- Old Mac Games
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The concept was simple and it was black and white (of course since it was an old Mac), but it was really fun. But a lotta adventure plus two action type games that actually get incorporated into the story mostly involving landing the ship on RAMA. The games were produced by an Adventure game company in the mid to late 1980's, called. Hi all, just wondering if anyone remembers the name of an old typing game that was out around Mac OS 6 and 7.x days. I'm pretty sure it was simply called 'Type!' , and it had a tutorial part and a game part when you ran hurdles against a computer opponent and you had to type with accuracy and speed to beat them.
007 Goldfinger1986
The player must stop Auric Goldfinger from taking the world's gold supply, stop the destruction of Kentucky, deal with Pussy Galore and even a fight with Oddjob. Not much for old 007 to do actually - it's all in a day's work (or is it adventure)? ...
101 Dalmatians Escape From DeVil Manor1997
Imagine being an orphaned Dalmatian puppy and being 'dognapped' (along with 100 of your puppy friends) by Cruella DeVil's two bumbling henchmen and thrown into the decrepit mansion that was once her childhood home. In Disney's 101 Dalmatians: Escape from DeVil Manor, you are an orphaned Dalmatian puppy named Patches....
11th Hour, The1995
It can be hard to judge a point-and-click adventure fairly. Obviously, the game isn't going to get the rating it deserves due to its slow nature. Although those factors don't combine well, in the case of Trilobyte's The 11th Hour, there are some very strong points that need to be...
15 Days2009
20000 Leagues Under the Sea1988
Based on the Jules Verne novel, this graphic adventure provides a first-person perspective on the realm of Captain Nemo and his enormous submarine craft, The Nautilus. Players guide three brave explorers -- marine biologist Pierre Aronnax, his assistant Conseil, and the rough-and-tumble seaman Ned Land -- who had boarded the...
3 Cards to Dead Time2010
3 Cards to Midnight2009
Three Cards to Midnight tells the story of Jess Silloway, a woman who comes down with amnesia on the eve of her 30th birthday. When she regains awareness, she finds herself sitting in a room with a strange man who is laying out a series of Tarot cards. Each card...
3 Skulls of the Toltecs1996
Released in 1996, 3 Skulls of the Toltecs is a cartoon adventure game in the style of LucasArts' The Secret of Monkey Island. Unlike the popular Monkey Island, however, this game seems to have had very little impact on the adventure playing community. Perhaps its style was already considered dated...
5 Days a Stranger2003
5 Days a Stranger is a point-and-click adventure game that was made in 2003 by Fully Ramblomatic. This game was the first adventure game I ever played and is still one of my favorites. Cat burglar Trilby got more than he bargained for when he broke into the DeFoe Mansion....
6 Days a Sacrifice2007
7 Days a Skeptic2004
7 Days a Skeptic is the very good 2004 sequel to 5 Days a Stranger. Like its predecessor, this is one of my favorite AGS and adventure games. Definitely worth a try. Many centuries have passed since the DeFoe Manor incident. It is now no more than folklore and forgotten...
7 days and 7 nights1994
Seven Days and Seven Nights, hereafter referred to as 7D7N, is by no means a well known game. In fact it's quite obscure, and unquestionably set to remain that way. Published in 1994, it is one of the very first Czech commercial adventure games. It reflects the humble beginnings of...
7th Guest, The1993
Every now and again there is a game that totally revolutionizes its genre. Take Civilization for instance. That game is one of the most, if not the most popular turn-based strategy game of all time. Its simplistic and well thought out gameplay captivated an entire legion of fans. The same...
80 Days2005
Based on the famous Jules Verne novel, Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-vingts Jours (Around the World in 80 Days), this graphic adventure returns players to 1899 and places them in the role of Oliver Lavisheart, a forward young man who wagers that he can circumnavigate the globe within the...
9: The Last Resort1996
Thurston Last is dead. His lawyers, in accordance with his last will and testament, have identified you the player as his next-of-kin, and have awarded you control of his mysterious and failing mansion, The Last Resort. As you take possession of your inheritance, you discover strange and destructive forces hard...
