DAZZELOIDS by Rodney Alan Greenblat
Sealed Collectible CD-Rom Rare OOP from original Voyager Production Release

Multi Media CD-Rom Software 
Produced in the Mid-1990s by the Original Voyager Company 

One of the best developers of multimedia CD-ROMs that ever existed, Voyager Company, released dozens of high-quality educational CD-ROMs between 1993 and 2000 before being bought out by Learn Technologies, which then quietly went out of business sometime in 2002. This is one of their interactive CD-Roms for PC/Windows or MAC.  

    Who can save the average citizens of Compli City from the sinister threat of total mind-numbing boredom? The Dazzeloids of course! They are: Stinkabod Lamé (daredevil, prankster, slamdancer), Yendor Talbneerg (technoid supreme), and Titan Rose (muscleman and poet). Their commander is Anne Dilly Whim, out to avenge her sister's death of boredom in front of the TV. Together, they battle the Mediogre, head of the Blando Corporation and power-mad capitalist worm, and his techno-weasel sidekick, Pin Bleeper. 

    In "Child is Bored" the Dazzeloids save little Jeremy Gerbilman from brainwashed zombification (too much Blando television!). Their mission in "Banker, Spare that Petshop" is to rescue the smelly but lovable Probe and Poke Petshop from the void of the Mediogre's Transglumifier. The story lines change depending on which character you send to the rescue, so learn what goes on inside their heads in the music-video-inspired "Dazzeloids Dreams." 

    Dazzeloids' unforgettable characters, brilliant animation, zany stories, strange poems, and infectious songs will entertain children of all ages for hours. Boredom is banished when the Dazzeloids hit town! 
     

    "Dazzeloids is a great experience. The quality of the graphics and the attention to detail are in full force."--CD-ROM Power 

    About the author . . . 
    Rodney Alan Greenblat was one of the first artists to create for the CD-ROM medium.  He is the author and illustrator of many children's books including Uncle Wizzmo's New Used Car and Aunt Ippy's Museum of Junk and the director of the Center for Advanced Whimsy. 

     FEATURES 

    • A zany cast of characters 
    • An addictive original soundtrack 
    • Definitions of both real and silly words help build vocabulary 
    • Five musical dream videos 
    • Read along with two fantastic storylines 
    • Multiple choices and "hot spots" encourage creative play 

      • The dance of silliness! 


Technical requirements for Voyager's CD-Roms

 Windows: 486SX-33 or higher processor; 640 x 480, 256 color display; 8 MB RAM MPC2-compatible CD-ROM drive and sound card with speakers or headphones; Microsoft Windows 3.1 (TM); MS-DOS 5.0 or higher.

 Macintosh: Any Macintosh (25-MHz 68030 processor or better); System 7 or higher; 5,000K of available RAM; 13" color monitor; double-speed CD-ROM drive.

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The Voyager collection of CD-ROMs represents an era that is fading into oblivion.  Due to a lack of computer systems still capable of executing this software, Voyager products that are still available in the original sealed packaging have significant historical value for collectors only.

The following discussion of CD-ROM technology and its preservation is found in The International Journal of Digital Curation; Volume 7, Issue 2 | 2012:

 Virtual CD-ROM Collections

 Although the Voyager CD-ROMs have substantial historical significance, they, and most other published CD-ROMs, are destined to have a dwindling user base whose expertise in the systems required to use them is in sharp decline. The physical machines required to execute them have already disappeared from most educational institutions and even the operating systems are increasingly hard to find; at Indiana University, which once had many hundreds of ?classic macs?, only one person within our University IT Services had distribution disks of the corresponding operating system software. The physical copies of these CD-ROMs are disappearing from library shelves. In seeking examples for this paper we made extensive use of interlibrary loan and we found that many cataloged copies of Voyager CD-ROMs are either missing or damaged.

The long-term probability for individual libraries providing physical access to the Voyager and other published CD-ROMs is nearly nil. The user base is dwindling, the existing hardware and software support disappearing, and the physical media degrading. While we believe these materials have substantial historical significance, their ultimate survival depends upon spreading the preservation burden across many institutions through a virtual collection that enables networked access for a sparsely distributed base of patrons using modern work-stations.