Videogame publishers are not stupid. Ever since the advent of the game console being a household staple, those companies have exploited one clever tactic of getting parents to part with their dollars (remember, all gamers live in America) thanks to the introduction of the "educational" videogame. The inherent flaw of the genre, however, is that once kids are old enough to hold a controller, they can't really learn much from a videogame. True, there are some titles, like Bubsy's String-Theory Kaper that can nurture the intellect of adults, but these aren't the games this list looks at. Nope. I'm zeroing in on games that can't teach anybody anything.
10) Oregon Trail
Take your pick: Any edition of this game dropping knowledge bombs on the 19th-century pioneer lifestyle ultimately failed its players for not teaching them a single damn thing. Go ahead. Search your memory banks. Do you remember learning anything other than the word "dysentery," about the existence of bears, or how to name your family members funny things so the game would say, "Who Cares Who died of dysentery?" Otherwise Oregon Trail was a clothesline of ruler-smacks on your knuckles for picking the wrong time of year to leave, packing the wrong supplies, and not understanding how to cross fjords on horseback.
9) Donkey Kong Jr. Math
There are a couple reasons why this simian-soaked calculation game was unable to educate its players. Chief among them? There were no players: Among the NES' 15 launch titles, this one sold the worst. This was in the days before Metacritic, mind you, so it's amazing players knew to avoid this unplayable, fever-dream rom-hack-esque title that replaced Donkey Kong Jr.'s mechanics with swinging around to collect numbers to make sums. Or maybe people knew to stay away because it was called Donkey Kong Jr. Math.
8) Elmo's A-to-Zoo Adventure
Far be it from me to call a kids' game over its intended audiences' collective soft heads, but children hate hate hate this Wii game . It's poorly designed, has sluggish controls (and an Elmo Wii-Remote cover that interferes with its outgoing sensor), and won't let you pause it. But don't take it from me, one review on toysrus.com: "This was by far one of the worst games Ive purchased. My 2- and 3-year-old sons got tired of it after about five mins of playing... We've had it for four months and my kids cry when I put it on." Well, that would explain why every time you boot it up Elmo says, "Elmo loves you! And sadness!"
7) Sesame Street 1-2-3
For the very reasons outlined in this list's introduction, this NES game is mootness personified. Although its lessons are credible, 1-2-3 has historically been more popular with stoners vibing to the incredibly catchy soundtrack who can feel smart tackling problems like 2+2 (spoiler alert, it's 4). Even if you're too young to smoke pot, you'll feel your intelligence and sideways ponytail being bitch-slapped with insults like counting six stationary green aliens to beam away to their home planet.
6) Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon
All facetiousness aside, Putt-Putt was one of the most popular early '90s educational game series - but this entry disseminated more mis-education than education-education. Among the many misnomers represented in this game about an anthropomorphic Chevy Bel Air getting blown to the moon from a fireworks factory mishap? There's just as much gravity there as here, the moon has gas stations, beauty shops, blue women, green mud, and families of monkeys that drive floating space-cars. Right. Mainly, with Ron Gilbert at the helm as co-founder of the responsible developer, Humongous Entertainment, all kids mainly learned was how illogical adventure games are. And that's an incredibly useful life skill.
Well to be fair, Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon DOES teach about the solar system, including how far the planets are from the sun (and that our moon is 400,000 kilometers from the Earth.)As for there being a lot of gravity on the moon in the game, what's to expect from a company that makes games about a superhero-wannabe boy that can travel into the Land of Darkness from his closet, a talking yellow fish that can solve mysteries and an anthropomorphic James Bond-esque fox that saves the world from a terrible milk shortage?
About the bus simulator...according to a reviewer on amazon, you can get out of the bus and go to a bar to drink...
They figured the sober driver thing required too much suspension of disbelief for their already deeply imaginative bus simulator.
Also if all you can do in a video game is drive a bus and drink... I think this is more of a programmer's "playable existential crisis" than a "video game".
I watched a let's play of City Bus Simulator and it felt much more like like a violence-free, buggy version, of Grand Theft Auto, than any kind of simulator.
And that Mario knitting pattern isn't even usable! The color-work is on the purl-side - you can't make a color patch like that on the purl side, it messes everything up!
/truefax that no one but me probably wants to know.
There was some game I used to play when I was like 10 or 11 and for the life of me I can't remember what it was called or who it was by. It was like some educational space ship game and they had a jukebox that played songs about the alphabet and stuff. I feel like it was part of a series. ALL ATTEMPTS AT GOOGLE HAVE FAILED.
Have you tried MobyGames? If you remember the platform, the latest-possible-year-of-publication, and search only the games tagged "educational", you'll probably find it.
Sesame Street 123 did have some cool music, but Sesame Street ABC beat it handily with the victory music from the Letter-Go-Round game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
The next time Gamespot does one of those fan-driven Hall of Fame contests, it will be up to us to make sure Carlos the Bus Driver gets the recognition he finally deserves.
Say what you want about Putt-Putt, but that game series taught my little brother how to use a computer at 2 years old. He's now in school learning how to make video game engines from scratch. Go figure...
