Gamertell

Much like cartoons, most gadgets and videogames are really not meant for kids. Let your toddler play Grand Theft Auto for a while or mess with your iPod and you’ll probably not be too happy with the results.

As a safer and more education alternative, LeapFrog Enterprises has been selling the Leaspter educational gaming system for about four years in retail stores across the US. This Summer (2008), LeapFrog will update the Leapster with web connectivity and also release a new handheld, web-enabled system called Didj.

To help teach the four-to-eight-year-old crowd (and let them lead the way?), the Leapster2 Learning Game System ($69.99) will come with a new reward system and a way for parents to check their children’s progress. According to the company press release, the Leapster2 will auto-level and adjust the difficulty so children will continue to progress as they play the system’s various education games. The new online features will let parent’s track their kids’ progress. To help keep the content from getting too dry, LeapFrog also has licensed titles including Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Disney’s Wall-E.

Five new Leapster2 games will be released in 2008 ($24.99 each) along with 10 revamped, web-friendly Leapster classics. The system is also backwards compatible with 33 Leapster1 games.

The new Didj Custom Gaming System ($89.99) is targeted for a slightly older student (6-10), allowing kids to customize aspects of the games to fit their gradeschool’s curriculum. The Didj will have a 3.2 inch LCD screen featuring 16.7 million color TFT on a 320x240 display, run at 393 MHz and include 256MB Flash memory.

LeapFrog is calling the Didj “the first totally customizable educational gaming platform,” since kids can design avatars, backgrounds and music for the system as well as customize in-game elements such as word lists for selling games to practice classroom exercises. The press release also hinted at a Sonic the Hedgehog spelling game for the system and has already promised nine new games in 2008 ($29.99 each).

The web element for both systems will be LeapFrog’s upcoming Learning Path (Summer 2008) where parents will be able to log in to track their children’s progress in each educational area.

Site [Leapfrog] Read [BoingBoing] Site [Learning Path]

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