Rodney's Wonder Window

A artistic stylings of Rodney A. Greenblat

Rodney's Wonder Window is not actually a game. I don't really know what I'd call it. It's like the cross section of an art portfolio/exhibit and one of those weird software toy type things that really proliferated as more and more people got home computers with CD Drives. I personally have no idea how I came into possession of a copy, other than that I probably got it from my parents as a present for some occasion back when I had an IBM Aptiva running Windows 95.

So, what RWW is is a series of artistic-type modules created by Rodney A. Greenblat, who later went on to making Parappa the Rapper and UmJammer Lammy. If you're a really huge fan of those games and want to see some of his earlier work from a time when weird software toys like this were popping up all over the place, go hurry off to Amazon right now because there's only one seller with a copy right now.

In the off chance that you do not want to drop whatever amount of money they're demanding for this oddity sight-unseen, I have prepared a handy guide here for you to let you know what's in store in Rodney's Wonder Window. I took these in DOSBox emulating Windows 3.1, so there are some graphical glitches here and there, but you'll get the gist of it

	FUN: A smiley face goes in a box pattern around the screen drawing a rainbow behind it like the snake from Snake. Then the word FUN shows up and it starts rocking out with what I assume is Rodney Greenblat yelling postive-sounding noises and happy music. The snakeman circles the screen again with another rainbow, and then you're booted back to the menu screen.
	Fly Guy: A disembodied head is being orbited by a fly making an annoying buzzing sound. The head becomes gradually more frustrated by the fly until he flicks out his tongue like a frog and eats the fly. BET YA DIDN'T SEE THAT ONE COMIN', DID YA?
	Spider: I guess you'd call this a music video. I think all of the assets were created in Microsoft Paint. An instrumental version of Itsy Bitsy Spider plays, and the events described in the unheard lyrics play out before you IN REAL TIME. This one is actually incredibly weird in the context of RWW, given it's incredibly non-weird in the context of the rest of the world.
	Kiss and Fight: Two houses are sliding around a big flowery lawn, but shortly become agitated and start shooting garbage at each other, both being damaged in the process. The houses then are replaced with two new houses, who ram into each other and make a kissing noise. Then it ends.
	Future: This screenshot is literally the entire thing, except with the words popping in with Powerpointesque animations. The rainbow points start cycling colors as well. I guess it's like an ad for the city of tomorrow or something, but I'm no art critic so I'm probably missing a subtext. Or maybe not. What do I know?
	Roadside: More or less the same thing as Future, but this one has more than one slide. The slides tell you about all the fantastic activities that go on in this roadside attraction. The building/robot plays his accordion on every slide, but the lazy bastard only knows one song.
	DataShorts: You get to cycle through a bunch of different patterns for a set of boxers. Some are wacky, as in the screenshot. Others are less wacky. All in all, the average wackiness quotient for the selectable boxer patterns skews towards "wacky."
	Art Gallery: It's just what it sounds like. It's a collection of images I assume Rodney Greenblat made with a short description and story about each.
	Birthday: After inputting a name (ostensibly the name of someone who's birthday it is), you click a button to light the candles on a birthday cake, blow out the candles (With Rodney breathily telling you to make a wish), and finally summon a tiny monster to eat the cake for you. After the monster finishes, you are displayed with a special birthday message.
	Tooli Bugs: A short cartoon about the mating habits of Tooli Bugs. It's a little odd, but it makes coherent sense. I found it more interesting when I was six, but uh, there's nothing wrong with it.
	Wigglelife: Everything on screen starts freaking out and making weird noises. It's like having a nightmare about flowers and pottery. You just kind of sit there and watch it until you've had enough.
	House: The word TRANSCONFIGURATION appears on screen, along with a horrifying noise. We then cut to a house whose roof retracts to reveal a satellite dish that shoots tiny little houses that slam into the ground and grow into full sized houses. Slowly the area around the house develops with like a driveway and car and more houses while Dance Of The Knights plays, and the process repeats. This continues forever until you hit STOP, which hits you with the TRANSCONFIGURATION screen again before letting you escape this nightmare.
