Oz on your computer

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Are there any Wizard of Oz computer programs or CD-ROMs?

Quite a few. Some examples:

  • The Legends of Oz came out in 1993 from Multicom Publishing, and has a number of different elements: The complete text of The Wizard of Oz, animated storybooks of three SillyOZbul picture books by Roger S. Baum, pictures and film clips from The Movie, a matching game, background information, and more. It does not seem to be generally available any more, but searching might turn it up.
  • QVision Publishing (now defunct) put out a number of CD-ROMs based on the Oz books of L. Frank Baum. Each of Baum's fourteen Oz novels was released on its own CD-ROM with the complete text, narration, and illustrations. They were sold individually or as a set, and they also sold a single CD-ROM that holds just the texts of all fourteen novels.
  • Reading Adventures in Oz, an educational game issued by Davidson and Associates around 1993 (I have yet to locate a copy of this, but you can find out more and download a copy at http://coreduo.me.uk/index.php?id=350).
  • The Wizard of Oz Audioclips — sounds from The Movie — from Sound Source Unlimited around 1993.
  • In 2000, DK put out Oz: The Magical Adventure, an edutainment game for young children in which the player guides the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion through various areas of Oz to rescue Dorothy from the Wicked Witch of the West. This was followed up in 2002 with The Oz Interactive Storybook.
  • A CD-ROM of the first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was once available from EbookCDRom. A similar CD-ROM edition of The Woggle-Bug Book was also made.

Have there been any Wizard of Oz video games?

A few.

  • There was an adventure game entitled The Wizard of Oz, which combined elements of the first two books, for the Apple, Commodore 64, PC, and possibly other platforms in 1984. This was issued by the Telarium Corporation as part of their Windham Classics series. More information about the Telarium Corporation and their products can be found online at http://www.lysator.liu.se/adventure/Telarium_Corporation.html. The Wizard of Oz can be downloaded there for the Commodore, Apple II, PC, and Tandy computers or their emulators. You can even play it in your browser now, at http://www.virtualapple.org/wizardofozdisk.html.
  • A video game based on Return to Oz by US Gold was available for at least the Commodore 64 and the ZX Spectrum. You can find out more about this game at http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0004115 and http://tacgr.emuunlim.com/downloads/filedetail.php?recid=2999.
  • Twisted, a graphic adventure game for pre-OSX Macintosh systems, is available for download at http://www.semitech.com/marc/ray.html (you can still play it in the "Classic Mac" emulator). You may also be able to order a CD-ROM of Twisted, with hints and maps, by sending $20 to Ray Dunakin, 4665 Huggins St.,San Diego, CA 92122 (but this information may be out of date).
  • Jack Lockerby released a text adventure based on The Wizard of Oz for the ZX Spectrum in 1995.
  • Yellow Brick Road is a CD-ROM adventure game, in which you control 3-D animated versions of the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion as you search for the missing Scarecrow. It was released in 1996 from Synergy, Inc. Yellow Brick Road 2 has reportedly been issued, but not in English. You can see some screen grabs of the German release at http://www.thelegacy.de/Museum/55473/.
  • The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) had The Wizard of Oz, published by SETA, which came out in 1993.
  • A Russian game called Bolshebnik Strany Oz or The Wizard of Land Oz, was made for the ZX Spectrum in 1996. More information is available here. Russian video games were also released based on the first two Magic Land books, The Wizard of the Emerald City and Urfin Jus and His Wooden Soldiers.
  • The Fuzhou Waixing Computer Science & Technology Company of China, infamous for making games using graphics from other games, produced a Wizard of Oz-inspired game for the Famicon (the Japanese Nintendo Entertainment System) entitled Lu Ye Xian Zong in 1996. More information can be found here here.
  • One of the unreleased titles by Philips Funhouse for the CD-I system was a game called Treasures of Oz, apparently based on the first book. It would have featured Diana Ross as the Good Witch of the North. More information is available here.
  • Available for download online is Zim Greenleaf's Laboratory, based on a character in the Seven Blue Mountains of Oz trilogy by Melody Grandy (available from Tails of the Cowardly Lion and Friends). It's on the web page http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXsourceXagt.html; scroll down to the file zimlab.zip.
  • See the previous question for information on DK's Oz: The Magical Adventure, an educational program with many game elements.
  • In 2002, an Oz-themed game came out from THQ featuring the Rugrats, called Munchin Land, for Windows.
  • A new Oz-themed video game was said to be in the works from Carbon6 Entertainment, the company that developed American McGee's Alice for Electronic Arts. It has since been announced the project has been canceled.
  • A number of these video games, and some original creations based on other Oz and Baum books, on its download page, are available from The Royal Website of Oz at http://dorothyandozma.com/downloads.html. The original games are available for online play here: http://dorothyandozma.com/games.html. That site also has information about other Oz video games.
  • In 2008, the Japanese company D3 released RIZ-ZOAWD a game for the Nintendo DS that was loosely based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It was released in English in 2009 as The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road.
  • Recently, a number of Oz games have been available for free trial play with an option to purchase the full version. These have included The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a Bejeweled-style gem matching game, Emerald City Confidential, an adventure game with a film noir slant on Oz, and another game called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, based around hidden objects.
  • In World of Warcraft, the Opera Event in the Karazhan instant/dungeon has The Wizard of Oz as one of the three boss presentations. You can find out more at http://www.gotwarcraft.com/Raid%20Instances/karazhan/the_wizard_of_oz.php and http://www.wowwiki.com/Wizard_of_Oz.
  • A social game for Facebook based on The Movie debuted in 2012 by Spooky Cool Labs. Players build a Munchkinland and the Yellow Brick Road while being occasionally bothered by the Wicked Witch of the West. More information may be found here.

