Amazon.com Product Description

In Busytown, children meet all their favorite characters from the Richard Scarry books, television programs, and videos. Together with Huckle Cat, Lowly Worm, Mr. Frumble, Dr. Diane, Mr. Fixit, and many others, they explore 11 playgrounds rich with real-life experiences.

Give your child the thrill of learning by doing, across a wide range of early-cognitive skills. Busytown meets the guidelines set by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, guidelines that emphasize learning through play. ... Read more

Reviews (7)

Great Idea But Full of Programming Bugs
My three yr old loves Richard Scarry's Busytown so it was a natural choice for him. However, he was very disapointed to find one of the games (the garage) did not work at all and several of the others have programming quirks. If the cursor isn't positioned just right the game doesn't work. My advice is to select something else or wait for another imporved version.

disappointing
I brought this because I loved richard scary as a child but was totally disappointed with the game. There is no replayabilty with the only variation in the game being in the gas station and the parcel delivery. But the children soon got bored. The best part is playing with the wind. The mouse control is very poor ending up with frustrated children. The only way to get into the gas station was to put the whole game onto the hard drive.

Bustown 2000 CD-ROM
I started with Busytown Software back in 1995 with our first son when it ran on DOS and barely on Win95. The program worked well. After reading about BT 2000, I was reluctant to buy it. I did buy it this past week, had the same problem with the gas station and within 24 hours, SSI Tech support emailed the file to copy from the CD to the Hard Drive. About a 30 second fix and the game functions flawlessly. If your child loves Richard Scarry books and videos, this is a must have to compliment what they read and view to give them hands on interaction that is unlike any other application that I have seen. My first son is now almost 7 and is teaching his 3 year old brother how to play the game.

My son loves it.
The Busy Town CD-ROM is educational and fun. There are a lot of different activities and for a 3-4 year-old to play with on his own. But you do have to have a fast computer. One of our computers was too slow and it was impossible to play the program on it. Our other computer was fast enough. We had problems getting into the gas station game. I sent an email to technical support and received a message explaining how to copy a file from the CD-ROM to my hard drive and now it works great! We are very satisfied with it. It was definitely worth the price.

Great if you can get it to work
I understand the complaints of the previous reviewers. I could not get this program to run on the PowerMac and it also had a lot of problems when I ran it on the iMac while networked to the PowerMac. But once the iMac stood alone, I only had minor problems with this program. It is a big memory hog.

It's a really super program if you can get it to run. I'd pay special attention to the system requirements before buying.

There are 12 different activities which teach your child all kinds of things. It's great for pretend role play also. Pump gas, serve customers in a deli, build a house, get a ship ready for sea, etc.

It's too bad this title has compatibility problems with so many systems, because it really is a beautifully done program. ... Read more

Amazon.com Review

Lowly the worm and Huckle the cat guide pre-readers through Busytown, aplace that truly deserves its name; the myriad letter games, phonics exercises,and object-identifying tasks will keep beginning readers busy for a longtime.

Lowly and Huckle gather stories for a newly built Storymobile by visiting thefarm, campground, beach, market, and school. In each of these spots, there arethree chores they can help out with, tasks such as finding marshmallows to roaston the campfire by clicking objects that begin with a certain letter, orstacking hay bales in the barn by deciding whether spoken words rhyme or not;completing each chore yields a story to help fill the Storymobile. Activitiesrun the gamut from simply matching letters to reading and writing stories. Mostof the activities favor beginning readers, coaxing them gently along withfamiliar Richard Scarry characters in everyday settings. (Though Scarry'sillustration style is consistent throughout, the animation is somewhatcrude.)

