Editorial Review
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.
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Customer Reviews
Busytown 2000 
2000-02-26
My first child played with the original DOS versions of Busytown and How Thing Work. They are GREAT games to learn and explore with. When we switched to a new computer with Win 98, the DOS versions had major problems finding and using the sound card properly. Tech Support was unable to help me solve them.
We bought Busytown 2000 because the older child still wanted to play it and we had a second child that we wanted to have the game also. We bought it because it was advertised as Win 95/98 compatible, and we figured that, at worst, it would be the same game with Win 9x compatibility added. Big Mistake. The game animation is nowhere near as good as the original. Gameplay is uneven at best, and at least one area we had to reboot the computer to exit. Another area rebooted the computer for us 1 out of 3 times the kids went there.
Busytown is a great franchise, particularly if you have a 486 still running DOS to play the older games on. They didn't like Win 3.1, and they really don't get along with Win 9x. Busytown 2000 does not apply the quality of the older games to the Win 9x platform. It's cheap animation matched with poor gameplay. If Amazon let me return software, it would be in the mail tomorrow.
Tech problems 2000-02-11
We ordered this software twice, and each time there was a problem when we tried to enter the gas station section. Amazon was very helpful in dealing with this, however they obviously cannot solve the tech defect. Very disappointing, son loves Busytown videos.
Great Idea But Full of Programming Bugs 
2001-07-25
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 2001-07-16
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 
2001-06-25
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. 
2001-04-12
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 2000-07-10
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.