	Holiday Fun: Rodney includes everyone in this holiday celebration. Light the menorah (if you prefer, you can pretend it's whatever the Kwanzaa candelabra thing is called) on your altar to Santa, then light a fire in the fireplace so you're sure he can't get in the house. After successfully lighting both fires, you're allowed to decorate the tree. Clicking the decorate button covers every inch of the tree with colorful decorations that look like they come from Wigglelife, at which point you're left with the screenshot. You can also make it night by turning off the lights, just like in real life.
	3D Views: This is the same thing as Art Gallery, but featuring a bunch of 3D Renders Rodney made using Sculpt3D. The gallery is titled VIEWS OF CANWORLD. I think the pictures are supposed to take place in Canworld.
	Pet Shop: You click on the animals and they do whatever it is that animal does. The fish bubbles and floats around, the chameleon changes colors and patterns, the hamster never does anything that you actually want. You know how it is. The rabbit, just like a real rabbit, has either his body or his head swell to unnatural size if you click on him. If you click the little dog, he starts yapping, and if you click the big dog while the little one's yapping, he (the big one) eats the little one's head. Boy did that give me the laughtershakes when I stumbled upon it as a young lad. The Tooli Bug is not a real animal.
	Sloop: A slideshow story called The Magic Sloop. I think it gets destroyed at some point in the story. Rodney reads the story aloud and the sails roughly correspond to whatever he's talking about at the time. You can't skip ahead if you're bored of looking at one of the slides, though, but that would be incredibly rude of you anyway, since he's reading you a story you jackass. I didn't like this one as a kid because I couldn't just blitz through it.
	Hamster: This is like a zoomed in version of the hamster from Pet Shop, in that it's a hamster from a closer angle. Unlike the pet shop hamster, though, this one will interact with whatever you click on, so that's kind of nice. I have never particularly been interested in controlling hamsters so it's not really my thing, you know?
	Chip + Pegg: For some reason, I can't run this one in the program. If I open the .mov in VLC though, it reveals itself as a cartoon about Chip and Pegg, two polygonal monsters who are invited by their Cousin Hexagon to come to Shapeland to see a surprise. They stop a bunch of weird places along the way where a bunch of weird shit happens. Cousin Hexagon lives on an angle. Chip and Peg receive a present for their trip, and then they go with Hexagon and his family to the mall to buy "inexpensive gifts." There are like 6 Chip and Peg .movs, and each of them is exactly the same except for a different prize they get. It ranges from a cheese cooler to a computer. I assume it picked one at random.
	BIRDWALK: This is the only one aside from FUN tha thas its name in all caps. It's another Quicktime movie like Chip + Peg, but when I run the .mov it just plays a honking noise over a black screen. I'd imagine from the button you just watch a bird walk around though, which would be pretty great if I could do it.
	Fire:  It's like when they show the burning logs on PBS, but worse. Note the screenshot of Wigglelife above the mantle. I tried clicking on the bear emblem to the left of the fire, but it doesn't do anything.
	Rotato Head: Rotato Head is the best module in RWW, bar none. The Rotato Head guy rotates and it plays menacing music.You can change him from a vertical roll to a horizontal spin, which changes the music to the Rotato Head Theme Song. You can also change the speed of his rotation from visible to too fast.
	Bignose: Bignose opens with a blood-curdling scream and the words BIG NOSE, theny ou're presented with this creen. You cram all that goofy crap on the table up Big Nose's big nose, and when it's all gone, he sneezes and it all ends up back on the table so you can do it again.
	Houseplant: This is actually a houseplant simulator. Literally. You plant seeds, add SUPER GROW, water it, spray pesticides, and... that's it. If you don't water it once every five days, it dies. I've never had the willpower to actually keep watering my virtual houseplant until it grows, but I do like that it thinks that it's now the year 114.
	Credits: I actually went through credits to see if anything interesting happens. Not really, though that little kiosk thing at the bottom looks like maybe this used to be for a fixture in like an art gallery or something. I'm not sure, but that would've made a lot of sense.

And that's Rodney's Wonder Window for you, more or less in its entirety. Of course it's not quite the same as seeing everything in its (usually) interactive form, but you can kind of fill in the blanks and have Rodney dreams all night. Or if you're a real hardcore Greenblat fan, I guess you could hit up eBay or Amazon or something and try to snag a copy. I wouldn't recommend it though unless you have a penchant for collecting weird crap.