9:052000
You wake up in bed. A reassuring start and one familiar from several games. You are spared the precision maneuvering that was required in Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy; instead, if you pick up the phone you receive a message urging you to work. It is 9:05 and you have...
A Case for Cap & Co.1997
Karen Lucre is in a fix! Zak, her little dog has been kidnapped! The kidnappers are asking for a huge ransom. Zak is in a great danger. Time is running out and Karen's parents are on holiday... it's obviously A Case for Cap and Co! Together with Cap, Billy, Karen and...
Abbey, The1993
You are one of the leading scholars of XIV century France, who is sent on a special mission by the king and the pope to investigate the Abbey of Montglane. The recent fire damaged the abbey and burned several old manuscripts, you're tasked to recover ten treasures that couldn't be...
Abducted: 10 Minutes2004
Abducted: 10 Minutes is a very cool adventure game that more than makes up for its short length by interesting, logical puzzles and exciting real-time gameplay. You play Detective Michael Ebb, who was watching TV at home when the programming is interrupted by a group of terrorists whom you put...
Ace Ventura1996
Based on the series of comedy films starring Jim Carrey, the PC version of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective is a point-and-click adventure in which you take on the role of Ace, who's out to solve a case involving endangered animals. Game play requires players to visit areas, gather clues, interact...
Acheton1987
Acheton is a home computer conversion of the mainframe adventure of the same name. Similar to Zork (which was released on the VAX mainframe not long before Acheton's original appearance), it is a fantasy treasure hunt set in a claustrophobic dungeon. It boasts over 400 rooms and 200 objects, thereby...
Ad Verbum2000
The city finally having secured an eviction notice, the demolition contractor is contractually obligated to conduct an inventory of the Wizard of Wordplay's manor before knocking it down, clearing the spooky space for cheap condos or a mini-mall. The only problem is that with his peculiar and punny powers pervading...
Adventure Fun-Pak1987
In 1989, Apogee released two 'Fun-Paks,' Adventure Fun-Pak and Puzzle Fun-Pak, priced at $10 each. Each 'pack' contains 4 games that were submitted to Apogee by outside authors, although most of the games were designed by Apogee's Scott Miller. Most of these games are ASCII-only games with minimal or no...
Adventure Games1986
Adventure Games is a collection of four text adventures of varying quality, released as a package by Public Brand Software in 1986. Of interesting historical value is the fact that Public Brand (better known as PBS) was one of the first major shareware distributors. This compilation includes William Crowther's and...
Adventure in Humongous Cave1993
How to best demonstrate the capabilities of your text adventure authoring system (the Master's Edition of the Adventure Game Toolkit) but to port the latest and greatest hit title using it? Well, one outta two ain't bad -- the programmer focused on re-implementing ADVENTURE, the revolutionary mid-'70s faux-fantasy treasure-collecting cave...
Adventure in Serenia1982
The IBM port of Sierra's Apple II game 'The Wizard and the Princess', where you must rescue a princess imprisoned by an evil wizard. Classic text and graphics with 2-word parser game. ...
Adventure XT2007
The sinister wizard Mordimar, having come into possession of the powerful magical artifact the Orb of Destiny, is slowly sapping the life-force from the forests of Blarg. Your goal: to retrieve the Orb, for the sake of the blighted woods! Author Paul Panks is known in IF circles for having settled...
Adventureland1978
Adventureland is the first of Scott Adams' text adventures. Using simple two word commands you explore an enchanted world, solve puzzles and try to recover 13 lost treasures. The game's display is different from other adventure games like Zork: The Great Underground Empire in that the screen is divided into...
Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment2005
Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment (GFW in short) is one of the best freeware adventure games ever made, period. Aside from superb humor, entertaining plot, and fun puzzles, Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw has succeeded in melding cross-genre elements that made games like Star Control so endearing. GFW is the...
