1982 Hewson Consultants (UK)
by John Fitzgerald
(The first part of this review is for the first version of this program which has the blue Atlas)
In the 80's I was completely obssessed with geography. I knew every flag, every country, every capital, every location, and I would probably have loved this program. I even wrote an Educational like this one, complete with flags, capitals, size, population, main mountains and rivers, etc, which I thought was actually quite good, modesty aside. It was even showed in my school in that particular year. A feat in those times! If I wasn't such a carefree kid, I probably would have manage to sell it (nah!). Well, I wrote it in 1988, and 'C.o.t.W.' is from the early Spectrum days, so it wasn't anything new. The problem with 'C.o.t.W.' is its too slow, too painful to use.
The author wanted to keep the loading screen of the atlas and used a small window for everything else, so you only see three countries at a time. If you want a location you have to type the country number, but first you have to check all of them and memorize the number you want. The only merit I can give it is the accurate location of the countries you choose and the Atlas map.
1,5 stars
(Part two - review for the coloured Atlas version)
This version is much better. Everything seems to fall into place. It also looks better with a coloured Atlas. Easy access to information which is a lot more complete. Including languages spoken, local currencies, and statistics of the most/least populated countries. Like the one I wrote! Densities are also shown which is a very nice touch but not accurate, missing the correct correlation between country size and population.
Still a lot better than the other version.
And also better than the program I wrote, eheh.
3,5 stars
