elementary school games

Post by **Jonathan** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 8:55 pm

We had a game on our IBM-compatibles (286!) that I primarily remember playing in 5th grade. It was a platform jumper with a puzzle emphasis. I think the puzzles were supposed to be educational which is why we could play it at school. There were three different themes: Egyptian, Greek/Roman and one other (Roman/Greek?). Frequently the puzzles were fairly difficult to solve, actually.

Anyone play this, or know where I could try to look it up? A little vague googling didn't turn up anything useful.

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 3:06 pm

IBM-compatibles my eye! You newfangled whippersnappers and upstarts had it all. Why in my day all we had were Apples and you blessed your lucky stars if you had color. Our favorite passtimes were going on the old oregon trail or playing football while wondering why the ball was square and pink. Pink I tell ya! Puzzle games he says. Geez. With THREE themes! Where were you living? California!

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 3:08 pm

On second thought. Did the guy jumping through the puzzles have a miner's hat that could shoot out a ray of light?

George · Post by **George** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 7:39 pm

I remember still using an Apple II as late as eighth grade. The school's computer lab had macs, but for some reason, the program we used was only available on Apple IIs.

In elementary school, I only remember one computer, which must have been an Apple. I don't remember the grade, and I don't remember ever getting to use it. I do remember seeing one kid playing some kind of jousting game, but I have no idea why.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 12:55 am

Yeah, geez Jonathan, all we had were color IIe's with ONE color mac that my 6th grade teacher had for his use to record grades and let us play the occasional game on (usually Zany Golf). Otherwise, we were stuck with Oregon Trail, some lemonade stand management game, and Wheel of Fortune. They also tried giving us Math Blaster, but it sucked because it was pretty easy.

Then there were no computers in junior high or high school at all except for the really crappy monochrome macs I got to use senior year for programming in Pascal. I mean come on! MONOCHROME! At least the IIe's in grade school were in color!

Thank god for graphing calculators in high school. They're monochrome too, but at least they were portable and had a bunch of games in memory! Take that you stupid gameboy with your cartridges.

George · Post by **George** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 10:06 pm

quantus wrote:Yeah, geez Jonathan, all we had were color IIe's
quantus wrote: Color? IIe? Damn, I'm pretty sure ours was a IIc, and it was definately monochrome.

quantus wrote:some lemonade stand management game
Wow, I vaguely remember that game, though I have no idea when/where I would have played it.

quantus wrote:Then there were no computers in junior high or high school at all except for the really crappy monochrome macs I got to use senior year for programming in Pascal. I mean come on! MONOCHROME! At least the IIe's in grade school were in color!

Well, in high school the programming classes had the powerful machines (like 486s!). I remember the keyboarding lab had a handful of 8086s at least through my freshman year. It was cool, all the computers ran this crappy text-only custom UI. I think it ran on top of DOS, though I couldn't swear to it. It had no command line, just a menu of authorized programs you could run.

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 1:39 am

maybe it was a good thing going to a private high school. we had pentiums running windows and our programming class was just moving to C or C++ when I left.

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 1:23 pm

Zany Golf!

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 1:46 am

So, did anyone else get play with LOGO on their apples in grade school?

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 3:50 am

I had LOGO on my HOME computer. Hah.

Post by **Jonathan** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 4:59 am

Dude, I was in the computer club. We were taught LOGO. We had projects.

To be clear, our computer lab was primarily monochrome Apples. Lemonade game, Number Crunchers, Oregon Trail, and some apple stand game were the usual fare. We had a handful of color Apples, and exactly four IBM-compatibles for the entire school. In seventh grade we got a BASIC interpreter on floppy! Shimmering rainbows of "YOU SUCK!"

In computer camp (completely different) I met one instructor who hex-edited Red Baron so he couldn't die. He was rad.

Jason: yeah, actually, now that you mention it, I think he did have a little miner hat with some kind of non-offensive power. Like a stunning ray of light. Does that jog anyone's memory?

George · Post by **George** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 12:01 am

Yep, I remember a class LOGO project where we had to draw an analog clock for a given input time. This other kid and I were competing against each other because we were both loser. I think I managed to get mine displaying the current time in real time, while he added a seconds hand to his. Or maybe vice versa; either way I think we tied for biggest dork.

Heh, I remember he was trying to mess with me once so he created a fake love note to me from the TA. Ok, I was in eighth grade and she was a college student, so it was obviously a fake. I tossed it out in the lounge trash can (it was a summer program at a college dorm). Sharing the dorm with us was one of the sports camps. One of the kids in that camp was names George also and saw the note in the trash. Apparently, it somehow got back to the TA, who contacted the program administrators who I assume punished the other kid.

Post by **Jonathan** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 12:08 am

George wrote:Heh, I remember he was trying to mess with me once so he created a fake love note to me from the TA.

This reminds me of Martin's nemesis Travis. Did other people have dork-based nemeses? There were a couple of annoyin kids in my high school who skipped too many grades, but they were immature, not assholes. All the assholes were jocks or druggies. I got along reasonably well with all the advanced class-taking folks, and didn't really interact with the rest.

None of this helps answer my question about the computer game!

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 1:08 am

I remember the computer game of which you speak. The dude had a red hat and walked around. There were multiple games. One in ancient egypt, another in aztec ruins, and i think there was a babylonian one as well. I just can't remember the name.