Adventures of Alice who Went Through the Looking-Glass and Came Back Though Not Much Changed, The1986
As in the Lewis Carroll work, Victorian girlchild Alice Liddell avoids doing her tedious homework ('Could there possibly be' you think 'a better day to go out and play and avoid studying Mathematics?') by escaping into a whimsical wonderland filled with bizarre characters. Many of the major characters (Cheshire Cat,...
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Old Mac Games
Macs Adventure Reviews
Real talk: I think learning is always fun. (Yes, I am absolutely a Ravenclaw. Why do you ask?) But when it’s a literal game? Then it’s even better, especially when you’re a kid. This is probably why there were so dang many fantastic educational '90s computer games — the rise of home computing (and, by extension, the rise of computing in the classroom) during the 1990s opened up a whole world of possibilities, including tons of ways to make learning a blast for the up-and-coming generations. And you know what? These games are still fun. And yes, I say that as a fully grown adult; don't knock going back and replaying the games you loved when you were 10 until you've tried it. Seriously.
As is often the case with the things we remember from the '90s, a lot of the games those of us who grew up during the decade filled our days with were originally developed and released long before the ‘90s. That's perhaps the reason '80s babies also have a certain degree of fondness for them; many of them actually dated back to the decade in which we were born. Some were part of long-running series, while still more of them received a number of remakes and reboots as technology improved. Though the graphics may be laughable now, just remember — once upon a time, they were the pinnacle of technological achievement.
So, in the spirit of nostalgia, here are 15 computer games from the ‘90s that made learning incredibly fun. Most of them are available to play on the internet now, so in these cases, I’ve also included links to where they can be found — frequently either an app store or the Internet Archive’s glorious collection of browser-based, emulated DOS games.
Have fun, kids!
1. Number Munchers and Word Munchers
The Munchers series was created by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium — or, under a name with which you might be more familiar, MECC. I don’t know about you, but I have vivid memories of seeing those four letters scrawled across a huge number of the educational games I played at school; the company dated back to 1973 and was also responsible for games like the business simulator Lemonade Stand and the storytelling game Storybook Weaver.
The Munchers series' conceit was simple: They taught kids the basics of math and grammar. Number Munchers was originally released in 1990 for the Apple II, while Word Munchers had arrived a few years earlier in 1985. Gameplay-wise, both series functioned kind of like a turn-based version of Pacman; the object WAS to “eat” all of the numbers or words that correspond to the instructions on the screen (multiples of five, etc.) without getting caught by a Troggle.
What exactly are Troggles? No idea, but they're insatiable.
2. Math Blaster!
The original Math Blaster! was released in 1983 by the now-defunct developer Davidson & Associates, but it wasn’t until the ‘90s rolled around that the series really hit its stride. Between 1990 and 1999, a whopping 20 games were released in the Blaster Learning System — and somewhat astonishingly, a few more follow-ups trickled out between 2000 and 2008. Math wasn't the only subject addressed by the series; Reading Blaster!, for example,taught language arts. A Science Blaster! Jr. was also released at one point, but due to lack of popularity, it was the only entry in the series to tackle science-based topics.
Math Blaster! is available to play online now; additionally, a bunch of ports of the math-teaching game arrived as Android apps in October of 2013, so the series appears to be alive and well (if somewhat frozen in time).
3. Scooter’s Magic Castle
Like many early computer games, Scooter’s Magic Castle consisted of a relatively large environment full of what we now call mini-games. Released under Electronic Arts’ EA*Kids umbrella in 1993, the game involved players either assuming the role of or simply helping out an elf-like creature wearing a blue tunic, red sneakers, and a red baseball cap turned backwards (the '90s!) as they worked their way through a variety of activities. These activities were designed to teach everything from problem-solving to typing; you could even make terrible MIDI music by jumping up and down a set of colorful stairs.
Scooter's Magic Castle also has a super earworm-y theme song, so if you now have it stuck in your head for the rest of the day… sorry. My bad.
