Madeline’s European Adventures

• Tweet
• Pin It

Have Fun Traveling with Madeline in Europe

A Review of Madeline’s European Adventures

Jackie and Kristina Wheeler

Madeline’s European Adventure is another in the series of programs based on the popular Madeline character in books, videos, games, and cartoon series, “Adventures of Madeline.” I liked this program better than Madeline and the Magnificent Puppet Show because it had more activities and learning opportunities and it wasn’t quite as obscure with hidden objects.
This game begins by telling a story to set the stage for Madeline’s adventure in Europe. On her way to the Paris train station with Miss Clavel and the other girls from school, Madeline spots a thief making off with a magic lamp. Instead of going to summer camp, Madeline and her trusty dog Genevieve, go in search of the lamp. The story introduces the characters and tells everything that children need to find. It gives a few hints on where to find things — a VERY FEW! The goal of this game is to find everything needed in order to catch the thief and regain the magic lamp. Kids must pick flowers to earn money and get their passport before they can take the train to catch the thief. The items are located around the neighborhood, the city, and the park. Finding these items was fun, but some are hidden very cleverly!

There are activities that are contained within the adventure, such as picture sequencing, rug matching, and the music box game. Check it out! And, there are also activities such as painting, word games, and countries that make the adventure even more fun.

• Painting lets kids pick from Egyptian Sphinx, Windmills of Holland, Taj Mahal and others to paint. They can mix their own colors which is really great and they can paint with a bucket or paint brush.

• Word game lets children pick from French, English, or Spanish and they spell words printed on the chalkboard using a keyboard on screen or their real computer keyboard.
• Countries provides a quick lesson in European geography by matching flags, capitals, country names to the countries on a map — from Finland to Greece, Portugal to Turkey!

My main problem with these Madeline adventure programs is that they don’t provide different playing levels, additional items to find in different places, or even different places to visit. Once the game is over, that’s it. You can play it again, but everything is the same as the first time you played it. There’s no more challenge. This doesn’t bother Kristina as much as me, so that’s why she still enjoys and plays this game. There’s lots of cute graphics, music, voices and sound effects, but nothing much out of the ordinary.
The creators offer an Answer key in the documentation in case you need help finding an item or two, which you probably will! A better way to offer this information would have been to include online clues and hints. This is done a little, but not enough, we found.

Minor annoyances include very slow transitions between graphics and pictures, taking over my cursor and not letting me control when to move on, and sound that has lots of static in it. Kristina likes this game, and she has played it a lot since we got it, but once she learns where everything is, part of the fun is gone. One “thumbs up” on this one…

School House Scorecard

Product:	Madeline’s European Adventures
Company:	Creative Wonders P.O. Box 9017 Redwood City, CA 9463-9017 Internet: www.cwonders.com
Cost:	$40.00

System Requirements:

486, 8MB RAM, 4MB hard disk space for hard drive installation.
Double-speed CD ROM drive, 256 color monitor, Windows-compatible sound card.
Windows 3.1 or higher with MS-DOS 5.0. Windows ’95.

Breakdown:

Ease of Use 3
Learning Value 3
Entertainment Value 4
Graphics 4
Sound 2

Overall Score: