As computers continue to take over the world, the information superhighway is gaining enough headway to warrant a new nickname - the infobahn.

And one of the earlier advances in information technology has taken on one of the old order's most popular mediums, music.

CD-ROM drivers, those little compact disc players that are all the rage when attached to a computer, have the amazing ability to digitize information.

The discs are like music CD's in the way information is stored, but CD-ROM's have visuals to go along with music -- and they are kicking the infobahn into overdrive.

The newest branch of the CD-ROM market digitizes such things as music videos, concert footage and fancy camera work. In the past year, music-oriented CD-ROM's started to gain momentum, carrying acts such as Aerosmith, David Bowie and Peter Gabriel. Even MTV has entered the market with a CD-ROM game.

But so far, the new industry is not quite sure what to do with itself -- the music CD-ROM's are new enough not to have any market expectations yet. So the period of reckoning is at hand as the pioneering wave of music CD-ROM hits the market.

One of the first recording artists to go the multimedia way is Peter Gabriel.

Xplora I Peter Gabriel's Secret World, for Macintosh computers, allows the world of computer videos to come alive and provides more computer-generated frogs than the average Penn State student has seen at any one time.

The aforementioned amphibians abound in the "Kiss That Frog" video, one of several clips from Gabriel's recent album, Us.

The positives are big -- life-like forays into Gabriel's Real World recording studios, a chance to glimpse other upcoming sonic innovations and excursions to a WOMAD (World of Music, Art and Dance) festival, where world beat music, complete with congos and other international sounds, steps to the forefront of the collective musical scene.

A happy user can navigate a typical festival and witness different world music acts.

Although some places are off-limits, those secret worlds can be accessed by finding a secret pass.

But the negatives are two-fold. For one, a Macintosh CD-ROM is required, whereas users with another kind of computer are out of luck. The second downer is that the gods of retail distribution have set the price for this technology at an uncomfortable $59.95.

It is no wonder CD-ROM drives have not made their way into the average college student's computer System.

"There wasn't as much to it as I thought it would be," said Mike Fox, referring to the Gabriel disc. Fox (freshman-business) admired the reproduction of the videos but did not think the price tag matched the enjoyment.

While the exorbitant price of the new CD-ROM games might discourage sales, students are still intrigued with the concept.

Carin Roberts (freshman-communications) owns a CD-ROM but does not have any of the music CD-ROM discs.

"The MTV one sounds real cool," Roberts said. "The only thing I can do now, is take a (music) disc and play it." Another damper on the technology is that it is not widely available. The interactive packages can mainly be found through mail-order companies.

"People are very impulsive buyers when it comes to games," said a sales technician at Connecting Point, 222 W. College Ave., who wished to remain anonymous.

It is rare for a customer to buy an expensive CD-ROM without seeing it first, he said.

"Software is not a big market in State College," the technician said.

But interactive, music-related CD-ROMs are becoming more plentiful as the market branches off in different directions.

For instance, the self-appointed popular music god, MTV, has released its first CD-ROM game.

Club Dead is the newest and supposedly hippest thing around. Gamers might want to give it a run, but there is little similarity between this and other CD-ROM games.

Club Dead is a mix of visual clues and sounds that an anxious gamer tries to navigate through in order to complete the main character's mission.

Club Dead has a director, just like a music video.

"It's got an MTV personality from start to finish," said Laura Siegel, a spokesperson for Viacom New Media.

The company worked to publish and develop the game, but MTV and Viacom New Media work together in a collaborative environment, Siegel said.

While this is the first MTV game that works on CD-ROM, this is not the first MTV computer product.

"There are other products where we've worked closely with MTV," Siegel said, citing the Beavis and Butt-Head video game.

In the case of the terrible prepubescents, Viacom employees worked with writers from the popular show to ensure that Beavis and Butt-Head's obnoxious antics were reliably translated to video game form. The question was, "How do you translate a brand to a product?" Siegel added.

But now the market is CD-ROM, not Sega, and Club Dead is a hip teen-age playground for the boobtube generation. Response to Club Dead has been positive, with Electronic Entertainment magazine awarding the game their best music award.

But there is a lot more than a good music score going on at Club Dead. There are puzzles to solve that revolve around watching scenes in different rooms and getting visual clues as to where the next destination might be.

Sounds like child's play, right? The hard part is that there are different tools used by the main character, Sam Frost. Those tools change where a player can go or what scenarios they see.

In the Cyberplumber handbook, (Sam Frost's occupation, do not ask), there are instructions for the use of trinkets such as the Personal Data Assistant (PDA), Electronic Access Guide (EAG), and the all-important Chipman.

While any attempt to explain these things to someone not actually playing the game would be a complete failure -- rest assured that those games are easy to get the hang of.

Future MTV forays into the CDROM world include a game based on a "Liquid Television" segment, Siegel said. The next release will be an action-based game, as opposed to the video playback.