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Common Sense Note

Parents need to know that while the game's box says it's appropriate for preschoolers, the mechanics are too hard for kids that young. This is a better match for kids ages 5 to 7. The game teaches skills such as spelling, parts of speech, and addition.

Families can talk about which race their kids like best. They can also discuss which character their kids like to be and why. Parents can help their kids start to think about the release of games based on movies. What makes them fun to play? What other Cars-related stuff have they seen around?

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Common Sense Review

Reviewed By: Jinny Gudmundsen

For young children, Leapfrog offers a version of CARS for its handheld educational gaming system. This installment keeps the driving simple by not letting cars go off the track, but spices up the challenge by introducing educational questions that kids answer by driving to the correct answer.

Cars for the Leapster takes place after the story in the movie concludes. Racecar Lightning McQueen has moved his race headquarters to Radiator Springs, but he and his fellow cars still need help getting the city noticed. Players are asked to enter car races to earn tokens so that they can buy neon for the town's signs.

The software offers four racetracks with two levels of difficulty. Kids choose a racetrack and which racecar character (Lightning McQueen, Mater, Flo, or Ramone) they want to be. Each racetrack has its own obstacles and educational challenges.

The educational content appears within the race in the form of decisions about driving. For example, in the Carburetor Cup race (one of the four racetracks offered), kids drive up behind three racecars traveling in a row across all three lanes. The software shows a sequence of geometric shapes on the top of the screen and asks kids a question about the position of the shapes ("Which shape is on the right?"). To answer, kids must speed up and bump the car showing the correct shape before they can zoom forward.

Players must be able to use the multidirectional arrow pad to speed up, slow down, and change lanes, while also pushing the A and B buttons to perform other tasks that require timing, including jumping over oil slicks, inflating tires to drive over puddles, and blowing the horn to tip over tractors.

The Parent Guide for the software suggests that the two levels of difficulty correspond to concepts for preschoolers and kindergarteners. But the skills required to race these cars are too hard for most preschoolers. Kids 5 to 7 are the ideal audience.

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