Reader Rabbit Kindergarten (DS)
© 2009 Graffiti Entertainment
Warning. If you're expecting to find the charm of the original Reader Rabbit titles, first published by The Learning Company, you're in for a disappointment. This is a crude adaptation with a poorly designed menu, fonts too small to read, and activities that don't work well on the DS screen. That's too bad, because the nine games include some potentially valuable reading skill practice. In the game, Reader Rabbit and his sidekick Sam the Lion, are flying their Dreamship when they are captured by a giant bubble wrap. They land in Balloon Town, an island made of balloons where all sharp objects including their airship are locked away in a palace. To free their airship, they must gather the 5 different instruments for the band that have been scattered around Balloon Town and use them to wake up the sleeping bull in front of the palace. You must help Reader Rabbit and Sam by playing minigames designed to teach memory, patterns, math, phonics, rhyming and following directions. Once you have retrieved the instruments and gained access to the palace, you must complete two more minigames to get to the airship and continue on a new adventure. The difficulty level of the minigames can be adjusted, although the overall point of the game is confusing. Bag it.
$30, Nintendo DS
Teaches: math, phonics, memory, following directions
CTR Rating: 30%