Where can I find some Wizard of Oz clip art?

A long-term goal of mine for WWOOW is to add an Oz art gallery, including clip art. But I have no idea how soon I'll be able to do this. Until then, take a look at the WWOOW links page (see the question Are there any WWW sites having to do with Oz? below). There is one section set aside for sites with Oz art, and there may be something there that you can copy or download to suit your needs. You might also want to search online image archives or search engines (an example of the latter is http://images.google.com/). If you are interested in just The Movie, and are willing to do a little digging, Corel put out a Wizard of Oz version of its Print House Magic program, for Windows-based systems only, a few years ago. You may be able to find a used copy somewhere. The original illustrations by W. W. Denslow have finally come out on a clip art CD-ROM from Dover (ISBN 0486991466).

Where can I get Wizard of Oz screensavers or desktop accessories?

These are available on the WWW, free for downloading. A whole bunch of different Oz screensavers can be found at http://www.kfu.com/~scarlet/oz_screensavers.htm. The Hungry Tiger Press website has some non-Movie based wallpaper at http://www.hungrytigerpress.com/tigertreats/index.shtml. If you don't find exactly what you are looking for, you may want to think about making your own Oz-themed desktop accessories, which is not as difficult as you might think — but it's also beyond the scope of this FAQ, so if you want to try this, you'll have to look for resources on desktop accessories.

How can I get in touch with other Oz fans on the Internet?

Regalia is an Oz mailing list, where members can write e-mails and they go to everyone else. For more information or to subscribe, see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/regaliaofoz/ and http://www.pauahtun.org/mailman/listinfo/regalia. Another list, hosted by author Edward Einhorn, is OzFiction at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OzFiction/. You can also find many Oz fans on message boards. One Oz message boards is hosted by IWOC at http://ozclubforums.yuku.com/directory. Some other Oz sites (see next question) also have message boards, and even chat rooms, so feel free to explore.

Are there any Wizard of Oz apps for my smartphone or tablet?

Yes, quite a few. Just go to your app store and start looking. I know, for example, that some programmers have reformatted The Wizard of Oz and other Oz books as apps. A site you may want to look at if you have an iPad or other Apple device is http://www.wizardofozapp.com/, which has a demonstration video and information about an interactive story version of The Wizard of Oz.

Are there any WWW sites having to do with Oz?

Oh, yes! There are now far too many to list here, and they're being added to and removed from the WWW all the time. A very good place to start looking for Ozzy WWW sites is (TMOHH) WWOOW's links page at http://thewizardofoz.info/wiki/Oz_links. The page links to lists that add up to over three hundred links to other sites, and many of those sites have links to even more sites. Plus, some of those sites, along with WWOOW, are part of Oz webrings, allowing you to connect directly to other sites. So if you're looking for Ozzy websites, break out your browser and take a look. (Note that, while there are many sites on that links page, it is far from complete, and probably never will be. If you're looking for information on a specific Oz topic, you may want to try a search engine — or better yet, several of them — and provide as many keywords as possible.)

Is there an Oz newsgroup in Usenet?

There is. Check out alt.books.wizard-of-oz and alt.movies.wizard-of-oz. The trouble is, nobody seems to be using these groups — the few times anyone posts to them, it generally is an advertisement for something particularly non-Ozzy. Still, maybe someone will say something substantial in them some time. And there's always rec.arts.books.childrens, which many Oz fans read. If your local Internet service provider doesn't carry these newsgroups, you can access them for free through the Google Groups service at http://groups.google.com/group/alt.books.wizard-of-oz?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8, http://groups.google.com/group/alt.movies.wizard-of-oz?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8, and http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.books.childrens?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8.

Where can I find the texts of Oz books online?

Most of public domain Oz books, and many non-Oz books by Baum, have been made available to read online. Project Gutenberg is trying to get as many public domain works online as possible, and these include many books by Baum. For a list of what's available, check out the official Project Gutenberg site (http://www.gutenberg.net/) or the Online Public Library (http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books), or any other site you may find by typing "Project Gutenberg" into a search engine. Several other sites have these texts as well, and some sites have other Oz and Oz-related books not published by Project Gutenberg, such as some of those on http://www.emeraldcityofoz.com/library/ and http://dorothyozma.tripod.com/library.htm. Other sites carry some books in other languages. For a list of Oz and Baum works known to be online, check the WWOOW links page (http://thewizardofoz.info/links.html).

Where can I find Wizard of Oz MIDI or other sound files on the Internet?

I know of no such resource for just Oz-related MIDIs or other sound files. Your best bet might be to use the keywords "Wizard of Oz MIDI" in your favorite search engine. Or try http://www.musicrobot.com for a search engine that specializes in MIDI and other sound files. Those looking for Oz music from the earliest Oz stage shows can find some samples, as either MIDI or MP3 files, at http://www.hungrytigerpress.com/tigertunes/index.shtml. I also have a few sites listed on my links page — see the question Are there any WWW sites having to do with Oz?.

Are there any Wizard of Oz ringtones that I can put on my cell phone?

A quick search on Google using "'Wizard of Oz' ringtones" turned up quite a few sites with ringtones from The Movie, of varying quality. Some appear to have been created by people who didn't know the music very well, as the ringtones placed the emphasis in odd places or had notes that were off. But they are out there, if you're willing to take a look. Sprint used to have some Wicked ringtones, but they don't appear to have them on their site any more.

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