System Requirements

PC / Mac Price Survey

Product Support

The heroes aboard the fabulous Dreamship explore Mt. Cheesemore where they have crashed. They must use their skills in grammar, reading, science, math and telling time, to find and repair their ship before the rodent pirates of Pi-Rat Island.

The program is intended for ages 6-8 or 2nd grade. The game introduces activities across the curriculum which require players to guide the well-known Reader Rabbit and his friendly pals across Mt. Cheesemore, collecting items needed to get their ship repaired. In addition to the main adventure game, the program provides three fairly engaging Learning Creations or learning centers involving art and music. Students can learn about calendars, create music and express themselves through painting and drawing. These additional isolated activities appear on the main menu of the software.

As a second grade skills program, Mis-cheese-ous+Adventure is a good review of basic 2nd grade skills, but it shouldn't be used as a teaching tool. Topics covered include: spelling, recognizing synonyms, antonyms, and compound words; adding, subtracting and fractions; reading comprehension and sentence construction; telling time; identifying insect characteristics; and recognizing number patterns. Unfortunately, the program does not teach, model or guide the player through the activities. The game assumes that the player has a basic understanding of how to navigate through this particular program as well as figure out the objective of a particular activity they are to complete. The skills addressed are age appropriate, but the format does not provide tutorial assistance, nor does it aid players when they are having difficulty. A progress report, however, is available.

Although initially captivating by virtue of its animated cartoon style and dramatic introduction, the game loses its appeal when navigating becomes difficult and frustrating. Additional guidance is not provided so players find themselves going back to the same activity which ultimately leads to little progress in completion of the adventure. The individual activities are slow, repetitive, and lack creativity. Clear instructions and guidance are missing on the objective of the individual activities and the overall goal of the adventure. Little things, like knowing how many of each object you must collect, would be helpful! It would have been better with clear instructions, on-going feedback, more engaging and creative activities and a defined purpose or rationale. Parents and teachers may like the product to review skills already learned. It would be difficult to use in a classroom setting due to the time needed to navigate through the game.

The program installed without major difficulty on our Windows test machines. Installation includes QuickTime 5.0. Some difficulty was encountered with installation on an IMac. This program requires adult installation and supervision. Navigation is sometimes non-intuitive, but can eventually be determined by clicking around.

2nd grade students who enjoy cartoon format programs while reviewing basic skills and those familiar with game navigation without much additional support or guidance. This game would not be recommended for beginners with educational software nor students with special needs or those lacking basic 2nd grade skills.

See SuperKids' comparisons with other 2nd grade multisubject software titles, and the Buyers Guide for current market prices of the PC and Mac versions.

PC: Windows 95/98/Me, 2000, XP , Pentium 166MHz or faster, 100 MB hard drive space, 32 MB RAM, 16-bit thousands of colors display, 8x or faster CD-ROM, Soundblaster16 or compatible sound card, mouse, color printer (optional).

Mac: System 8.6-9.1, and OS-X, 180MHz or faster cpu, 100 MB hard drive space, 32 MB RAM, 16-bit thousands of colors display, 8X or faster CD-ROM, 16-bit stereo sound, mouse, color printer (optional).

Reviewed on:
-     Pentium III - 500 running Windows 98, with 384MB RAM and 24x - CD-ROM
-     Pentium III - 750 running Windows Me, with 128MB RAM and 24x - CD-ROM

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