Speed through Lego worlds in your own constructible Lego car!

Product Information

This is the first racing game that challenges you to put both yourdriving and building skills to the test. First, you get the chance to build yourself a car or choose one of the pre-built models, then you get to race it through exciting LEGO worlds, battling against history's greatest ever racing champions. GoodLuck!  LEGO Racers combines all the fun of LEGO building blocks and fast-paced cart racing! Design and build your own car using a multitude of LEGO parts, or choose from over 20 pre-built vehicles. At any point you may return to the garage andconstruct a new car, or just make general modifications.

Featuring characters from all your favorite LEGO worlds, LEGO Racers even lets you build your own drivers, creating new personalities with driving styles all their own.
Two players cancompete head to head or one player can take on five other Racers for the trophy on twelve challenging tracks spread across four different worlds based on LEGO SYSTEM themes: Space, Pirates, Castle, and Adventurers. Race in burning deserts and steamingjungles, through creepy castles and massive mineshafts. Dodge Cannonball fire from pirate ships or race through the mud pits in the swamp lands. 

No matter where it takes you, LEGO Racers guarantees excitement, thrills, and fun onyour way to beat the final and Greatest LEGO Racer of all Time!


Product Features

While amazing 3D graphics and an original up-beat racing soundtrack add to the excitement, the in-depth tutorials and easy to usecontrols give you all the help you need in your track battles. You'll need it too, it you want to take on the fastest racer of them all - Rocket Racer!

• Learn the tricks of each track, including short-cuts, power-ups andtrack hazards.

It is also a superb way of introducing youngsters to the PC and keyboard. Chunky, imaginative, and, more importantly, possessing ultimate play appeal for children (what child ever tires of pushing buttons, turning wheels, and pulling and pushing levers?), it is a fantastic way of refining gross motor skills to the finer level required for mice and keys.

But probably the best thing about this set, from a parental point of view, is its ease of installation and portability. Just place it over the keyboard and it slots into place. A belt then straps around the keyboard to hold it in place when your toddler inevitably gets excited. And, when it becomes the favorite toy of the moment, it is easy to pop in a bag and take to Grandma's (whether she has a PC or not!). It is a superb toy and developmental aid that kids will love and parents will feel good about. --Lucie Naylor

The game begins with a series of tutorials that outline the basic functions of play--driving trains, moving from track to track, and managing loads--before presenting a series of timed puzzle scenarios. Younger players may find even the simplest of these scenarios too challenging, and may prefer the options that allow them (or their parents) to lay out train routes on their own. The electronic element also allows for some creative settings, such as scenarios set on the moon or the North Pole, or ones that include dinosaur farms.

Despite these fictional elements, the program's best feature is the level of realistic detail it provides on the nuts and bolts of train systems. Each train car has a specific function, prohibiting players from loading inappropriate cargo. Track repairs, coupling and decoupling cars, refueling, track switching--all of the basic concepts that rule the railroads are covered in 3-D Ultra Lionel Traintown Deluxe.

Though its approach is low-key, it's also very educational, developing in young players an appreciation for how trains and railroads work--not to mention how food gets from the farm to the local grocery store. 3-D Ultra Lionel Traintown Deluxe may well be everything both a parent and a child could want. It's engaging, well designed, and informative. Best of all, playing it is a lot of fun. (Ages 7 and older) --Alyx Dellamonica

This Windows-only program offers three activities and three games, introduced by buff-armed, jovial Tonka Joe. The activities all involve building cool things that can be saved and printed. There's a wood shop for constructing forts and castles, a metal shop for designing all manner of vehicles, and a tech lab for rockets, robots, time machines, and the like. The ever-versatile power tool comes into play here: pointing the Teflon tip at the screen and squeezing the trigger selects an activity, twisting the collar on the tool selects one of 24 different power-tool tips to use on a project, then pointing and triggering again gets the job done. We really liked arc welding, which made the screen flash so realistically we considered donning sunglasses. The three games have three levels, and are good exercises in logic, spatial applications, and finding the right tool for the job. A pit-stop game requires kids to quickly fix racecars that roll in needing repairs. A Tetris-like construction game has players affixing panels to a house as they fly in from all screen directions. And in The Safe Game kids use their tool to solve puzzles, using visual cues to "crack" a series of locks and win the treasure contained in the safe. Decent games, one and all, that will please tool lovers, and provide the tool-impaired with a gentle introduction to the differences between Phillips-head and flat-head screwdrivers.

A final word: the plastic power tool is quite light, but the games are engrossing enough that it's possible to hold it to the screen for long, fatiguing periods of time. Now we know why Tonka Joe has such beefy arms. Perhaps Tonka Power Tools should be marketed to adults as a triceps toner. (Ages 5 and older) --Anne Erickson