of time.

If you're prepared to work at it. Microbe will certainly keep you busy and repay your efforts eventually. However, if you want some fun now then I can recommend Adventures In Flesh. There are no graphics, but it's the only program I know that uses the disc drive for sound effects!