LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc. is an educational entertainment and electronics company based in Emeryville, California. LeapFrog designs, develops, and markets technology-based learning products and related content for the education of children from infancy through grade school. The company was founded by Michael Wood and Robert Lally in 1994. John Barbour is the chief executive officer of LeapFrog.
Torus Games was an Australian video game developer founded in 1994 by Bill McIntosh. The company is located in Bayswater, Victoria. Its managing director is Bill McIntosh. The company being a family business. Torus has developed over 145 titles. The company is most known for family action/adventure games, based on well-known licenses.
The V.Smile is a sixth-generation educational home video game console manufactured and released by VTech. The system was first released on August 4, 2004. Its titles are available on ROM cartridges called "Smartridges", a pun on the system's educational nature. Several variants of the V.Smile console are sold, including handheld versions and models with added functionality such as touch tablet integrated controllers or microphones. The V.Motion is a variant that includes motion-sensitive controllers and has titles designed to take advantage of motion-related "active learning".
VG Pocket is a series of handheld dedicated game consoles built by JungleTac and sold by Performance Designed Products LLC. The VG Pocket model was the first console of its type to have a 2" backlit color LCD screen.
Thomas Kalinske is an American businessman who has worked for Mattel (1972–1987), Matchbox (1987-1990), Sega of America (1990–1996) and LeapFrog (1997–2006).
The Leapster Learning Game System is an educational handheld game console aimed at 4- to 10–11-year-olds, made by LeapFrog Enterprises. Its games teach the alphabet, phonics, basic math, and art and animal facts to players. Along with a directional pad, the system features a touchscreen with a stylus pen that enables young users to interact directly with the screen. The Leapster was released in October 2003.
The Lion King: Simba's Mighty Adventure is a platformer video game based on Walt Disney Pictures′ animated film The Lion King. It was developed in a collaboration between Torus Games and Paradox Development, and published by Activision. It was released for Game Boy Color and PlayStation in December 2000. Unlike the previous The Lion King video game, it adhered more closely to the events in the film and the storyline carried on into The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, with Simba having to battle his evil uncle Scar, rescue his daughter Kiara, and finally battle Zira.
In computing, a motion controller is a type of input device that uses accelerometers, gyroscopes, cameras, or other sensors to track motion.
The ClickStart is an educational computer system created for children aged between 3 and 6 years by LeapFrog Enterprises and was introduced in 2007. It is LeapFrog's second home console, and the first to come with its own games. The entire system consists of a console unit and a wireless keyboard and mouse set. It is also designed to have specifically designed cartridges to be inserted into it, simply called My First Computer Software. The console also introduces Scout, a green-colored dog character who also appears in later LeapFrog products.
The Japanese multinational consumer electronics company Nintendo has developed seven home video game consoles and multiple portable consoles for use with external media, as well as dedicated consoles and other hardware for their consoles. As of September 30, 2021, in addition to Nintendo Switch, Nintendo has sold over 863.07 million hardware units.
PlayStation Move is a motion game controller developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Initially released in 2010 for use with the PlayStation 3 home video game console, its compatibility was later expanded to its successor, the PlayStation 4 in 2013, its PlayStation VR platform in 2016 and the PlayStation 5 in 2020. Conceptually similar to Nintendo's Wii Remote and Microsoft's Kinect, its function is based around controller input in games stemming from the actual physical movement of the player. The Move uses inertial sensors in the wand to detect motion while the wand's position is tracked using a PlayStation Eye or PlayStation Camera. The device was generally well received by critics, but has not quite met Sony's goals for integration into the market.
View-Master Interactive Vision is an interactive movie VHS console game system, introduced in 1988 and released in the USA in 1989 by View-Master Ideal Group, Inc. The tagline is "the Two-Way Television System that makes you a part of the show!" The titles include four Sesame Street games, two games featuring The Muppet Show characters, and a Disney game, Disney's Cartoon Arcade.
The LeapFrog Didj is a handheld console made by LeapFrog Enterprises. The Didj was priced at $89.99 when it debuted on August 22, 2008. Its library mostly consists of educational software aimed for children based on licensed properties such as those from Disney, Nickelodeon, and Marvel.
Kinect: Disneyland Adventures is a 2011 open world video game developed by Frontier Developments and published by Microsoft Studios on Kinect for Xbox 360, with a remaster for Xbox One and Microsoft Windows developed by Asobo Studio released in 2017 as simply Disneyland Adventures. It takes place in a recreation of Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, circa 2011, with themed games in place of many of the rides, while motion controls are used to play the game.
The LeapPad Explorer was the first release in a new line of LeapPad products after the discontinuation of the original LeapPad line by LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc. LeapPad Explorer was released on August 15, 2011.
Off-TV Play is a feature of Nintendo's eighth-generation video game console, the Wii U. Like all video game consoles, the Wii U uses a console and a controller to manipulate an image on a television screen. The Wii U's unique feature is that its controller, the Wii U GamePad, has its own built-in screen for displaying images. It can display an entirely different image, or duplicate the television screen into the Wii U GamePad. Off-TV Play is the term used for when an entire game is played strictly on the controller, without the use of a television. The GamePad also features two speakers that can be used for Off-TV Play. There is no standardized way to activate Off-TV Play and how it's implemented depends on the game.
Toys-to-life is a video game feature using physical figurines or action figures to interact within the game. These toys use a near field communication (NFC), radio frequency identification (RFID), or image recognition data protocol to determine the individual figurine's proximity, and save a player's progress data to a storage medium located within that piece. It was one of the most lucrative branches of the video game industry especially during the late 1990s and 2010s, with the Skylanders franchise alone selling more than $3 billion worth over the course of four years.
The LeapFrog Epic is an Android-based mini-tablet computer produced and marketed by LeapFrog Enterprises. Released in 2015, the Epic is LeapFrog's first device to run on Android; most of LeapFrog's mobile computing devices for children run on a customized Ångström Linux distribution.
As the Sonic the Hedgehog series of platform games has grown in popularity, its publisher Sega has expanded the franchise into multiple different genres. Among these are several educational video games designed to appeal to young children. The first attempt to create an educational Sonic game was Tiertex Design Studios' Sonic's Edusoft for the Master System in late 1991, which was canceled despite having been nearly finished. When Sega launched the Sega Pico in 1994, it released Sonic the Hedgehog's Gameworld and Tails and the Music Maker for it. Orion Interactive also developed the 1996 Sega PC game Sonic's Schoolhouse, which used a 3D game engine and had an exceptionally large marketing budget. In the mid-2000s, LeapFrog Enterprises released educational Sonic games for its Leapster and LeapFrog Didj.
