Disney's Activity Centre: A Bug's Life (UK version)

Description:

As the title would suggest, this is the game to accompany the film. It features all of the film's characters in a beautiful visual display of games, puzzles and other simple activities for children from 3 to 7 year's old.

This title has been reproduced for the UK market.

Features:

• Bug Camera - Take a picture of a bug and find out some facts about it.
• Puppet Show - Create your own show, colouring in scenes as you want.
• Bug board game - Simple board game. All parts of it can be printed out for use away from the computer.
• Animations - Point and click on hotspots to see fun animations.
• Spiral Root - Sequencing : Putting events into order.
• Council Chambers - Treasure Hunt - hotspot point and click search.
• The City - Help a bug get back to its Daddy.
• Bug Circus - Build a circus act.
• Bug bar and Grill - give the customer the right food.

Technical Aspects:

Installation is straightforward, using the CD-ROM auto start feature for Windows 95/98. As suggested, the software took up around 35Mb of disc space.

There are some minor issues, though. The box specification recommends 16-bit video, but when the title is installed or run, it complains if your PC is set to 16-bit, saying that 256 colours are required. We found no problems running the software in 16-bit mode. Also, the box recommends a 101-key keyboard. The UK standard is a 102-key keyboard. Again, the software runs fine on a 102-key keyboard.

The title comes with a manual detailing the activities. Although the title has been re-produced for the UK market, the changes would appear to be cosmetic ones to the box.

Report and Conclusions:

You start with a rolling screen of ant activity above the ground. Flik gives a fast run down of what you can do and asks you to find a number of items. He needs these to build a contraption to scare away the grasshoppers who are still causing trouble. A number of other rolling scenes of life above and below ground are depicted. Hotspots activate animations, which may be different from one click to the next. Some hotspots activate games and activities. On successful completion of an activity, you acquire one of the items for the contraption.

Each activity is explained at the start. This is often done quite fast and is difficult to follow (for the adults never mind the children) - The original American accents are retained, but then I would not expect anything different for a title based on a Disney film. Both children were quite lost at times about what to do, which was frustrating. In particular it was difficult to know what to do next and where we should be going. Our 3 year old liked clicking around the scenes but found some of the activities a little too difficult.

There is little educationally to gain from the activities: there is a sequencing game, but the others are for playing around with. There are however some facts on a variety of the bugs in the game, which the older players may find interesting.

The graphics overall are beautiful, in 256 or 16-bit colour modes - just like watching a Disney film on a small TV set. The animations are also a joy to watch, and very realistic with lots of humour, voices and actions.

If your children love a bug's life then consider buying it just for the animations. Three is probably a little young, and at eight some of the activities are a little tame. Longevity is OK, but not great - once all the items have been found there is a limited attention span to clicking the animations. We are not aware of the price at present but the £40 at which other Disney titles are set at is a bit steep for this product.