Educational
October 1985 (Nintendo)
I can’t think of a single person who liked educational video games once they get past the age of 6. Parents seem to be the closest, but that’s really just liking the idea of educational video games if you ask me. It seems this game is doomed from the start.
Actually, I’m going to attempt to save it. This is no longer an educational game. It’s a puzzle game. You try to race against your friend that you suckered into playing with you1 to collect numbers that will eventually, through the power to math, get to the number Donkey Kong requires.
Really, it’s not so different from Pac-Man? Ok, maybe Pac-Man where you have to collect dots and fruit in an alternating pattern. But I think that would be a good game too.
The A game is the easy level. You’re trying to get lower numbers and you always start at 0. It’s a race to get the numbers to add up. But there’s more strategy too. You have the option of using any combination of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing the numbers. There are 5 places on the bottom of the screen where the operation sign can show up. After you use it, the sign will go to the slot that was empty. So there’s strategy in which sign to use, especially if it means making your opponent suddenly have to travel all the way across the screen.
The B type steps things up a notch. Donkey Kong will ask for negative numbers. Suddenly you’re wanting things in the hundreds. Plus, you’re not starting on 0 so you have to figure out how the math works out.
The +-X÷ exercise is just useless. All you do is figure out the problem in some world outside the game and climb the chain to see if you’re right.
I’ll step back into reality for a bit. This game is not something I’d spend all day looking forward to playing. It’s probably not something I’d ask a lot of people to play with me. But if you have the right person to play with it can actually be some fun.
- Technically the game is always on multiplayer mode. If you don’t have anyone to play with the second player’s character just won’t do anything. But really, if you’re not playing against someone there’s no point in playing this anyway. [↩]
I actually really enjoy educational games, especially those that don’t talk down to the audience. I still regularly enjoy the Where in [noun that qualifies a location in time and/or space] is Carmen Sandiego games for this reason.
I’m back and forth on it. In it’s post I said it wasn’t that bad. Then I said it was bad in the recap. Really, it’s hard for me to make up my mind. I think part of that is I’m thinking of it as a game and not as an educational tool disguised as a game.
This is just my own personal take on educational games, but I refute the point that many tend to make when they say that children’s/educational games need to be taken within context — that they are aimed at a younger audience, that their purpose is education moreso than entertainment, etc. But, no; as a reviewer, in my mind, my basis for rating games is simple: Am I enjoying this? In the cases of most educational games, no, I am not, even if it’s meant for kids. That does not effect my enjoyment, thus not improving the game’s quality.