Were there any educational video games you grew up with in your childhood?

28 comments

1. I would imagine that they existed,but I didn’t use any of them when I was a kid.

   I am from the first generation of ‘video games’…first arcade machines,then home systems like the Atari and then personal computers at home (like the Commodore).

   We played a lot of games but there was very little educational about any of them!

2. [Granny’s Garden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granny's_Garden) is a big one for the UK – if you were around in the 80s it was probably played on the primary school’s [BBC Micro](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/BBC_Micro_Front_Restored.jpg) computer.

   [The publisher is still in business](http://www.4mation.co.uk/cat/granny.html) and there’s now a Windows version of the game.

3. I don’t know if there are any others, but one game I had completely forgotten about until someone mentioned it recently was Davilex’ RedCat series ([example](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs_J-GnEh8I)). They basically had a game for every subject taught in elementary schools.

4. I think the big one was *Cheops pyramid*, which is a maths puzzle/adventure game. There was also *Backpacker*, which is a geography quiz game.

   Edit: Thinkin’ Things too.

   Edit2: [Cheops pyramid speedrun](https://youtu.be/yfTVpGyMYVo)

5. Yep, I had various learning programmes as a child.

   ​

   But since I went to school in France for the most part, I played mostly French learning games. I had a series of games from Cocktail Vision, I remember for French, English and mathematics, but there were other subjects as well.

   ​

   An alien guided you through the game, and by successfully completing tasks, you could get points and unlock games. There was a version for small children where the alien was called Adibou and for older children Adi.

   ​

   Looked like this:

   [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aivHzMa13LA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aivHzMa13LA)

6. Lazy Larry in the land of the lounge lizards. To play the game, you had to get 4 out of 5 multiple choice questions right, because of the adult nature of the game. But those questions were US-specific. And as teens, we had no idea who those persons, places and events were.

7. You just unlocked a memory of a game that I played on… you know, one of those “fake” PC toys in the late 90s that were made for kids

   Found it, it was [Adibou](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVBTl9jtCkg) !

8. I remember Math Blaster and an English learning game involving monsters, can’t remember the name though. German specific, I had a more program than game dictation training and companion software for my first year of English school book.

   Edit: also had some games from publisher Tivola, but I’d consider them more edutainment than straight learning games

9. Runescape thought me the English language. You either spoke English or you couldn’t trade with people.

   Thats the story of how I learned a second language before I had classes in it.

10. I remember a series of video games that were given inside cereal boxes, and each CD had a different theme:
    Geography, with an interactive map of the world
    Biology, about the human body

    Also kinder-Ferrero during those same years was in the toy phase, and some videogames were made about them, but they weren’t so educational, more like a DLC for the cartoon.

11. Pixeline. It’s a whole series of games with a girl called Pixeline. I only played the first 2, because after that i was too old, but my younger siblings played the later ones.

    I most clearly remember the first one. It was just her in her room, and then you could click various objects and it would start minigames that were about childrens songs and had the song playing in the background. You learnt the songs and a bit of counting. The later games had spelling.

12. We played the Reader Rabbit games (Kalle Kunskap in Swedish). I had [the 2nd grade version](https://youtu.be/U-idyHO2FAY).

13. I’m Dutch

    For a while there was a game distributed on schools where you had to maintain canals and rivers, their eco systems, and make sure they didn’t get clotted by wild growth vegetation

    It was 8 bits AT MOST. Like had four colours max. Late 80s

14. Contra, it taught me to always go topless, never fear jumping into water from cliffs and how to fight alien mutants and their combustible henchmen

    Never got successfully invaded by aliens, so who am I to doubt these lessons.

15. Lego Chess taught me how to play chess, including all of these advanced moves. It included story lines related to the western and pirate themes, which have now been pretty much retired by Lego.

16. Yes, Carmagedon!

17. I had a Cluefinders game about math and another game called “The planet of numbers”, where you had to save numbers from… alien invaders?

