RRP: £19.99
Price: £2.42
Review Barbie Explorer / Barbie:Barbie is off on her adventures, once again, running, diving, jumping, climbing, Lara Croft like, through many different scenarios. She travels to unfamiliar and exciting territories including Africa, Egypt, Tibet and other secret exotic places, to find missing pieces of a mystic mirror to unlock its secrets, and to discover clandestine passages in ancient temples. Adding to the fun and excitement are traps, puzzles to solve, obstacles to negotiate and precious gems to discover. There are different levels of play: Barbie can run faster, jump higher and walk on quicksand, thus helping the player practice and improve keyboard skills. The games can be played alone or with a friend. Barbie-lovers everywhere will enjoy this game, and the manufacturers recommend it is suitable for children aged six years and older, though some help will be needed with installation. The accompanying pamphlet is somewhat disappointing, and though it contains 28 pages, there are only five in English, the rest being in French, German, Spanish and Italian. Subsequently, there is only information concerning installation and keyboard controls, so adult help is imperative. (Six to eight years) -Susan Naylor.
RRP: £29.99
Price: £22.33
Review Starry Night Complete Space & Astronomy Pack Deluxe Edition / Imaginova CPACK-50-C1U:
RRP: £9.99
Price: £0.01
Review Mosby's Medical Encyclopedia / Softkey:Mosby's Medical Encyclopedia on CD-ROM has made it even easier to look up your health problems, containing just about all there is to know in the field of contemporary medical expertise. Mosby's is one of the biggest names in American Medical Reference. For 75 years flu victims in Fresno, syphilitics in Seattle, plague carriers in Peoria and hypochondriacs in Hackensack have been checking its authoritative pages for the right terms, drugs and treatments to go with their condition. The format is admirably clear. A column on the left of the screen indicates the various available sources on-disc. You can click on each to access the subsection you want. Most useful is maybe the encyclopedia, which gives plain, lucid, informative definitions of some 20,000 medically related terms. Below the encyclopedia is a very handy drug guide, affording the scientific background and uses of multifarious pills, medicines and remedies, from Ibuprofen to Intaferon, Temazepam to Tixylix (one problem here for British users is the American bias: occasionally drugs will be listed under their US trade name, which differs from the UK version). Equally interesting is the "human atlas", which diagrammatically maps nervous, lymphatic, musculatory and digestive systems, among others; the on-disc Internet guide, which links you to pertinent Web sites and apposite net-addresses, is pretty cool too. In fact there's so much information here it might prove slightly overwhelming for the layman, and in some ways the CD-ROM is aimed as much at professional users as the needy family or inquisitive individual. [+]But for those willing to swallow the odd technical term it's still pretty hard to think of a better single-disc medical dictionary on the CD ROM market. -Sean Thomas.
Price: £19.98
Review Scally's World of Problems HOME EDITION / Topologika Software Ltd:
RRP: £19.99
Price: £2.99
Review Wallace & Gromit Cracking Animator / BBC Multimedia:
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.58
Review Jump Ahead Baby (PC) / Focus Multimedia Ltd:
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.94
Review Disney's Winnie The Pooh Print Studio Classic / Disney Interactive:Little imaginations can develop their creativity with their favourite Winnie-the-Pooh friends in Disney's excellent Winnie the Pooh Print Studio Classic. Introducing all the well-known and well-loved characters from the AA Milne stories, the package is aimed at children aged four years and above (though it is obvious that help will be required at this age). On the whole it's an easy-to-use program, but if you do get stuck, the extremely well-set-out, and explicit, user manual is very easy to use. Winnie the Pooh Print Studio Classic enables children to create their own stationery. There are 19 different personalised projects to be explored, including calendars, greeting cards and envelopes, invitations, bookmarks, growth charts and postcards, to name but a few. To help with all this, there are more than 100 images of the 100 Acre Woods, favourite characters, a special Winnie-the-Pooh font, and more than 50 background designs and borders. Great for encouraging creativity and first computer skills, this imaging package is beautifully produced and great fun to use. -Susan Naylor.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £12.81
Review Playmobil: Laura's Happy Adventure / Ubisoft:Kids embarking on Laura's Happy Adventures will encounter free-form problem solving and dizzying graphics as this program takes them from attic to underground fairy kingdom. Laura finds an enchanted diamond in her grandfather's rock collection and is given a task by the talking stone: she will unlock the stone's mysteries if she sets out on a mission to please the people she loves. This program is "designed on extensive research of girls' social orientation" and will "challenge girls and develop social skills", according to the blurb on the box. This program's nice-girl emphasis on pleasing people is bound to raise some eyebrows, but we found that the CD-ROM delivered a more total experience than the blurb promised. Laura's Happy Adventures is a game within a game within a game. A player will find a magic bracelet, on which grandpa discovers a mysterious inscription. Then Laura must skip clear across town to the fortune-teller to discover what the inscription means. The fortune-teller then asks for an exotic feather before she will explain the message, and the adventure branches out in another direction. [+]Thus the game weaves an interactive web that is easy to get caught up in. This game has some annoying features. The program must be negotiated using the keyboard or a game pad: the mouse isn't an option. Manoeuvring Laura around her vast world using arrow keys is as clunky as her little Playmobil figure. And aligning her in front of doors, people and objects so she can interact with them is nightmarish. As the point-of-view swoops, zooms and circles around our heroine, an unskilled player may succumb to vertigo before figuring out how to control game play. Now for the good news: the game is so absorbing your child will return to it repeatedly. And its free-form structure encourages resourcefulness. Kids must take some initiative, nose around and discover what needs to be done. If they don't, Laura simply stands there, fidgeting and tossing her hat. Other characters in the program give advice and hints, but only if the player makes Laura "ask". Parents will probably need to help younger children get the hang of negotiating Laura's world. And if your youngster is prone to motion sickness, you might want some Dramamine nearby to help them stomach those dramatic graphics. Otherwise, this is a good exercise in deduction, listening and non-linear thinking. It is likely boys would enjoy it too-if you hide that pink box and those awful blurbs from them. (Ages 6 to 12) -Anne Erickson.
