I’m four days behind on work, so before I have time to share how awesome Sacramento was, I’ll have to get caught up.
Until then, I have a link that’s going to make Gen Xers go nuts:
The Top 10 Most Influential Educational Video Games from the 1980s.
People who grew up playing video games are influenced by them, especially when designing games of their own. Those who played through the 1980s are reaching their professional prime, and the games they played in school are worth examining. Here we’ll take a look at what I consider to be the top ten most influential educational games from the 1980s.
I’ll refrain from telling you what the games are, because a big part of the fun for me was scrolling down the page and jumping a little bit as each one was revealed, saying a little too loudly to my empty office, “Oh my god I played that!” Feel free to geek out in the comments here or at Propeller, though. This could easily turn into a radical ride on the 80s nostalgia bus.
(Huge thanks to my fellow geek Brendoman, who found this and submitted it to the Geeks Group at Propeller.)
NB: I’m an idiot. I left the very important word “Educational” out of the link to the story. I’ve added it.
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The link is actually for education titles only, which I didn’t realize at first– I started to get upset when Reader Rabbit and Math Blaster showed up instead of Mario and Zelda. Even among educational titles, though, they were stretching by the end. Windows Solitaire as an educational title? Because it “eased our transition to using the mouse” ??
I’d like to see a good list of 80s games that influenced game design for entertainment, rather than education… I bet a couple of the same titles would still be there.
I didn’t get it at first until I read the title of the article -educational-. Then it made sense. And yes, I played a couple of them. I was ashamed at the time to tell any other kids (especially those now called gamers) I knew in junior high that I was playing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. But my mom bought it for me, I thought I should fire it up, and mostly because there wasn’t a new D&D gold box to play. They ruled, and still do (when I can get them to work on my modern machine).
Thank you for the name drop. Despite these being educational titles, they really did inspire a generation. They were the first games many of us played and I think they deserve just as much respect as your shooters, rpgs, and what not.
Seeing the screen shots for NumberMunchers and the classic Oregon Trail just made me screech “OMG! I remember that!” in my office. I’d forgotten about NumberMunchers. Gosh, I loved those old educational games I used to pay in the MacLab at my elementary & middle school. Nostalgia overload.
I remember arguing with my classmates about whether or not one of my characters in Oregon Trail had recovered from typhoid. One had (according to the game) and the argument was that in real life no one ever recovers from typhoid so the game wouldn’t say that. I ended the argument by saying that I had to focus all my energy on mentally willing my caulked wagon to not tip over. Ah, to be young and nerdy again.
Oregon Trail deserves plenty of praise. I legitimately thought I was shirking schoolwork by shooting squirrels, when in fact I was learning resource management and the perils of dysentery.
I’m not sure how Windows Solitaire and Zork qualify as “educational”, though. That is, unless the lessons were “Windows is a crappy gaming platform” and “dark rooms present endless opportunities for becoming grue food.”
Well the only two I can say I’ve played are: Windows Solitaire and of course ZORK!!!
I had an old CPM system with 8-inch floppy drives and one of the main frame computer guys at work had the game and let me have it to play… Needless to say I spent months playing and trying to find all the tokens in the game… I finally went and bought the clue book cause there was one I never found…
There’s a lot to be said for text based games, they make you use your imagination a lot more than with the modern day Video Games…
ZORK was indeed a fun game to play way back then…
Whoa and yowza! I’m not much of a gamer, but I’ve played Oregon Trail. I couldn’t believe it. Currently my 9 yr. old looooooooooooves educational games. I’m so relieved, and of course proud. :o)
I still have Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiego and Zork on my PC.
You know, I think I’m in the mood for some Zork now all of a sudden. Time to turn on all the lights. 😉
I have played many of those games.
I still blame Will Wright and SimCity for my undying Sims addiction (as well as my penchant for “cheating” whenever possible). Many, many hours were spent with my sister as we hunted for that damned elusive Carmen Sandiego even after we lost the atlas.
