by Benny - 09.30.08
Educational Game Research recently posted one of the best (if not THE best) gaming top 10 lists I’ve ever read. The Top 10 Most Influential Education Videogames from the 1980s is simply fantastic. It’s even got downloadable links to all of the games. (Math Blaster, Number Crunchers, and Carmen Sandiego oh my!)
Reading through was certainly a trip down memory lane - and the fact that I played around 90% of these games made me think about their influence. While they certainly primed me for my future as a gamer - they also had an effect on my development as a student as well. I have to think that was the case for most of the generation that experienced them.
I’m not up on my modern edutainment - but I have to think its a much more diverse and complex industry now. Our generation is “lucky” in this sense, we were able to have a shared experience around these games. Almost everyone in their early to late 20s has a nostalgic spot for these games.
You gotta wonder if Where in the World in Carmen Sandiego’s subtle lessons will invariably influence modern geo-political relations. Or maybe the lessons taught in Lemonade Stand will somehow subconsciously affect our future economic policies. Edutainment is regularly thrashed - but it definitely played a role in our development as gamers and as humans. Whose to say it won’t have an influence on the world at large?
where’s Mario’s time machine
Edgar - 09.30.08 7:09 pm
That’s not from the 80s. You’ll need a different time machine
We had Apple IIe’s at my grade school. We did random programming and made graphics in Basic for the most part… but sometimes we’d get to play games. The old Oregon Trail is the best version as far as I’m concerned.
There was also this game where you played a fish. You’d pick the type and then eat food and decide what other fish to try and eat. Someone else mentioned it in the comments on the site (I think): Odell Lake.
Tony - 09.30.08 7:14 pm
If you’d like to see where contemporary educational games are going, you should try checking out things like the serious games movement, or programs like UW Madison’s GLS (Games Learning & Society), where folks are taking a long look at what makes games actually awesome, and applying that to education.
Sol - 09.30.08 7:17 pm
“The Learning” Travel the epic world of Books and equations in this new MMORPG. From the learning company
Edgar - 09.30.08 7:48 pm
Pass second grade math and gain 500 exp and a token to grade 3
Yep, this is your answer to get kids into learning
Edgar - 09.30.08 7:49 pm
I remember that Odell Lake game… good stuff. Oregon Trail was a favorite of mine as well, I think there were only a few of us in the class at the time lucky or skillful enough to actually make it through the game.
Another great series was the Word Munchers / Number Munchers games where you had to run around this grid of numbers and only ‘eat’ the ones that were multiples of five or prime numbers. The last level was something like “Eat only numbers divisible by pi” or something crazy hard.
I kid… but it was certainly a nice diversion.
Jake - 09.30.08 8:55 pm
I work in a school. I’ve found that although they have rehashes of what we had “Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego” and “Oregon Trail - 5th Edition”, they also have a common bond in the JumpStart games…one day the high school kids were all talking about the frog from the second grade level game one day, out of the blue, and having as good as a time as we do when one of us mention dying of dysentery.
Amauriel - 09.30.08 9:14 pm
Even though I’m not exactly a veteran at early 80’s edutainment games, I still, to this day, play Oregon Trail in school.
Blood_Falcon - 10.01.08 3:24 pm
Number Munchers FTW!
William Zhang - 10.02.08 9:39 pm