The most important lesson I learned from Oregon Trail was that if you have an option you should always be a banker. While the people playing the farmer were eking their way across the country, I always blazed my way to Oregon at high speed, with the maximum yolks of oxen and a billion rounds of ammo for my rifle.
I learned from Oregon Trail. I learned that it goes: Broken finger, cholera, broken leg, smallpox, broken arm, broken wagon wheel, dead ox, and THEN dysentery. Once they survive the dysentery, they break their freaking finger and DIE.
Sesame Street 1-2-3 made the list? Oh gods, I had that game. My out of touch grandmother got that for me... when I was 8 years old. I'm saddened to see no mention of the giant alien that would pop down and shake his head in one of the number games when you got three in a row wrong. It was disapproving nightmare fuel. Though maybe a great character for a FFF story...
this list just shows that even makers of games ment to educate can have a bomb for really donky kong junior math and sonic school house think the creators were trying to make the characters more educational only to fall short.
My daughter liked the sesame street wii games (there was also a cookie monster carnival themed one) for a few months when she was 2 or 3. now a year later she won't play them at all.
The controls were definitely awful for some parts of it. there were a couple where it seemed like someone with no clue said "hey let's squeeze some motion control in this part" and forgot they were dealing with toddlers who would just crazily shake the remote through the whole mini game.
one part I did like is, aside from the above motion parts, a toddler could just be given a remote and the game would tell them how to do everything so it taught how to follow instructions as well as the main math/alphabet lessons.
" Then again, if you choose to spend your free time playing a bus-driver simulator, then you haven't really learned much about life or how to live it, have you?"
Objection - the guys who played Desert Bus for Child's Play were pretty good people. :)
Y'know, it seems like City Bus Simulator has some intriguing mod possibilities...
Zombie mode! Drive around an overrun city picking up supplies, survivors that can help weld more sheet metal armor to the sides, and make it back to a safe area before nightfall and the ghouls come out in force.
Arab Spring Mode! Ferry wounded civilians through a ruined city, dodging government forces and sniper fire...make it to rebel-held territory, and you get to cobble-together 30 year old MiG parts to the bus to make a psychobilly katyusha launcher!
Desert Bus 2000 mode—featuring perfect 1:1 terrain matching and realtime METAR weather updates! Still banned in Australia, Germany, and Saudi Arabia for violent content!
William Friedkin's Sorcerer mode—like Desert Bus, only in the jungle, and if you drive too fast or too rough, you explode and lose! And if you reach your destination...you still lose! Soundtrack by Tangerine Dream.
You mean like Zombies vs Ambulances, by budget game publisher D3? (The publisher that, to be fair, brought the world Earth Defense Force. And some would say Oneechanbara was a positive as well.)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Don't forget Mexican Desert Bus mode, all of the tedium of regular Desert Bus, but now with the threat of being stopped and having everyone summarily executed by roving drug cartel gunmen.
Oh man, that Arab Spring mode got me lol'ing. That NEEDS to happen, I'll take zombie mode as a very close second though. Educational games at their finest!
To be fair, the Oregon Trail failing to tell you how to cross a fjord isn't that unreasonable; seeing as you'd more likely be fording a river.
Of course, any "[X] Trail" game that would involve fjords sounds pretty damn interesting...instead of stopping at trading posts, you'd just raid coastal villages. 'Also give you a chance to (forcibly) add new party members to make up for ones that died of dysentery/scurvy/axe blows to the face/being sacrificed to Odin/drawing the short straw when provisions ran out, etc.
Crossing fjords on horseback? That sounds like some sort of game variant where you aren't playing a group of pioneers, but a roving horde of nomadic warriors. The Hun Trail, perhaps.
Oh, come on, I used to play Sesame Street 1-2-3 all the time. Though now that I think about it, I can't remember if I actually learned something playing it.
As you progress through the game, the driver of the bus gets a phone call: "Pop quiz, hotshot. There's a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do? What do you do?"
Regular video games have taught me plenty.Barrels explode when shot. Health packs and ammo will always be plentiful. The human body can absorb a surprising amount of damage. And if I get killed, I can just restart from where I left off.
Ah, Putt-Putt! I remember those games. Humongous Entertainment taught me that as a budding adventure gamer I was doomed to failure unless I learned how to reliably find the help guide they programmed in one of the F keys, that anthropomorphic cars had zoos with singing topiary bushes whose songs would never leave your head, the wonders of those random mini-games that have nothing to do with the main plot but hold your attention for hours and hours, and that wood floats. Good times!
Dude, the Pajama Sam games were a massive part of my childhood. The fact that the puzzles changed between each playthrough blew my seven-year-old mind.
1) We used to name Oregon Trial characters after teachers and administrators and then get them killed so you'd see, "Mr. Heffernan died of dysentary!" 2) Elmo is the devil3) I want to get City Bus now. It's got to be more fun than Desert Bus.
You guys were clearly very clever. In my class it was de rigueur to name all the victims of disease things like "Poop Face". Witty 11 year olds, we were not.
Not at all. Sure, some people LIKE to think that programs like "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" are how we learned how to type, but let's face it, we learned to type by trying to figure out how to get the bottle of pills to give to Faith. I got so good I could type just as fast one-handed...er, uh, heh, not that I needed to...
