Cheap Math Blaster Cross Terrain Challenge Ages 9-12 (Software) (Macintosh, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me) Price

Kids guide a sassy purple-haired alien girl named G.C. along a perilous pathway of crumbling bridges to collect hover boards in one game. In another, they use directional coordinates to move G.C. around a bamboo grid and beat a robot competitor to, yes, more hover boards. Completion of any of the five obstacle courses in the game results in an extra points race that pits a boy character, Blaster, against the clock in a desert setting on... a hover board. We just got a little burned out on bustin' big air.

There are some nonboard head games. Spatial skills and speed come into play in a pipe-connecting game. Graphing, foresight, and speed are required for a scorpion corralling enterprise where kids click on coordinates that activate directional roadblocks on a grid. The right sequence herds the creatures back into their holes, and the game is addictive in a Tetris sort of way. The most challenging of the five games is a maze where the player must roll a giant hamster ball between matching geometric shapes, while contending with force fields and obstacles within the maze that spin, bounce, and throw the hamster ball off its course. This last one is one of those "looks better on the box" games. The game would be awesome (dude) in a 3-D version, but the actual game is a simple two-dimensional maze with an aerial view of the action.

These games get harder the more they're played, and there are five missions, which involve multiple versions of the games, within the program. High scores result in SmartPoints, which can be redeemed for rewards. This involves going online and handing name, e-mail, and address information over to Knowledge Adventure. Kids can supply that information to the company, but can't redeem their SmartPoints without written permission from parents.

The relentless focus on board moves and attitude may put some kids off; we think there might be a reason that the only girl in this game is from another planet. And though the minimal in-game instruction is probably deliberately designed to encourage problem solving, we fear this may put off true math-phobes. Parents should be prepared to help out with some of these games, and may be challenged themselves, since they learned their math back when it didn't have to be "Blasted" to be made palatable. (Ages 9 to 12) --Anne Erickson