Sneakers is a game meant for the very young crowd. It's about a group of very cute mice who wear clothes and live in someone's house. Their food is stolen, and they immediately blame some rats and set out after them. As far as I know, the only way mice are going to get food is to steal it, and now they're upset that someone else stole it from them and they immediately blame the rats despite the lack any evidence whatsoever. The rats, incidentally, look almost exactly the same as the mice aside from their clothes and the color of their fur. Sociological implications aside, that's as good a story for a game as any.

So you and your three mouse friends set out exploring the house for the rats that stole your food. You're treated to a mouse-eye view of your group as you travel, in one direction at a time, around each room. You can go left or right. When you get to a corner, some arrows pop up and offer the option to turn in a different direction or go through a door. If you see a rat or something a rat might hide in (like a trash can) you can click on it. When you see a rat, move the cursor over it and hit a different button. A few seconds later he's gone in a puff of smoke. The number rats you have left to find and the time in which you have to do it are displayed in the corner of the screen.

There are also combat sequences in which your group can physically engage the rats. There are six different moves featuring a few punches, kicks and a defensive maneuver. There's nothing complex about it, but timing the punches and kicks is just hard enough to be frustrating. The defensive move used by the rats makes them look like they're cowering in fear. Maybe they are, but your mice have no other option but to keep beating on them until they squirm in a spastic death seizure and disappear.

Different environments await once you're done with the house, but you can't explore those either because you're still stuck on a rail going in one direction. If anything would have made this more appealing for children, letting them look around the room would have been nice.

The visuals are typical children's TV fare: bright and over the top. The sound consists of annoyingly chipper music and squeaks in place of speech for the mice. All of that may appeal to very young kids of roughly the same age as Barney's fans, but playing the game is another matter. Any child old enough to hold a controller has outgrown the concepts here and, more importantly, has much better games from which to choose.