4. The Carmen Sandiego Series
No list of educational ‘90s computer games would be complete without an appearance by this mysterious, trench-coated criminal mastermind. The four major entries in the series — Where in the World, Where in the U.S.A., Where in Europe, and Where in Time — were all first released by Broderbund between 1985 and 1989; the deluxe versions of Where in the World and Where in the U.S.A., however, came along in 1992 and 1993, and as a result, it’s those versions that most ’90s kids remember so fondly. There was no better way to learn geography — and hey, Where in the World deluxe is playable at the Internet Archive, so it looks like I just figured out what I’m doing with myself this weekend.
Fun fact: A Facebook version of Where in the World was available to play in 2011; I’m not sure how I missed it, but it stuck around until 2012.
5. Kindercomp
I’m really dating myself here, but Kindercomp is probably the first computer game I remember playing. Initially released in 1983 by Spinnaker Software Corporation, it was exactly the kind of game that appealed to very young children: It consisted of six mini-games that taught kids their way around a keyboard by having them draw pictures, match pairs, and other simple activities. The one I remember is the 1984 version, but the Internet Archive has a whole bunch of ‘em available, so knock yourselves out. If you have a kid in your life who's around 3 years old, it might be a fun time to play with them!
6. Mario Teaches Typing
As a child in a house full of gamers, naturally I adored Mario Teaches Typing, which first hit the scene in the early '90s. One of a number of educational Mario games released between 1988 and 1996, it put the pixelated plumber to good work teaching us how to type. Hitting the correct key would prompt Mario to hit blocks, jump on Koopa Troopas, and more. Nintendo had almost no hand in the development of these games (a far cry from the tight hold the company tends to keep on the reigns of its properties nowadays), but they proved popular all the same.
I’ll be honest, though: I actually learned how to type by frequenting chat rooms. As a result, I can type an impressive number of words per minute; however, I definitely don’t use the “correct” fingers. Ah well. Whatever works, right?
7. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing
Mario was second perhaps only to Mavis Beacon in the world of beloved typing programs — and what’s more, it’s still around: The first version debuted in 1987, and it has remained in production, continuing to get new and improved updates, pretty much ever since. You can download it for free right now if you like.
I was, by the way, absolutely devastated to learn recently that Mavis Beacon isn’t a real person. She was invented to give a face to the program in an era when human people weren't regularly associated with computer and video games (everything is a lie). 1985's The Chessmaster 2000had shown how effective putting a real person on the cover of a computer game could be; the wizard on the box was played by actor Will Hare, reported Vice in 2015. Mavis became the next incarnation of this strategy, as depicted by Renee L'Esperance.
8. 3D Dinosaur Adventure
Launched by Knowledge Adventure in 1993, 3D Dinosaur Adventure was little more than a glorified encyclopedia specializing in what we knew about dinosaurs at the time (much of which has since been determined to have been terribly, terribly wrong, even if the brontosaurus did make a triumphant comeback in 2015). That didn’t matter, though, because dinosaurs.
Also contained within 3D Dinosaur Adventure was a mini-game called 'Save The Dinosaurs' — which, to be perfectly honest, was downright terrifying. It required players to make their way through a series of maze-like hallways to find and rescue 15 types of dinosaurs before time ran out — and by 'before time ran out,' I mean 'before the comet that wiped out all of the dinosaurs crashed into the Earth, while you and the dinos were still on the planet.'
No pressure.
9. Odell Lake
Pc Adventure Games
Like the Munchers series, Odell Lake was created by MECC and therefore a fixture for many an elementary school computer lab. It debuted in the early 1980s, but it stuck around for long after that; it’s why so many of us ‘90s kids remember playing it when we were young.
In all honesty, it wasn’t really that exciting — all you did was swim around as a fish, trying to figure out whether you should eat, ignore, or run away from every other fish you encountered. I’m also not totally clear on why this was classified as an educational activity; Giant Bomb suggests it taught kids about food chains and predator/prey relationships, but I... clearly did not get that takeaway from it. But hey, I suppose survival skills are important, too, right?
Odell Lake is a real place, by the way; it’s in Oregon. Just, y’know, FYI.
