Disney's Buzz Lightyear 2nd Grade

by Disney

Product Features

• Program Manual
• With Active Leveling Advantage
• Windows & MAC

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Greetings, space rangers! Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear and the playthings that inhabit Andy's bedroom are about to change your definition of "educational toys" as they make light work of some fairly advanced learning material. Andy is gone, and Buzz takes it upon himself to rally the toys for some teaching and fun. "Are you ready to exercise your romping skills?" he asks, gesturing grandly across the bedroom.

Nine activities provide a full curriculum of early-learning challenges: math (including fractions), music, geography, spelling, reading, and telling time. Disney's designers didn't forget the fun factor, either: kids learn double-digit math as they build a marble maze with the help of Jessie, the tomboy cowgirl. Blasting meteorites into halves and thirds makes fractions fun, and Buzz spouts global trivia, such as "Argentina has the most sunflowers in the world," to teach geography.

The music area is a real standout. There's a full four-octave keyboard complete with reverb, and exploration yields click-and-drag cassettes that transform the board's sounds into anything from a rock concert to a circus tent. Musically inclined kids will have hours of fun in this spot alone.

This CD-ROM takes full advantage of the audio and visual possibilities computer-based learning can offer. Listen for background music composed specifically for certain activities, and watch for the shadows that the precisely rendered characters cast. (Ages 6 to 8) --Anne Erickson

Product Description

Different children have different abilities at different ages. In addition, a particular child's development can change radically throughout the school term. Disney/Pixar's Buzz Lightyear learning series uses the Active Leveling Advantage to adjust difficulty to suit your child's current level of ability. In this way, your child is alwayas challengrd, yet never frustrated if he or she is just learning to master the skills presented in the product.

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Product Details

• Item Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: B00004U5QZ
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Buzz Lightweight, April 12, 2001

By 

Robert Hazelwood (Arizona USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Disney's Buzz Lightyear 2nd Grade (CD-ROM)

I'm sorry I bought this program BEFORE reading the other reviews here, because they're generally right on.

"Buzz Lightyear 2nd Grade" is just a superficial money-maker cranked out by people who either don't know or don't care about child education. Most of the "activities" are so brainless and boring that I was secretly ashamed to be encouraging my child to "enjoy" them.

Plus, the installation on my plain Windows 98 PC was a nightmare. I'm a very knowledgeable user but it still took me almost two full evenings. The setup program is at once unforgiving and stupid. My existing version 4.0 Quicktime just HAD to be upgraded to v4.01, for example - and this launched itself (involving a major download) right in the middle of the main program installation. This had predictable results.

Other issues were files installed with the wrong attributes (which later stopped the program), an uninstall file given a wrong extension (which prevented an uninstall), beta test messages popping up, and an almost unsolvable conflict with msvcrt.dll (a common problem). This last would crash the program whenever an activity was exited.

I was ready to give up when I found mention on this site of an available patch.

Running this patch finally got me going, although the speech is often totally garbled, especially in the intro screen.

My advice - save your money. Don't reward efforts like this. We could have had so much, much more from a Disney / Pixar collaboration.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars learning is fun too !!, December 12, 2000

By 

john m. boes (UP of MI.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Disney's Buzz Lightyear 2nd Grade (CD-ROM)

While my son enjoys playing "his software", he is particularly interested in the Toy Story themes. With Buzz Lightyear as his favorite, he is naturally drawn into hours of learning fun with this Disney Interactive program. I have been surprised at his knowledge in geography and his reading skills. Jessie's math maze has expediated his math abilities. There are enough game options to keep his interst level up and his computing skills sharp. I also get the benefit of having my son sit on my lap while helping him through the tougher games. Certainly a purchase well worth the price.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Incompatible with newer quicktime versions, April 10, 2006

By 

John N. Finlayson (IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Disney's Buzz Lightyear 2nd Grade (CD-ROM)

This title is out of date, and installing it will break other applications that rely on newer versions of Quicktime.

It requires Quicktime, but the program installer doesn't recognized the most recent versions of Quicktime, so it won't start. Instead, it recommends that you uninstall your "old" version and install its "new" version, which is actually many years old.

I would not recommend installing this software if you have any need for any other application or web page that relies on Quicktime.