Arthur's Preschool

Children who don't mind straight-up education drills are the definite target of this game, aimed at the 3 to 5 years age range. Arthur's Preschool places a heavy emphasis on learning over play. The various activities--whether identifying letters by the sounds they make, choosing a particular shape in response to a verbal cue, or doing simple counting--offer, essentially, an electronic version of old-style educational flash cards. Each activity is designed to maximize learning and has a built-in scale of escalating difficulty. They will challenge users to harder tasks if they ace the first level of toughness.

For players who want their learning activities sugar-coated with a little arcade play or humor, Arthur's Preschool is certain to feel a little dry. This is not a flaw, though, so much as a difference in approach. The game provides learning statistics for parental review and offers one "achievement certificate," complete with a connect-the-dots game, for each academic subject. The game also offers a series of creativity-oriented games--arts, crafts, and musical activities--in addition to its more hard-core subjects.

With so many games and activities, it is safe to say this game is genuinely trying to pack everything but a teacher and school friends into its school-in-a-box. Arthur's Preschool takes itself seriously, true, but children who take it seriously, too, are sure to learn a great deal. --Alyx Dellamonica

Amazon.com Product Description
This rich two-disc product invites kids to join Arthur and the gang for learning and fun. Nine educational activities cover math, reading, creativity, and more. Arthur's Preschool teaches a full year's worth of preschool skills, and entertains your child in the process. The Activity Center contains more than 20 additional activities for fun in music and arts and crafts. Personalization features let Arthur learn your child's name, favorite animal, and birthday. (Ages 3 to 5)

My kid loves it! It's great. She is a big fan of Arthur and they really captured the essense of all the Arthur characters. Some of the activites are skewed a bit young, but for my 3 and a half year old, that was fine. It's the fist thing she asks to do if she sees me sitting at the computer. Highly recommended.


Windows Incompatability Problem-Very Dissappointed!!!   July 4, 2002
Maria Lynch (New Jersey United States)
16 out of 17 found this review helpful

This CD-Rom is not compatable with Windows XP and it should be stated clearly somewhere on the packaging. The whole thing froze my computer. Extremely dissappointing!


Not Compatible with WIndows 2000 or XP   March 21, 2002
11 out of 12 found this review helpful

I'm a bit disappointed that it doesn't work on Windows XP and Windows 2000.


Good games, marred by bad implementation   December 28, 2001
Vimal Rajamanur
19 out of 21 found this review helpful

My son has been using this for the last two months. He's 2 & 8 months, slightly under the recommended age for it.

As a game, it should have a lot going for it. For a new user, there are a variety of skills tested, from counting (using baseball), to alphabet (using a robot builder), to shape sorting (using piggy banks of different sizes & coins to match).

However, it is quite flawed in many ways. In most games, the instructions on what letter to select, will stop abruptly if a key is pressed or the mouse is clicked.

For example, in the alphabet game, Arthur will say something like, "Hand Brain the upper case letter A", & there are 5 choices. If however, my son happens to click anywhere on the screen, Arthur will stop before the sentence completes & my son will click at random. It's tough to pick a letter if Arthur doesn't say which one is to be picked!
That sort of thing happens in many of the games, so for us, quite a few of them are un-playable.

If you play the games more than a few times, there's not much variety in the games. The almost exact same things happen each time, even if they were completed correctly the last time.

Quite soon, I'm not sure if my son is learning new stuff or simply remembering the game's prompts from previous experience.

Bottom line : Good game with possibilities for a month or so, will become old hat after that.