Star Wars Math

by Lucas Learning

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• ASIN: B00004U8JP
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 14, 2000
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,356 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #38 in Software > Children's Software > Math

Product Description

From Children's Software Revue® -- "Subscribe Now!"

After crash landing on Tatooine, players enter Jabba's Game Galaxy where they challenge space creatures to math games in order to earn money for the purchase of ship parts. The graphics and animation are truly dazzling, as is the terrific background music. The games, however, are hard to figure out at first, and the help provided isn't always specific enough. Once you get going, though, the activities are unusually engaging, cleverly getting kids to use their brainpower. The games also provide practice in important skills like place value, addition, subtraction and geometry. In one activity, children use their place value skills to estimate high and low numbers. In another, they add and subtract Pit Droids to match equations. Kids play against colorful, lifelike characters in each activity. While many testers found the friendly competition motivating, some children became frustrated when they lost to the sometimes tough opponents, particularly when they didn't understand the rules of game. In one activity, for instance, kids move through a game board by answering math problems. While the initial instructions are helpful, the steps to the game are relatively complex (e.g. only odd numbers let players move), making it hard for children to keep track of what's happening. On the whole, the games are very doable and well worth figuring out. If your kids have an extra dose of persistence, they'll love this program in spite of its weaknesses.
Teaches: math, addition, subtraction, fractions, geometry, logic
Age Range: 6-9 Copyright © 2000 Children's Software Revue

Amazon.com Review

Watto's shop is full of spaceship parts, all waiting to be mixed up as you design a fast-flying salvage ship to retrieve junk from space. Trouble is, you're short of credits--and Watto's prices are high. That's where Jabba the Hutt comes in: within his personal casino of games of chance and strategy, you can attempt to earn enough credit to build some new wings and go flying.

Star Wars Math: Jabba's Game Galaxy is designed to challenge and develop a wide range of strategic, mathematical, and geometric skills through a series of well-crafted games. In Dueling Dice, players practice addition in a variation on blackjack: they try to reach exactly 30 droids without overshooting. Holochex pits you against Jabba the Hutt in checkers games on different-shaped boards that use monsters instead of static game pieces; though more simple than chess, it is complex enough to hold players' interest at length. And in Digotto, players try to create a lowest or highest number, digit by digit, and decide where to place each number as it is generated. The last game is Ratt's Race, a board game that poses basic computation and geometry challenges.

Once you have the credits in hand, it's off to Watto's junk shop to purchase parts for your ship. Careful, though: you must balance the various engineering requirements within your limited budget. In the ship hangar, you can actually put the ship together. After that, you can leave Tatooine and clean up space junk in the wider galaxy.

As math games go, Jabba's Game Galaxy is quite challenging. The random element of most featured games (Ratt's Race is the big exception and the big moneymaker) makes it impossible for even skilled players to be guaranteed regular victories; winning enough money to assemble a ship requires significant time and effort. Though some of the animations are repetitive and slow down play, the overall quality of the graphics and sound is excellent. The range of activities gives the game wide appeal--especially for boys, who may relate better to the all-male cast of characters--and the pseudo-gambling milieu is mitigated somewhat by the use of Star Wars villains (as opposed to the more lovable characters) in this slightly shady setting. (Ages 6 to 9) --Alyx Dellamonica

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Won't run under XP, January 25, 2009

By 

bsd107 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Star Wars Math (CD-ROM)

This game will not run under XP. This is on an old (P4 2.4GHz) desktop running a clean install of XP SP3, and the game will not start, even when all compatability settings tried. It just crashes as soon as it is started.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Star Wars Math, December 20, 2007

By 

T. Bellette (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Star Wars Math (CD-ROM)

Awesome game. Purchased about 6 months ago and my 9yr old son and he loves it. It's easy to learn and yet is still challenging each time he plays. There is variety in the games and a fun objective of playing to earn credits to buy new ship parts and fly home. The rats' race game for eg; displays a card when working out maths problems so they can see and learn problem solving not just rely on mental maths skills. My 5yr old has been playing at times with him and she is really developing her adding skills. This is a great game for boys and girls. I am also using this with Windows XP and have never had a problem with loading or playing the disc.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Works great! My kids have spent hours on this game!, November 17, 2007

By 

Richard A. Brown (Antelope, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Star Wars Math (CD-ROM)

I'm not a big fan of gaming consoles, so my kids (ages 13, 9 and 7) share an Windows XP system on which we run various educational games (Jumpstart, I Spy, etc.) Star Wars Math has been a fantastic game for them... they've played both individually or as a group, and it has worked flawlessly. For me its a "win-win", since they get a Star Wars themed game (a big deal these days) but is pretty educational as well. I can't believe this game is listed as unavailable! But no worries, it does work well under XP.