Shanghai: Great Moments

Shanghai: Great Moments (Activision, CD-ROM for PC, $39.95) Shanghai, released sometime in computerdom's Mesozoic era-that's 1986 to us-was a model for a generation of video puzzle games: simple concept (eliminate a stack of mah- jongg tiles by removing matching pairs), sparely illustrated, absurdly addicting. Now, Shanghai gets the multimedia treatment. In addition to three new variations of the original, this flashy program dresses up the puzzles with sound effects, video clips, different tile sets, and even a live emcee (actress Rosalind Chao from Deep Space Nine). Is it worth it? To be perfectly ambivalent, I guess so. In the end, it's a little like playing checkers using a beautifully crafted marble set: It may look a lot nicer than those cheap plastic sets, but at heart it's still the same old game. B -Albert Kim