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Thursday, September 16, 2010

[NES] Educational Computer 2000

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Educational Computer 2000 [Kibord 003]

Genre:
well, educational computer!
PC/developer/publisher: ehrm... why did I put this? Whatever. Microsoft.
NES/developer: unknown, but judging by the copyrights, MOONSPIRV or sort of.
NES/publisher: unknown
Year of release: 2000
Players: no, rather users. One.
Media: 1 MB cartridge, NES compatible
Additional peripherals supported: Subor Keyboard and bundled mouse. Without them, you couldn't even use it fully.

Oh yah, for the first time, I'm going to review, well... Not really a game, but rather a bootleg clone of pre-2000 Windowses. Why? Well, because if you had these long ago, these will make you cry. Really. Cry out flaming tears of The Grand Nostalgie. And out of all the pirated 'educational systems', I selected this one. Not Win98, not newly-dumped Win2000. This. Why? Well, because it's not a stupid slideshow like Win98 and is more functional than both versions altogether.
So, in Famicom's manner, these 'educational systems' replace the real PC thing. But, while in case of Famicom these were trying to become standalone computers, most of the keyboard famiclones were sorta kinda simulators before you bought a shiny new PC with preinstalled game series named Gates' Nightmare (time for throwing rotten tomatoes guys! If you don't abuse at its' glitchiness at all, of course). Yet even today, in our age of worldwide crisises and crysises, I see those keyboards with a slot for a cartridge in shops. Who knows, maybe I could have even spend two times more money on buying this instead of my three-years-old Dendy 2. One thing I definitely know, however. Like Famicoms, these educational systems will soon become gaming consoles rather than computers...


***


OH and what I see! This cart wasn't fully made by guys from China! Or is it? In any case, I see some familiar Russian titles in here! So, here are the few things you'll see here: some pointless drawing/planning/karaoke programs, keyboard trainer, pretty decent Solitaire, some system options, including screensver setup and stats of your 'machine' (I swear, the screensaver feature is cool to see in here), Donkey Kong Jr. Math, an accurate MS-DOS mockup and 1MB SRAM... Yeah, 1MB SRAM used for fully functional Microsoft Word. You know, I would rather use this version than the regular Notepad/Word that bored me to death. And hell yeah, it saves everything properly, but there is one lil' problem... How the Dickens do I import the files from the cartridge SRAM to my comp?
What you badly need to play with all of these toys, however, is a Subor Keyboard (Famicom's one won't go) and a mouse (yes people, NES had a mouse, thanks to the guys whose idea it was to make educational shit). FCEUmm from CaH4e3 (for dummies: pronounced as 'Sanchez') supports both very well. One complaint for the mouse... It scrolls too slow. Like you were moving a cursor with a joypad. No complaints on keyboard, but the cursor speed fucking sucks. Fucking sucks so much that you have to move your mouse back about ten or twelve times to get the cursor from one side of the screen to another. Maybe this is one of the really few cases where trackball comes in handy? Oh, and on Solitaire, 'the contrary happens': moving the mouse becomes such a softness...
Another bad thing is the music on the title screen. It feels like Micro Genius's crap tunies, no kidding.
One more. The program collab is completely random.
But it's fun to see the 'inside' of this cart with PC-DOS.
It was fun to discover that the songs that my parents and grandparents loved were reconverted into 8-bit, even if the result sounds crappy.
It was fun to see the characteristics of my 'computer' in the options menu (so, if you're going to do NES style games, use this as a reference).
It was just awesome to discover maybe the most comfortable text editor on the NES, out of all, perhaps, three or four.
It's not a slideshow like Windows 98 parody. It works.
I wish I would have this thing bundled in case if I buy a keyboard famiclone.
So all in all... If you wanna mess up with it, mess it, for fun and profit. If you see no sense, don't bother. It will never replace the real Windows in any case. Here, I said everything I thought about this multicart. Really short, but that's all I have to say, honestly.
But we shall return to Windows stuff very soon. Ehrm, what do you think, maybe we should review some classic Windows games ported to NES, huh?

BOTTOM LINE:
Out of all edu-stuff I saw for this console, this one is the most neat. Every program included here works. Without the real famiclone, however, it becomes zero priority, but if you had Windows 98 as an OS long ago... Check this out.

SCREENSHOT TIME!

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System programs. Comes packed with Word and Excel.
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Such a sucky system. LAWL.
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And now, the screensaver!
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I dunno who made THIS program, but he never knew Russian THAT well.
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Select your deck pattern for Solitaire. Nobody would know that doing this would be harder than playing Solitaire itself.
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DOS prompt, as a dessert.

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