The adventure games at the core of this collection are well worth the price of admission. First, there's Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, a classic with good voice acting, terrific style, and a compelling story line that can play out in several ways. This was one of the first games to give players the choice of either fighting or thinking their way through puzzles, and we played it through three times before moving on to the other CD-ROMs in this collection.

The other titles certainly didn't disappoint. Sam and Max Hit the Road lets players guide Sam (a detective dog) and Max (his rabbit sidekick) through a series of twisted adventures. Don't let the talking-animal theme fool you--this is a cartoon for adults with plenty of over-the-top humor and some tricky puzzles.

Maniac Mansion 2: Day of the Tentacle is another hilarious game, pitting three goofball characters against a mad purple tentacle bent on world domination. A time machine mishap leaves one character in the present, while one is whisked back to the past and the other is sent into the future. All three must work together, solving puzzles that will affect the characters in other time periods and let them progress. You can even access the original version of Maniac Mansion, an entertaining adventure in its own right, by using a computer terminal in this game.

Don't miss out on this incredible gaming bargain. --T. Byrl Baker

Pros:

• Classic adventures all hold up well despite their age
• All three games use superb voice acting instead of text messages

• Extras, like the screen saver and demo CD-ROM, are pure fluff
• These older DOS-based games can be tough to configure