Price: £6.00
Review Microsoft Magic School Bus Dinosaurs / Microsoft:Wahoo! It's another field trip with Ms Frizzle and the Magic School Bus, and this time you are going to the prehistoric era. The Friz has misplaced some her treasured dinosaur pictures, and the only way to replace them is to travel back in time and photograph the dinosaurs yourself. In The Magic School Bus Explores in the Age of Dinosaurs, players use clues in the Friz's emptied photo album to work out in which period the missing dinosaur belongs. Homing in on the Jurassic, Triassic, or Cretaceous periods is only part of the challenge, though; you must also learn where on earth the dinosaur lived! And once you've arrived in the correct place and time, you must still determine which dinosaur you're looking for before you can get a new copy of the photograph for Ms Frizzle. With clear instructions, appealing animation, and loads of information on dinosaurs and other prehistoric life, this CD-ROM achieves a near-perfect mix of educational content and entertainment. Each locale that players visit comes with its own mini-game. In one, players put together jigsaw puzzles to reveal different types of dinosaur footprints; in another, they must help a dinosaur race up an erupting volcano before it drowns, starves, or is burned by falling meteors. A third allows players to morph the Magic School Bus kids into different varieties of dinosaur. This combination of games broadens the game's appeal, ensuring that every child will find something to enjoy. It also means that players will have plenty of reason to return to the Age of Dinosaurs, discovering new games and dinosaur facts every time they play. [+](Ages 6-10) -Alyx Dellamonica, Amazon. com.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £0.01
Review TKKG: Identikit / Fusion Academia:
RRP: £9.99
Price: £1.98
Review Spy Kids 2 / Mindscape:
RRP: £19.99
Price: £4.99
Review Lord of the Rings Activity Studio: The Return Of The King / Alternative Software:
Price: £19.99
Review Winnie the Pooh Print Studio Disney Classics / Disney Interactive:
Price: £9.99
Review Playmobil: Alex Builds His Farm / Focus Multimedia Ltd 5031366012869:
RRP: £9.99
Price: £7.98
Review Casper Double Pack: Mystery in the Castle & The Spooky Alley (PC) / Focus Multimedia Ltd:
Price: £9.99
Review Playmobil: Hype - The Time Quest / Focus Multimedia Ltd 5031366012890:
RRP: £19.99
Price: £0.90
Review Lego Loco / LEGO:Become a trainee stationmaster and design your own railway with trains that run on time and keep your LEGO passengers happy. You can make your own tracks and towns, and the game's switches and points allow you to control all of your trains as they travel from station to station. It is relatively simple to put your computer-based railway together. You are given a toy box which has buttons that you click on to access everything you need to build a scenery or a track. You can choose specific engines or carriages for your trains and there is a speed control box as well. So you can easily stop, start, reverse and alter the speed of your trains. This game is the computer equivalent of a model railway and LEGO hopes it will appeal to anyone from 6 years to 99 years. It will give train enthusiasts hours of fun and certainly help take their minds off all the rail problems in the real world. -Justin Hunt.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £2.98
Review PC Fun Club: Clifford Musical Memory Games (PC/Mac) / Focus Multimedia Ltd:
RRP: £9.99
Price: £0.01
Review Science Museum: Secrets of the Universe / Softkey:
RRP: £9.99
Price: £0.70
Review Greenstreet Junior Colouring Book (PC) / Greenstreet Online Ltd:
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