The stories that kids can "win" are a great motivator; this age group seems tolove having a big goal. Considering the abundance of activities, five areas withpoint-and-click identifying games, and a spot where kids can write their ownstories, this CD-ROM deserves its self-aggrandizing title, especially if theuser is a fan of Scarry's brand of whimsy. (Ages 4 to 7) --Anne Erickson ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Give Your Kids a Great Jump on Reading
There are a lot of CD-ROMs out there, but this one is engaging and fun for our 3.5 year old son. The fundamentals for reading and even math are well established: rhyming words, matching letters, sequencing of events, identifying words that begin or end with the same sound, observing and categorizing objects. Another child in his pre-school is already reading due in part to this software and Clifford Reading CD-ROM by Scholastic. Richard Scary stories are one of our child's favorites and the stories here do not disappoint. The only thing that prevents me from awarding fives stars is that during the reading of a story, each individual word should be highlighted. One tip: I found this at Zany Brainy for half the price here.

A Fun Way to Learn
This, like all the other Richard Scarry titles we own, keeps my son engaged for a long time. There are activities at different levels so it does not get boring fast and the characters are darling. If you like Huckle and Lowly you'll love this program. ... Read more

Features

• 8 entertaining activities packed with hours of positive playtime
• Puzzles and games, each with 3 levels of difficulty
• Memory matching and spelling games, jigsaw puzzles, mazes, and more
• Color, paint, and print out your favorite Busytown characters and buildings
• Designed especially for children ages 3 to 7

Reviews (4)

Non stop 3 year old fun
My son has this cd and it is all he wants to play. He has it on at least once a night. It has good graphics. and kids can do fun things like build a house, or drive a firetruck. It is easy to work, and keeps a child happy for hours.

Great for little bitty kids!
My son was two years old when we got this software, and he LOVED it! Really, all a child needs to learn at that age is how to work the mouse, and now to click, and how graphics interact. He doesn't need to learn Calculus and French. So if Busytown doesn't "challenge" the older children, that's fine. It wasn't intended for older children any more than Sesame Street is intended for them. But this software definitely has its place in the scheme of things, and I would recommend this as a GREAT first software program for toddlers.

Busytown is like a storybook that lets the child build things and make things move. It has different buildings or places they can enter and do different fun things, and highly enthusiastic actors doing the voice overs and vocals, singing catchy songs my son loved to sing with them. There are probably kids who will get bored with it as they get older. But you need to have something good, and fun and reliable for the smallest children. And this software appeals to the same children who love the Richard Scarry books, your 1-4 year olds.

Richard Scarry Busy Town
My son loves the Richard Scarry Busy Town software programs. They consist of things he is familar with and enjoys (example: building a road or using a tractor and planting a field). Each program has a difficulty level that you can set. The beginner's level has a flashing star to help your child along, so if you do not want the flashing star to assist your child then changing the difficulty level will eliminate the star.

Richard Scarry's Busytown 200 cd-rom
This is not very educational. My 4 year old finds it boring. Most of the program they give you the answers by flashing a star to tell you which direction to move or which item to choose. It does not help them think at all and I would not reccomend it. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Best Math Program
This program is a great multi-level program for the early math learners. It introduces the child to various math concepts and lets him explore the world of mathematics in a playful manner. Huckle and Lowly are full of praise for the little mathematicians and are constantly encouraging, whilst introducing the ever important mathematical vocabulary throughout the game. Staying with the concept that students need to practice a new skill to actually acquire the skill, the program requires the child to complete about 25 problems at every station of the game. The final object is to collect parts for Mr. Fixit's math machine, which are acquired through correct solution of the given 25 problems. There is a parents report page, which tells the parents which skills have been successfully mastered, and which still need to be completed. This I liked especially, because it also gives the curriculum area addressed and encourages off computer activities, by suggesting other family activities which address these topics. This program has great cross-curricular ties, such as the solar system, and Language Arts, along with art and many typical math areas such as graphing, plotting, symmetry, basic and advanced computation, sorting, organization, time, money, measurements, directions etc. This program is useful for Pre-K to 3rd grade. The math machine at the end relies on the child to tell it what to do, following the idea, that you can only use a computer or calculator, if you know what you want them to do... ... Read more