I was giddy at seeing so many memories of my early computing days. Excuse me now while I go play.
Excellent. I played 90% of those! 🙂
FYI… you have been Farked again:
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3894676
Great list. Loved Oregon Trail and Carmen SanDiego if I was feeling like killing time – but Zork was my favorite. If I had a quarter for every time I had been eaten by a grue…
Ahh, I played many of those games. I used to LOVE finishing my regular schoolwork early, so that I could spend class time playing Carmen Sandiego.
I just have one question though – why do you link to propeller, rather than directly to the real story? I understand that you loves teh propeller, but whatever happened to the “Via” link?
Lemonade Stand ruled by world for a while. It was included on my Apple IIc floppies. Man, I built the GE of Lemonade Stands, turning those lemons into gold. Gold, I tell you.
@Ryan Waddell: I work for Propeller, and I want to see the Geek group grow and flourish, and prosper. I want it to become a social networking destination for like-minded geeks, so rather than give it the [via] link that nobody ever uses, I link to the place I found it at Propeller.
I hope that I can share cool stories with people while helping expose people to the Geeks Group at the same time.
I’m sorry but any list that doesn’t include Wing Commander (ok, technically 1990 release, but it was known before that) is wrong.
Damn it Wil, now you’ve gone and distracted me from work for another 10 minutes.
On the flipside, now I know where to get an Oregon Trail emulator. Hell yeah.
Oh, and I just stumbled onto this 30 seconds after posting that comment: http://www.agreeablecomics.com/therack/?p=347
Damn, you get around, my friend.
I certainly played, and loved, the bulk of those games.
Years ago, when my wife and I were still dating, she revealed to me that she had never played Oregon Trail (though she did play Lemonade Stand). I actually located and purchased an updated DOS version in a games store just so she could experience the magic.
Oh man! I remember fighting over the 5-inch floppy of Oregon Trail during “computer time” in my elementary school library. Though I did prefer Sunken Treasure. Number Munchers still intimidates me. I have always been bad at math.
Zork and indeed all the other Infocom adventures ARE educational. I learnt English through them. Okay, so I acquired a rather weird vocabulary, and none of my teachers could explain grues to me (but I DID keep the light on while playing….those things scared the heck out of me when I was 11!). Yeah, skeleton keys. Took me a while to get THAT one…for a while, I thought it really was a skeleton-shaped key.
“I’m sorry but any list that doesn’t include Wing Commander (ok, technically 1990 release, but it was known before that) is wrong.”
While I think it teaches great life skills (if you want something done don’t leave it to wingmen, don’t trust bipedal felines), it’s not educational in the strictest sense.
Oh wow. I’ve been on this nostalgic game kick lately – buying a Nintendo on eBay and getting Mario Brothers, Maniac Mansion (anybody play THAT game??) Bomberman, Tetris, Dr. Mario, Adventure Island, Kid Icarus, Klax, you get the point.
Anyway, I’ve got to go. Now that I can play Carmen Sandiego and Oregon Trail (aaack!!!) you won’t see me for a while. OMG!
Awesome! I was a good mother. LOL My kids had most of those (and I still use MBTT sometimes to increase my accuracy)
Of course, any game can be educational. My youngest son started Head Start (we were poor and poor=uneducated in the mind of the govt) at age 4. The second day I got a call from the administrator. She wanted to know what curriculum I was using.
I was a bit bemused. Beyond only letting them watch PBS and talking to them a lot, there was no formal education going on. She said he could add and subtract, write upper and lower case letters and knew his colors and shapes . .the equivalent of a second grade education
Nintendo, I said. He learned shapes and colors from Sesame Street, adding and subtracting from The Legend of Zelda, and how to write letters from Simon’s Quest. LOL Ended up taking my Nintendo to Head Start every Friday so all the kids could learn from it.
Refugees in the Wilderness! Eco-Island! Oh, Unisys ICON… R.I.P.
