Sanctuary Woods

Not to be confused with Sanctuary Wood.

Sanctuary Woods Multimedia, Inc. was a Canadian-American multimedia developer and third-party game publisher. It was one of the early multimedia companies developing products for CD-ROM distribution. The founders, Brian Beninger and Toni Beninger, were both experienced technologists who saw the potential for developing family-oriented and educational multimedia projects when Apple Inc. released Hypercard.

It published two games developed together with actress Shelley Duvall — It's a Bird's Life and It's a Dog's Life. It also published some well-known titles developed by Presto Studios.

In 1994 Sanctuary Woods purchased from MicroProse the MicroProse Adventure Development System game engine used to develop Rex Nebular and Return of the Phantom.^[1] Following disappointing sales through 1995, the company underwent mass layoffs and a corporate restructuring.^[2] Sanctuary Woods went out of business in 2001.^[3]

Games published

3DO

• Dennis Miller: It's Geek to Me
• Dennis Miller: That's News to Me
• It's a Bird's Life

Macintosh

• Ripley's Believe It or Not!: The Riddle of Master Lu
• The Journeyman Project Turbo!
• The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time
• Math Ace JR.
• Victor Vector & Yondo: The Cyberplasm Formula
• Hawaii High: Mystery of the Tiki ^[4]

PC

• It's a Bird's Life
• It's a Dog's Life
• Ripley's Believe It or Not!: The Riddle of Master Lu
• The Journeyman Project Turbo!
• The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time
• Radio Active: A Music Trivia Game
• Wolf — the first of two wildlife simulators
• Lion — the follow-up of Wolf
• Victor Vector & Yondo: The Cyberplasm Formula
• Victor Vector & Yondo: The Hypnotic Harp
• Victor Vector & Yondo: The Vampire's Coffin
• Victor Vector & Yondo: The Last Dinosaur Egg
• Math Ace Grand Prix Edition
• Word City Grand Prix Edition
• Hawaii High: Mystery of the Tiki ^[4]

Games developed

Victor Vector & Yondo

Victor Vector & Yondo is a series of games published by Sanctuary Woods starring a superhero-like main character called Victor Vector, with a side-kick St. Bernard dog called Yondo. The games were published in the 1990s and had an educational spin to them. They were among the first CD-ROM games to be targeted at children.

• Victor Vector & Yondo: The Cyberplasm Formula
• Victor Vector & Yondo: The Hypnotic Harp
• Victor Vector & Yondo: The Vampire's Coffin
• Victor Vector & Yondo: The Last Dinosaur Egg

PC

• Once Upon a Forest
• Orion Burger
• Victor Vector & Yondo|Victor Vector & Yondo: The Cyberplasm Formula
• Victor Vector & Yondo: The Hypnotic Harp
• Victor Vector & Yondo: The Vampire's Coffin
• Victor Vector & Yondo: The Last Dinosaur Egg
• It's A Bird's Life
• Ripley's Believe It or Not!: The Riddle of Master Lu

Reception

Computer Gaming World in 1993 described Victor Vector & Yondo as "Heavy on the flash and light on the substance, this product is more of a talking comic book than a graphic adventure" and criticized the quality of the digitized speech.^[5]

Entertainment Weekly rated Shelley Duvall's It's a Bird's Life a C− stating "While there are plenty of activities-an on-screen storybook, sing-alongs, connect-the-dots puzzles-the animation is primitive, the button-pushing can get awkward, and there are enough disc-access delays (blank screens to you and me) to shatter the attention span of even the most devoted bird fancier" ^[6] The game failed commercially.^[7]