Tarzan Activity Center
Disney Interactive	Ages 4 to 8

Rating Scale 5 = great,    1 = poor

Educational Value 3.0

Kid Appeal 4.0

Ease of Use 5.0

System Requirements

PC / Mac Price Survey

Product Support

Disney's Tarzan Activity Center provides young Tarzan fans with nine time-absorbing activities loosely based on the newest feature-length animation from Disney. These include three sing-along songs, three arcade-style games, a music creator, a journal, and a sticker-maker.

The three sing-along songs from the movie were among the favorities of our 6, 8, and 9 year-old reviewers, all of whom saw the movie opening day. The songs may be played with the on-screen lyrics sung by the original cast, or karaoke-style, with the user providing the vocals.

The 'Trash the Camp' music creator activity is based on a scene from the movie where Tarzan's animal friends discover Jane and the Professor's camp site, and create music from all their possessions. Musical masterpices may be saved, turned into sheet music, and edited.

The journal allows young users to keep a diary, with a twist. After composing a page, the user can translate the document into one of several animal languages at the click of the mouse. English text is turned into icon pictographs, which can be saved or mailed to a friend. Our users were disappointed to discover, however, that the decoder button merely provides a translation card, rather than the ability to instantly convert the pictograph string back to English.

The arcade games provided the greatest attraction to our reviewers. By far the most popular was 'Terk and Tantor's Power Lunch.' This game challenges the user to match various eating animals' colors with a bouncing chameleon ball, and a collection of food items. As the game progresses, the variety of food items increases, along with the speed of the ball. Other games include: 'Tarzan's Jungle Tumble' where the user must help Tarzan avoid various dangers, like baby leopards, elephants, Kerchak, and the hunters; and 'Fetch the Sketch,' a matching game.

Each of the program elements can be played in any order.

Educational Value

Disney's Tarzan Activity Center offers a number of activities with educational potential, if pursued by the user. For example, the journal offers writing practice, and the music maker offers an impressive musical scoring tool. Unfortunately, our young testers preferred the arcade game activities.

Kid Appeal

Disney's Tarzan Activity Center has reasonably strong kid appeal. We tested the program on some users prior to their seeing the movie, and others only post-movie viewing. Both groups liked the program, and returned to it repeatedly without prompting.

Ease of Use / Install

Disney's Tarzan Activity Center installed without difficulty on our Windows 98 test machines. Each of the activities was preceded by adequate oral instructions. Although none of our parent reviewers reported the need to consult the small, jewel-box manual, it does offer a number of useful tips.

Best for... / Bottom-Line

Disney's Tarzan Activity Center is a fun program for its target audience. For most children, its educational potential will only be reached with parental involvement and direction.

See SuperKids' comparisons with other problem solving titles, and the Buyers Guide for current market prices of this PC-only title.

PC: Windows 95 or later, 133 MHz Pentium-class processor or faster, 20 MB hard drive space, 16 MB RAM, 256 color DirectX-compatible video card, 4X or faster CD-ROM, 16-bit DirectX-compatible sound card, Standard AT-101 keyboard and mouse.

Reviewed on:

PentiumII-450 with 128MB and 32XCD

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