• Unique world of LEGO toys meets prequel eras of Star Wars universe
• Choose from 30+ Star Wars characters; solve puzzles using special abilities
• Use The Force; progress through game to unlock new characters
• Hidden levels and vehicles; free-play mode adds to game's re-playability
• Single-player mode, plus "drop in, drop out" 2-player co-operative mode

LEGO Star Wars blends the unique world of LEGO with the adventure of Star Wars, for unforgettable action and fun. Live the most popular moments from The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of theSith. Episodes I to III come to life -- and you can become a part of the story!

[Copied here from a blog post of mine as this will be of interest to any OS X user buying this game]

I really dislike buying desktop computer games. The software quality is poor, and the vendor support is usually lousy.

Unfortunately my 9yo prefers Mac games to Wii games, so when he's earned a big incentive for overcoming a real challenge, we end up with another OS X game.

It's just as well there are so few of them.

The latest problem came with Aspyr's Lego Star Wars (DVD) (Mac) (2005). After I'd installed it my son couldn't play. It started up oddly, with a long video loop. A key press produced a gray screen, then the loop resumed. Finally it crashed.

So what was the problem? There's nothing like this on the Aspyr site and the only update patch is a long delayed and apparently troublesome fix supporting native execution on Intel Macs. I was running the game on my PPC G5 Mac.

I suspected a security/privileges bug. Game vendors, who usually outsource development to very junior engineers in international markets, rarely bother with security models. They build to the usual XP assumption (everyone runs as admin) then port the game to OS X.

Sure enough, from my admin account the game worked. I suspect the game tries to write to the Application folder. That's a no-no. Non-admin users on my system, including my usual account, don't have write privileges in the global Application folder.

I could have reinstalled to the user-specific application folder, but then the other kid accounts on the family machine would need their own installs. Since Leopard gives more control over permissions, I could have installed in a folder that everyone could write to.

In our case though I have an external drive with open space. OS X doesn't enforce permissions on external drives, so after installing there everyone could use it.

PS. On my G5 the game defaulted to lowest resolution. I set it to the penultimate resolution and it worked find and looked MUCH better.

|My son loves this game. It works well with Mac. I like the game because it is good clean fun.

I bought my little boy the Lego Star Wars II (original trilogy) game to play on our IMac (the all-white one with the Intel Core Duo processor). I checked into the system requirements, asked a lot of questions, and even had extra RAM installed to assure that it would work. He loved it, but I (mostly my hands) got tired of playing using the keyboard. So, I purchased two Mad Cat controllers at the Apple store, went home, and the thing cranked away happily. I figured I'd never have to resort to keyboarding again.

I then purchased Lego Star Wars I. I figured it would work on my machine as-is, but, a day or so after we began playing, the controllers stopped working. I called Aspyr, and was told the controllers I have aren't supported by the game; there's a list of supported controllers in the ReadMe file on the disk.

I know this game was actually released first, so maybe the later, original trilogy game is compatible with more hardware (eg, the Mat Cat controllers). I thought the controllers would be OK because they seemed to work with my machine and operating system. I didn't realize the game software could reject them.

All this wouldn't matter so much were it not for the fact that we can't progress past a point midway through the third "movie," where we try and try to jump up and shoot General Grievous, but the keyboard buttons don't seem to be able to do it. I've researched the walk-throughs and tips on the internet without success, and I'm not about to spend $40 or more for another pair of controllers just to get a better shot at General Grievous. If anyone has any ideas re: how to get past this, I'd love to hear your comments.

I don't know whether Aspyr is to blame for all of this or what, but it's been an expensive lesson about the level of detail and checking I'll need to go through next time I want to purchase a game for my IMac. Probably the moral of the story is, Play ball outside with your kid.

If you'd like a game that you can play with your young child at the same time this is a great one. My son is four years old and he absolutely loves this. Characters never die so you can play as long as you like. It also has challenges for the adults. It's cute while also action packed. Clearly, this is not a game for the hardcore gamer but a lot of good fun.

When you first open up the game it is a thrill. THe kids love identifying their favorite characters and the sounds are the genuine article straight from the movie's soundtrack. But the game gets complex quickly and the frustration level soon rises. Add to that the ease of use and the constant presence of enemies and the kids end up spending way too much time just in fights. And what kid can resist a light saber? The net benefit of this game is minimal.