Post by The Mad Plumber on Apr 6, 2010 23:14:01 GMT -5
Learning with the PooYoos: Episode 2 (Launch Trailer) @ GameTrailers.com
You know what I hate? I hate cynicism. You know, not everything needs to involve decapitating vampires or blowing up helicopters. Now, I will admit that the theme song they play in that trailer is considerably grating for me, but it's a kids game. Plus, it's early education. What's wrong with that? Oh, I'm so sorry for you punks that this game doesn't have enough LOL or PWN or whatever it is you seem to think is important in life. Dumb pricks.
A long time ago with our family computer, the Apple IIe, my parents provided a couple fun action games like Skyfox and Pac-Man. However, our library mostly consisted of edutainment titles, mainly from The Learning Company. I somewhat suspect that my experience with these titles helped build my early comprehension and allowed me to do as well as I did in school back then. When I saw that PooYoos trailer above, I was reminded of an early development title I had for the Apple. I believe it taught you early language and math recognition. The game would present you with a very basic math problem and you would press the appropriate key on the keyboard. If you were right, the game would reward you with an animal walking onto the screen (be it a pelican or penguin or others) and chirping. Maybe I don't have kids myself to testify what is good parenting, but from my own experience as a kid, I imagine it's more productive to raise your kids on edutainment titles than just violent, bloodbath games.
Now, I really wish I could remember the name of that early development game I mentioned, but I can't seem to find any reliable source about titles for the Apple IIe. I'll just talk about other education programs from my early childhood and maybe later on.
Reader Rabbit
Aside from the earlier-mentioned title, this would be the oldest edutainment game I got for the Apple. The game was roughly themed around the railroad. The game featured a library of three-letter words and the game's several minigames all built your understanding of these words. One game might involve creating a stack of words sharing a common letter, building a train with words that consecutively differ by a single letter, or associating words with graphics.
Math Rabbit
Math would be my best comprehension, so that somewhat spells my appreciation for this game. Math Rabbit featured a circus theme throughout its minigames. The game taught arithmetic at varying difficulty levels.
Writer Rabbit
This title is graphically superior to the two previous Rabbit titles, though it does strike as being a little silly in retrospect. Writer Rabbit featured an overall party theme and taught grammar in various types of exercises.
Think Quick!
My parents took me to a computer software store, I assume to buy a new copy of Skyfox to replace the one which got bent and became unplayable. Instead, for some reason, I asked about this game. Think Quick! featured problem-solving challenges, required players to find common threads in geometric shapes, and even allowed users to create their own levels.
Magic Spells
I didn't play this often and I can't recall what its gameplay consisted of. From my best guess, the game was mainly a scramble word puzzle.
Robot Odyssey
This isn't a game I owned. I saw trailers for it on some of my other TLC titles and I never got to play it until I saw that my shop teacher had it ... and I accidentally lost it when I got pushed into the mud and had to pay for it. Odyssey is a precursor to Think Quick! and teaches programming logic. It's a very difficult game and very worthwhile.
Unknown Title
After the Apple became obsolete, one of my parents found this title which was more or less just an educational trivia game that quizzed you on subjects in various educational levels.
Super Jeopardy!
I'm forced to debate whether Jeopardy! is educational, since it only tests your intelligence without really improving it. This title that we got for the NES featured voice sampling and some crazy character archetypes.
Math Blaster
I don't recall when or how I got a Math Blaster title for the Apple and I can't recall playing it too much.
Unknown Magazine / Disk Titles
The disks came packaged with these paperback manuals that featured the code for these various applications featured within. Beyond building some interest in programming code, I also recall that one of the games featured in one of the disks was a business widget emulator. I was never good at it, though.
Anyways, I bring up the topic of edutainment titles because I look at them as positive ways of developing relevant skills in youths and building early aptitudes and interests towards advanced sciences. With myself looking to write games, I would like to innovate titles that both entertain and educate. However, I don't want to get shot down in forums like GameTrailers because of my efforts.