10. Reader Rabbit
You know the old saying, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it? That’s pretty much the Reader Rabbit series in a proverbial nutshell: It’s so effective at teaching kids to read and write that it’s survived all the way since the first game launched in 1984. There's a huge list of Reader Rabbit titles scattered throughout educational computing history; at the series' height in the late '90s, six to seven titles in the line were being released each year. The output has since tapered off, of course, but the remarkable thing is that it's still around.
The last major PC release for a Reader Rabbit game was in 2010, but a number of titles have debuted since then as iOS apps. Many of the games are also, of course, available to play online courtesy of the Internet Archive.
11. Mixed-Up Mother Goose
Mixed-Up Mother Goose didn't have a ton of replay value; the point was to sort out all of the nursery rhymes that had gotten 'mixed up' and put them back in order, so after you did that once, your work there was done. However, the world in which the game existed was so delightful that I played it over and over again as a small child. Released by Sierra in 1987, with a handful of remakes appearing at regular intervals throughout the ‘90s, it was a point-and click adventure game that encourage problem-solving; it also gets bonus points for having tons of relatively diverse avatar options — something which was even rarer back then than it is now. (And, y'know, it's still a problem decades later, so that's... really saying something.)
12. Super Solvers: Treasure Mountain
I’ll be honest: I actually have no recollection of playing 1990’s Treasure Mountain, Treasure Cove, or any of the other Treasure titles in this series. Many other people seem to remember these games fondly, though, so I think they deserve an inclusion here. Like many educational games, 1990's Treasure Mountain — a creation of The Learning Company, like the Reader Rabbit series — involved solving riddles that led you to keys that unlocked each successive level. You also collected treasure as you went, returning it to the chest at the top of the titular mountain once you got there. A prize was awarded for depositing the treasure back into the chest.
Type Adventure Game Old Macdonald
Treasure Mountain and Treasure Cove both focused on general reading comprehension and basic math skills; however, other entries in the Super Solvers series tackled more specialized skill sets, including deductive reasoning and logic.
13. The Dr. Brain Series
Best Adventure Games For Mac
Admittedly, I never played the fourth game in Sierra On-Line's long-running Dr. Brain series, and I wasn’t a big fan of the third — but the first two? Classic. The Castle of Dr. Brain, released in 1991, and the follow-up, 1992’s The Island of Dr. Brain, were a step up from a lot of the other puzzle-solving games out there; they were geared towards slightly older kids, so there was more to each puzzle than simply picking a matching shape or selecting the next number in a sequence. We’re talking intense logic puzzles that might stump even some adults.
Sierra merged with another educational game company, Bright Star Technology, following the release of The Island of Dr. Brain; the franchise was then handed over to a team from Bright Star, which might explain why 1995's The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain and 1996's The Time Warp of Dr. Brain were so different from the first two entries in the series.
14. Eagle Eye Mysteries
Like Scooter’s Magic Castle,1993’s Eagle Eye Mysteries and 1994’s Eagle Eyes Mysteries in London came to us courtesy of the now sadly defunct EA* Kids division of Electronic Arts. Unlike Scooter’s Magic Castle, though, they were meant for an older crowd. The games followed siblings Jake and Jennifer Eagle as they solved mysteries throughout first their hometown, then in London not — unlike a modernized, digital version of Encyclopedia Brown. If you were a pint-sized fan of whodunnits, this was the game for you; it helped you learn how to piece together different pieces of information until a complete picture emerged. A valuable skill to have, I feel.
15. Oregon Trail
Ah, yes: Oregon Trail, the game responsible for countless deaths by dysentery, many drownings of oxen who tried and failed to ford the river, and a plethora of memes. For anyone who grew up playing it, it's the gift that keeps on giving.
Speaking of people who grew up playing it, perhaps unexpectedly large swathe of the population falls into this category. Originally developed in 1971 and launched by MECC in 1974, roughly 20 versions of the game have been released since then — the most of which, believed it or not, arrived in 2018 as a handheld game similar to the Tiger Electronics games a lot of '80s kids grew up playing. Ostensibly, it taught kids what it was like to travel the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon in 1848; practically speaking, though, it mostly taught us about frustration.
Also: Never ford the river. Always caulk your wagon and float it.
Your oxen will thank you.
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