Toy Story 2 Activity Center
Disney Interactive	Ages 4 to 8

Rating Scale 5 = great,    1 = poor

Educational Value 3.0

Kid Appeal 4.5

Ease of Use 4.0

System Requirements

PC / Mac Price Survey

Product Support

Based on the Disney movie of the same name, Toy Story 2 Activity Center offers kids six activities to be played alone, or, in some cases, with a friend. Situations from the movie are cleverly interwoven into the action, involving users with their favorite characters Woody, Buzz, and the rest of the gang.

Arcade-type activities dominate, as kids help guide their pals across a 6-lane highway packed with bumper-to-bumper traffic, aid Buzz as he assembles a rocket ship, and rescue Woody by moving Buzz across rows of luggage in search of the suitcase that holds Woody captive.

Other activities include a checkers-like board game, a simple art program that lets kids 'Create-A-Comic-Book', and 'Woody's Printing Press' with which kids can print greeting cards, postcards, a poster and stickers featuring the Toy Story 2 cast.

Educational Value

Educational value in Toy Story 2 Activity Center is minimal. The arcade games involve a bit of strategic planning, but this can get lost as kids dive in with fast-twitch energy and find that they can succeed at the games without much strategy if they're twitchy enough. And while the two art-based activities involve creativity, they are quite limited. Kids do little more than choose stickers and apply them to backgrounds.

Kid Appeal

Toy Story 2 Activity Center was well-liked among our testers. Students especially enjoyed the program's theme, and the inclusion of characters and situations from the popular movie. As expected, the graphics and animation are excellent, and the activities are designed to appeal to older kids and parents as well as those in the targeted age-range.

Some of the activities included in this program involve arcade skills and can therefore be frustrating for young users, especially those unfamiliar with arcade-type games. Those who lack arcade skill should be encouraged to develop strategies based on their previous trials with the games and use these strategies to achieve ultimate success.

Ease of Use / Install

Toy Story 2 Activity Center installs without difficulty. The included games are not intuitive. Directions are given at the start of each activity, nevertheless referring to the manual is often a necessity.

Best for... / Bottom-Line

The Toy Story2 theme, and cleverly designed activities makes this an amiable, if not terribly educational program. The arcade-like activities may be difficult and frustrating for young users.

See SuperKids' comparisons with other problem solving software titles, and the Buyers Guide for current market prices of the PC and Mac versions.

PC: Windows 95 or later, Pentium 133MHz or faster processor, 50 MB hard drive space, 16 MB RAM, 16-bit DirectX-compatible color video display, Quad-speed (4x) or faster CD-ROM, 16-bit DirectX-compatible sound card.

Mac: System 8.1 or higher, Power PC processor, 133MHz or faster, 50 MB hard drive space, 32 MB RAM, Thousands or millions of color video display, Quad-speed (4x) or faster CD-ROM.

Reviewed on:

PowerMac 6400/200 with 32MB and 8XCD

Pentium166 with 24MB and 12XCD

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