You know what I hate? I hate cynicism. You know, not everything needs to involve decapitating vampires or blowing up helicopters. Now, I will admit that the theme song they play in that trailer is considerably grating for me, but it's a kids game. Plus, it's early education. What's wrong with that? Oh, I'm so sorry for you punks that this game doesn't have enough LOL or PWN or whatever it is you seem to think is important in life. Dumb pricks.
A long time ago with our family computer, the Apple IIe, my parents provided a couple fun action games like Skyfox and Pac-Man. However, our library mostly consisted of edutainment titles, mainly from The Learning Company. I somewhat suspect that my experience with these titles helped build my early comprehension and allowed me to do as well as I did in school back then. When I saw that PooYoos trailer above, I was reminded of an early development title I had for the Apple. I believe it taught you early language and math recognition. The game would present you with a very basic math problem and you would press the appropriate key on the keyboard. If you were right, the game would reward you with an animal walking onto the screen (be it a pelican or penguin or others) and chirping. Maybe I don't have kids myself to testify what is good parenting, but from my own experience as a kid, I imagine it's more productive to raise your kids on edutainment titles than just violent, bloodbath games.
Now, I really wish I could remember the name of that early development game I mentioned, but I can't seem to find any reliable source about titles for the Apple IIe. I'll just talk about other education programs from my early childhood and maybe later on.
Reader Rabbit
Aside from the earlier-mentioned title, this would be the oldest edutainment game I got for the Apple. The game was roughly themed around the railroad. The game featured a library of three-letter words and the game's several minigames all built your understanding of these words. One game might involve creating a stack of words sharing a common letter, building a train with words that consecutively differ by a single letter, or associating words with graphics.
Math Rabbit
Math would be my best comprehension, so that somewhat spells my appreciation for this game. Math Rabbit featured a circus theme throughout its minigames. The game taught arithmetic at varying difficulty levels.
Writer Rabbit
This title is graphically superior to the two previous Rabbit titles, though it does strike as being a little silly in retrospect. Writer Rabbit featured an overall party theme and taught grammar in various types of exercises.
Think Quick!
My parents took me to a computer software store, I assume to buy a new copy of Skyfox to replace the one which got bent and became unplayable. Instead, for some reason, I asked about this game. Think Quick! featured problem-solving challenges, required players to find common threads in geometric shapes, and even allowed users to create their own levels.
Magic Spells
I didn't play this often and I can't recall what its gameplay consisted of. From my best guess, the game was mainly a scramble word puzzle.
Robot Odyssey
This isn't a game I owned. I saw trailers for it on some of my other TLC titles and I never got to play it until I saw that my shop teacher had it ... and I accidentally lost it when I got pushed into the mud and had to pay for it. Odyssey is a precursor to Think Quick! and teaches programming logic. It's a very difficult game and very worthwhile.
Unknown Title
After the Apple became obsolete, one of my parents found this title which was more or less just an educational trivia game that quizzed you on subjects in various educational levels.
Super Jeopardy!
I'm forced to debate whether Jeopardy! is educational, since it only tests your intelligence without really improving it. This title that we got for the NES featured voice sampling and some crazy character archetypes.
Math Blaster
I don't recall when or how I got a Math Blaster title for the Apple and I can't recall playing it too much.
Unknown Magazine / Disk Titles
The disks came packaged with these paperback manuals that featured the code for these various applications featured within. Beyond building some interest in programming code, I also recall that one of the games featured in one of the disks was a business widget emulator. I was never good at it, though.
Anyways, I bring up the topic of edutainment titles because I look at them as positive ways of developing relevant skills in youths and building early aptitudes and interests towards advanced sciences. With myself looking to write games, I would like to innovate titles that both entertain and educate. However, I don't want to get shot down in forums like GameTrailers because of my efforts.