Tonka Space Station

$29.99, Win, PlayStation

Teaches: eye hand coordination

CTR Review

Confusing but generally fun, this new Tonka program is really an arcade game in disguise. Play begins as kids pick a space station to build and manage. This quickly leads to a series of arcade-like challenges requiring quickness and eye-hand coordination. For instance, if kids choose to fortify their space station's defenses, they must steer a flying Tonka space vehicle through a worm hole to ward off oncoming asteroids. To collect food for the station's inhabitants, kids maneuver a vehicle to harvest space berries while avoiding nasty alien weeds. There are nine multilevel missions in all and games can be saved. Reading is necessary to fully understand the program, which is a drawback for pre-reading five-year-old children. It's also not always clear what you're supposed to do. By clicking around and experimenting, though, children will figure things out.