Long-Term Road Test: Leapster

I bought a Leapster for my son's fifth birthday almost a year ago, but he recently "re-discovered" it and it has become a prime toy.

It's a neat unit - four AAs and it seems to have many days worth of play time. It runs Macromedia FLASH, which isn't really apparent, except that you get some decent animations with I suspect very little processor power (which means longer battery life and lower cost). I paid about $80 for it at Costco which included a couple of cartridges.

The catridges, about the size of a thick matchbook, cost around $25, although you can get them for $15 or so on eBay. In order to keep from losing them I bought a Leapster case which includes a pocket to hold the cartridges. As expected, my son lost the case a few weeks later, including all of his cartridges that were in the pocket. Nice. Now we keep them in a sandwich baggie.

The games are educational and entertaining - numbers, letters, shapes, - the levels and complexity increase into early elementary school levels. My 3 year old daughter has also enjoyed it very much and I recently picked up a Disney Princess pre-K catridge for her (for both, actually, there is a mandatory sharing policy in our house).

Leapfrog seems to have a done a decent job on content with a decent supply of homegrown stuff plus the requisite Disney, Dora the Explorer, Incredibles, Pixar, and on and on.

The unit is easy to grip and has so far withstood a few drops on our slate floor (cringe). Of course there is a headphone jack and the kids seem to have picked up on its operation quickly.

Someday soon they will get older and get bored of it, moving to X-Box, PSP, etc. but until then I hope they keep up this positive and educational aspect of console gaming.   

Comments

[Ed Zee]

Nice Review of a educational toy. So glad that this stuff is getting good blog coverage, and withstands the drops.
The R&T cover art (from '61!) made my day, having been a subscriber from the '50s (ouch).

[markus waibel]

Great review for a nice "toy". I did a review of the Leap Frog Leapster in German on my website.