It’s a Dalmatian vacation, of sorts! Set in London and Paris, this activity center is based on the story lines and characters of Disney’s new feature film 102 Dalmatians. Arcade-style and creativity activities make up this program’s offerings, and help extend the movie fun at home – interactive-style.
Our hands-down favorite activity, Verdogo, involves helping Oddball (the female puppy lead) through a bakery rescuing all 102 puppies. The floors of the factory become a gigantic maze, complete with ladders, tubes, rotating pans, and conveyor belts. Kids lead their heroic puppy using the arrows on their keyboard, collecting puppies, of course, along with frosting, jelly, and butter to slow down the bad guys. The arcade challenges here are not as daunting as typical arcade fare so that children as young as 4-6 can enjoy some success with the game. However, jumping is not always easy. Once little ones have mastered the leap, they’ll have a blast while receiving a spatial skills work-out at the same time. They might even build their number skills as they watch their puppy tally increase all the way up to 102 – with a little persistence, of course.
Kids create works of art – spotted and otherwise – with backgrounds, character stickers, colors, and patterns in the program’s creative activity. In an arcade-style game, they quickly and efficiently drop bowls of puppy food on banquet hall tables in order to feed the puppies before they can get to the kitchen – and, well, we wouldn’t want those puppies in there! Children adopt a puppy at The Second Chance Shelter, then feed and play fetch with their new friends in various international parks that open up gradually as kids play the game.
Finally, a clever logic game requires kids to use deductive skills in order to uncover the Top Dog who has some important information about the abducted puppies. This activity plays much like Guess Who in which kids must eliminate dogs based on clues like "not brown" and "two-tone". Unfortunately, this can be quite challenging for the target age group. Parents or older siblings may need to help.
There’s an Internet tie-in that seems rather unnecessary – after adopting a puppy, children go online to download new parks in which to "play" with their chosen pup. Once a download is complete (and it’s thankfully short), they must re-enter the program in order to keep playing. This activity gets old rather fast – there’s only so much children can do with their pup once in the parks.
As well, the interface is slightly tricky. Kid testers were frustrated the first time they played the game, not knowing where all the activities were. Fact is, many of the buildings on the main screen map bring up a simple postcard and audio fact about such tourist attractions as Buckingham Palace and Carnaby Street, and others lead to the program’s activities.
