Star Wars DroidWorks
© 1998 LucasArts
It's about time somebody took the latest, coolest videogame technology and made it into something that children can learn from. You start in the Droid Workshop, where you combine up to 88 robotic parts, each with unique characteristics. For example, you can make your droid very strong and heavy, but there's a tradeoff— it will need more batteries. Once you've made your droid, you can take it for a test drive on one of 13 different missions. For example, in Fire When Ready, kids must adjust a giant catapult while accounting for mass and trajectory to hurl their droid across a vast canyon. If the droid is too heavy, it's back to the workshop for some lighter parts. This is no easy mission. It can take up to an hour of playing with batteries, weights and explorations before you experience any degree of success. The scope of this initial challenge frustrated some testers. We agree that there should be an easier early puzzle, or at least a better hint system for when the going gets tough. Parents, be prepared to do some coaching. They certainly didn't cut any corners in the art department when they designed this program. The rich 3D graphics and fully orchestrated musical scores capture the appeal of the Star Wars movie. The compelling graphics, like those in videogames, are based on LucasArts' Jedi Knight animation engine— the kind used in those amazing flight simulations. Watch out though, as you'll need no less than 81 MB of hard disk space. We were able to make the program run just fine on a two-year-old Pentium 200 with 32 MB of RAM. It ran even better on a first generation iMac.
$29.95, Win 95, Mac OS (CD-ROM)
Teaches: science, energy, simple machines, light, magnetism, programming