08/05/96 VIRTUAL BRICKS FOR THAT BUDDING BUILDER

VIRTUAL BRICKS FOR THAT BUDDING BUILDER

REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE a kid, and ``interactivity'' meant sitting down with a pile of blocks to create castles, skyscrapers, or any of a thousand things? Gryphon Software Corp. in San Diego figures that plenty of computer users still have that desire to build and has introduced a virtual construction toy called Gryphon Bricks. On any Apple Macintosh computer, the software reproduces building blocks that look and ``snap'' together much like those little plastic pieces made by Denmark's Lego System.
Not only do players get a limitless supply of cyberblocks but they also can do such tricks as animate the objects they build or print out a step-by-step blueprint of their creation to share with others. What's more, players can save the on-screen antics of animated objects as a digital movie, which can be passed along via E-mail. Macintosh owners can download a free trial version of Gryphon Bricks from the company's World Wide Web site (http://www. gryphonsw.com). By mid-September, software retailers should have the $39 CD-ROM, which will run on both an IBM-compatible PC and a Mac.
EDITED BY PAUL M. ENG