Maniac Mansion was crazy cool. I miss games like that.
gonna have to say, this is Top 10, is very US-centric.
Partly as the Apple II never really had a presence in Europe (at least not in the UK).
other than Carmen Sandiego, Sim City and MAvis Beacon… don’t think I’ve even heard of the other ones before!
Ive got the list open in another tab, and Im almost afraid to look. I wonder how much of its console games and how much of its PC? I wonder how much I really missed out on because my parents were of the “you have a computer, you dont need a nintendo.” type. Meh.
…
Okay, I dont feel to bad now. I remember pwning Oregon Trail as a kid, and I loved Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego. World was slightly okay, and I wondered what bright soul decided “where in space” was a good idea. America’s Past was also fun.
Does anyone else remember the Carmen Sandiego kids game show?
Sim City was an accomplice in getting me suspended from school. If anyone wants to hear THAT story, Ill tell it.
I hated Mavis Beacon. Seriously.
NumberMunchers? Wow. I remember that from first grade. crap.
Okay. Feeling lots better now. =D
Loved Oregon Trail…always died of cholera. Just like in real life. I have been looking for the name of a game that I used to play similar to these that took place in a Haunted Museum and was history based…oh the hours I wiled away at my local library between that and Carmen Sandiego! (The PBS game show was great too!) I REALLY started to get going with the Super NES though!
Ok, perfect chance for me to solve an age-old riddle:
Does anyone here remember an educational 80’s (c. 1985) c64 game that involved a mysterious and/or haunted mansion? I think it was a math game, but I could be wrong. In any case, I’ve tried for years to remember the title of it. We had it at my elementary school in Indiana and I LOVED that game (second only to Activision’s GHOSTBUSTERS game, which remains one of the essential formative experiences of my geek/gaming youth).
–Gabe
i score 8 out of 10.
this also makes my brain jump to a seldom accessed memory of mine. i grew up in the SF bay area, and when i was about oh – maybe 8 or 9 – my cousin went out a few times with the guy who lived down the street. his name was steve jobs. one time he came over while my cousin was babysitting me and we all played trivial pursuit and i totally won. because they let me. and then he totally won. because he started a frickin revolution.
I played 8 of those games. Totally forgot about M.U.L.E – loved it. Also glad to find link to all the Infocom games; I’ve always remembered Moonmist and Bureaucracy. The latter having haunted me all these years since neither my brother or I could ever finish it. I was starting to think I had made the memory of the game up!
OMG – MATH BLASTER!
I haven’t thought about that game in years, but I distinctly remember getting to play it on my Dad’s computer and proudly printing my certificates (you got them for passing levels as I recall) on the old-school printer with the perforated-edge sheets. Chocolate-covered broccoli indeed, nothing wrong with that.
Ok, Wing Commander wasn’t educational, and though I did RTFA, I was going by Wil’s “influential” headline, not “educational”.
And back to the topic at hand, if we’re going for educational, then any list without “Rocky’s Boots” on it is wrong.
Fair enough Wil… Though I have to admit that I was very confused when I clicked the link and ended up at Propeller… and just clicked straight through to the list. I hope I’m the only one who does this, because you’ve made it pretty clear that you do love the fine geeks at Propeller (I just don’t have time for another aggregating site).
Ok…I’m posting a little late on this thread but the dose of 80’s videogame nostalgia immediately hooked me in and I wanted to share a something with me fellow Gen-X old farts. Not computer games perse, but arcade videogames.
Remember when you were a kid going down to the mall to blow a pocket full of quarters at the arcade? This fellow created an amazing digital animated trip back to those days. Have a look at his work, make sure you read the instructions first on how to turn the movie’s music on and off.
Enjoy
http://www.cinemarcade.com/arcade84.html
A bit late to the party but I laughed at this…
Possible Endings to The Oregon Trail.
http://graphjam.com/2008/08/30/song-chart-memes-endings-to-the-oregon-trail/