The '80s were without a doubt the most inlfluential time for the technology the know and love today, and that's especially true for video games, as graphics and computing power increased to the point where games started to become visually entertaining and interactive. If you, like me, were in K-12 in the '80s and early '90s, you remember the games that we're talking about. Oregon Trail? Math Blaster? Number Munchers? Carmen Sandiego? Oh, yeah! After the jump, we’ll take a look at what the Educational Games Blog considers to be the top ten most influential educational games from the 1980s. They've included some very necessary links to download or play most of the games online for free...
1. The Oregon Trail: Showed us resource management could be a fun and thoughtful element within an educational video game, with a strong dollop of historical context to boot.
2. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?: Showed us a boring school topic (geography) could be presented in an interesting way within the videogame medium.
3. SimCity: Showed us that games without a clear way to win can still be fun, educational, and time consuming.
4. Reader Rabbit: Showed us that computer games could be effectively used in early education introducing toddlers to language arts.
5. Math Blaster: Demonstrated how basic math worksheets could be fun when delivered within a videogaming environment.
6. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing: Showed us computer skills could be effectively drilled through playful software.
7. Lemonade Stand: Showed us that potentially complex and hard to understand concepts like economic theory could be simply and effectively illustrated in a video game.
8. Number Munchers: Showed basic skill and drill for math could be much more fun on a video screen than on paper.
9. Zork: Showed that interactive fiction was a compelling medium.
10. Windows Solitaire: Eased the transition to a mouse-based GUI for millions of computer users. Showed us games can have an enormous impact on business computing skills.
The entire list, and links to play online or download, is here.
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I don't know a couple of these, but most are very familiar, and I'd COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN about Number Munchers!
*Oh, sweet!
What about Rocky's Boots? (Making logic circuits.) That one was great. I wish I'd played it more... I still get confused by logic gates.
What did DOOM teach us? Besides the word "gutentag"?
My school was so poor, I was playing these on a 1984 Mac in 1995...
Man, I miss playing Oregon Trail, that game seriously consumed my 8-year-old life, ha.
OH MY GOD! you brought back awesome memories of 1st grade computer lap and floppy disks and vocab books. I completely forgot about number munchers and math blasters, but that and oregon trail and carmen san diego were my favorites. I still played oregon trail up until high school, when they stopped putting disc drives in computers. My siblings can't even remember when you had to start everything in dos prompt.
Carmen Sandiego!! The best!
Number munchers!!!!! Unfortunately, the bane of my existence is that the school I work at does not have any of the Munchers games. Sigh.
Why don't they re-package these games like the Wii has done with old Nintendo games from our childhood for Xbox or Wii or online?
oh my goodness - i only read the list and neglected the first paragraph. sorry!
off to play now ...
OMFG!!!!! Number Cruncher AND Math Blaster!!!! I effing loved those games! I think they're the reason I loved math so much in school.
Now if only I could have that Kid's Paint program and a dot-matrix printer, I'd totally be an 8 year old kid again. :)
They forgot Odell Lake! That's the other game I remember playing in elementary school. You were a fish and had to avoid being eaten. I'm not really sure what I learned from that, though?
I loved Odell Lake, too! I couldn't remember the name, so glad you did!