Reader Rabbit Preschool Sparkle Star Rescue

The opening movie-like sequence is just a flashy distraction that could have been better designed, replaced or excluded. My niece usually bypasses it with a click and goes straight to the menus.

The menu is interesting enough but some of the menu paths lead to the same place and I wonder what is the point of this.

My biggest gripe is some of the sound effects that tend to drown out the instructions (a major disadvantage) and as far as I can tell, you have to click them off everytime you restart the program .

Also, what is the point of being able to add users if you can't delete some of them? My niece likes to type a lot of letters without care to what she's typing so we have a long list of users who are either ABCDEFG, or AAABCDEDFGHIJK etc and there is no way to get rid of these that is obvious to me.

The activities are easy enough to complete once you figure out what to do but it would have been more appropriate to be able to customize the experience i.e. have several levels for each activity so that the parent/adult can select the most appropriate level with less or more requirements for completion to get the brillite stones as a reward. My niece has managed to get a few of these in some activities but in others, she has yet to achieve the number of repetitions required to collect one because she usually gets bored and switches to another activity before she completes the required number.

The colouring activity is creative and unique but some of the smaller shapes are difficult for preschoolers to target with the mouse without a severe amount of concentration and focus and so trying to colour these shapes is an odious task when it should be fun.

Also, the counting activity with the rockets, (while very unique and creative), is a definite candidate for multiple levels of difficulty since at age 3, most pre-schoolers have not grasped subtraction yet and this activity requires that they be able to understand this concept to complete some of the mission tasks.

In addition, the counting activity and some other activities need a more obvious and more visual completion/reward message for each time the task is completed. This is the one area where the graphics are lacking.


some things done right, others not so good   December 17, 2002
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

We are a loyal Reader Rabbit family, having tried many children's software titles and consistently finding the RR series at least as good as any similar software and usually much better, but I would say this particular title is a mixed bag. On the positive side, the graphics are good, the characters are familiar and there is an overarching purpose (collecting brillites to plug into Mount Brill) that lends depth to a typically shallow gaming genre. On the not-so-positive side, the games are often exceptionally tedious and it is not always clear what one is expected to do. I really appreciate that there's a framework story and a big finish with a "Congratulations" to help your child get excited about the accomplishment but, as another reviewer has mentioned, the child can easily get the brillites needed to finish the game while they still have another (and incomplete) set of stones -- what are those for?

There are six activities that rely on matching, counting and letter recognition skills as well as listening to instructions, but there is little devotion to teaching these skills -- it's basically just testing them. I'd say this is one of the weaker members of a strong software series .... perhaps not the first program that you might want to buy for your preschooler, but entertaining and with some positive attributes if you're shopping for a third or fourth.