Al and Sid's Incredible Toons



        by Jeff Tunnell and Dynamix (Sierra), 1993.


 

 
   etc.


"Sid and Al are two characters in a PC game in which one can build all sorts of gadgets with which Al, the mouse, can try to kill Sid, the cat. For instance, Al unlocks a lever that is pressed out by a spring to kick into Sid, who slides down a slope, just to release a ball by his body. The ball falls into water, the water spills out, an electric drier sets on flames, the flames burn the line that holds the trigger of a revolver that kills Sid just when he happens to arrive at the right place and the right time.

In this game one can build in this game whatever fantasy permits. Then we ask others to tell how it all works.

All things move, all things rotate, all things change in a sometimes very complicated fashion. To predict what will happen is a delicate mechanical problem, and then we even ignored the additional difficulties caused by the presence of chemical and electric components. Yet most children can solve these puzzles and so can we, most of us non-physicists, as it were. To solve these problems by brute force physics is almost out of the question.

Thinking with mechanisms gives easy answers, however. Maybe with one or two alternatives left open for testing (we see that either the ball will hit the toaster, in which case this and this will happen, or it will not, but then…).