e question "Why do most educational videogames suck so hard?" doesn't even get asked anymore, because we all know the answer: because they try to teach you stuff. It's just the nature of the beast. Any game that is trying to teach you first and be fun second is almost certainly guaranteed to fail, because the designers concentrate too much on the message and not enough on the medium. Almost. Believe it or not, educational game designers actually got it right sometimes.
That's what makes these games so special: they outshone the competition and brightened up many a dreary grade school classroom. At their best, they were like special treats, the little diamonds hidden away on the class computer that made all the boring and painful aspects of school life a little less noticeable. They often turned up outside of school, and could often be found in a family computer room or den alongside more serious software. Only time will tell whether more recent educational games (such as the Brain Age titles) are up to these standards.
12) Path Tactics
While this game claimed to teach math skills, it more often taught frustration and bad sportsmanship to any kids lucky enough to have an Apple II in their classroom. The rules were pretty simple and the atmosphere sparse and casual, but that didn't stop the tension as you and a computer or other player raced to see who could reach the end and trigger the Mussorgsky midi first.
11) The Secret Island of Dr Quandary
At a glance, this game and The Island of Doctor Brain may seem identical, but they are in fact quite different: whereas Dr. Brain is a kindly genius who guides you around a delightful paradise, Dr. Quandary is an asshole who traps you on his ugly island in the body of a grotesque doll and forces you to play with tangrams in order to escape. It all adds up to an experience that almost taunted you to succeed, the crusty Mick to your classroom Apple's Rocky Balboa. It's also worth noting for containing the somewhat cathartic "Troggle Shoot" game at the beginning, something veteran MECC players will greatly appreciate.
10) The Island of Dr. Brain
The apex of an educational series that would eventually go very much downhill, this Dr. Brain was fun, challenging, and certainly creative, testing knowledge of music math, and with the classic Tower of Hanoi game thrown in for good measure. As if that isn't enough, try not having your mind blown when you enter a new screen AND IT'S A JIGSAW PUZZLE YOU HAVE TO PUT TOGETHER! It may not be as difficult as other such games but it was certainly the most visually interesting, with colorful graphics and a variety of different rooms worth exploring.
9) Math Blaster: The Search for Spot
The stuff indoor recess was made of. You control a green spaceman (who sounds more than a little like Lenny Bruce's impression of the Lone Ranger) on a quest to rescue his little floating robot friend from "that yellow three-eyed trash alien". This somehow requires you to answer math problems really fast and shoot at stuff from inside a spaceship. My favorite part was definitely the tricky "path runner" section, which required you to pick up the right number while dodging enemies in an improbably long cave.
8) Number/Word Munchers
A phenomenally simple concept (Pac-Man + facts = money) turned out to be gaming gold for MECC. There's not much more to say really, other than that these games got surprisingly difficult in the later stages, forcing you to figure out complex equations in a matter of seconds while being attacked by toothsome monsters. Thank god for those safe zones.
7) Gizmos and Gadgets
Almost everyone played at least one of the Learning Company's Super Solver games, where you were a faceless stranger with terrible fashion sense challenged to stop an asshole in a bowtie from... doing something bad. In this game, you must scamper around a giant factory-complex, battle robot monkey-things and build different vehicles in order to beat the bad guy in a race. Such vehicles include blimps, planes, and alternative-energy racecars (I, for one, think Al Gore owes G&G a lot of credit). Many of these games are ingrained into our psyches forever, but as memorable as Treasure Mountain, Outnumbered!, and the like all were, this is one of the two that we all clamored to play.
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