    I also remember playing games about a pig kid, I think Piglet was his name. I had the entire collection, but only remember some of the games like “Piglet in the future”, “Piglet takes an exam in anatomy” and “Piglet in the forgotten world”.

    Then I also played the Pink Panther games. The one in the camp was my favourite (also terrifying).

    And I played a couple Mia Mouse games, too.

    I barely remember any Russian games in particular, but I think I had a game about a kid saving the jungles from Barmalei the pirate and a game about a hare boy walking around the forest and learning how to read.

18. I remember our prehistoric school computers had this one game installed, some sort of mini game collection/early pro-EU propaganda. I only remember bits and pieces, such as the in-game currency was called ECU instead of Euro and you could play various mini games like geography and trivia quizzes about the member states of the EU. And much of it was already out of date by the time we got to play the game.

    There was one particularly popular mini game where you controlled a small boat on a horizontal axis via left-right arrows, with money dropping from the sky in various denominations. I guess to advertise the concept of a common currency long before the Euro became a thing. And the goal was of course to collect as much of it as possible by steering the boat to where the money was falling down. But this mini game was apparently programmed in such a way that the rate of money dropping from the sky was directly linked to the processor speed or something. Because when we finally got this one new shiny almost up-to-date computer, probably donated by a parent, this game would run at such insane speed that it was just impossible to keep up, basically rendering the game completely unplayable on the newer machine :D. Anyone remember what that game might have been called?

19. In ~2002, we used to play “[Real lives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Lives)” in the computer class. It has a social studies component to it.

20. In France we had Adibou, which was quite popular in the end of the 90’s for children around 5-7 years old. It was very decent quality at the time. I think I heard it was reissued last year or something.

21. We had this cute little point-and-click adventure game called “Fred und das Flaschenfahrrad” (Fred and the bike in the bottle). It’s about a penguin who found a message in a bottle depicting the blueprint of a bicycle. Fred gets excited and wants to learn how to ride a bike – but he has to get a bike for that first.

    So the game takes you through a port town where Fred has to find the different parts of his bike, and he makes sooo many mistakes while navigating through the streets. He is accompanied by Kleo the seagull who lectures him about everything he does wrong. At the end of the game, you have to puzzle the bike pieces together and complete a little obstacle course.

    I absolutely loved this game as a kid because there were so many things to discover, e.g. you would get different scenes playing out depending on the direction from which you entered the next screen. The traffic education part probably played a role too, but I was more enamored with the town and its characters and all.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrBHrn40-4k

22. “Kalle kunskap” is a series of i don’t know how many educational games for diferent ages that I grew up.

    The two I remember espesially mush is one with an abanden amusement park theam and the other one being “Kalle kunskap lär dig engelska” (Kalle knowledge teach you english) where you help a paintbrush prinnses with something I don’t remember around her kingdom that only speak english.

23. There is a series of computer games about the educational kids show Löwenzahn. Alos Oskar der Ballonfahrer is a game about a young boy with a hot air balloon teaching kids about animals and their habitats and their change in behaviour in accordance to the seasons.

24. When I was in childcare, there was an English learning game that I played daily. I don’t remember the name but I know that I knew more about English than Turkish until end of first grade. Also, I had subscription to National Geographic Turkey and Discovery Turkey which both had coupon for games and CD/DVD related to that year’s issue. I remember having around 24 games and videos from them in a year. One of the games was about dinosaurs other one was about our galaxy and solar system. I am not sure about this one if it is national level but Toyota had some game made for traffic rules for our school. You can drive a car or be a pedestrian around a city learn about the rules and be familiar with how to react. It was cool a game. Other than I went to a sports summer school with they taught us basic computer then online Pokémon game.

25. When I was growing up in the 2000s we had a bunch of magazines with cd games inside of them that you could buy from kiosks, among them Reksio games were the most popular, the main series was a point and click adventure, but it later had spin offs with educational mini games such as:

    [Mathematics and Reksio/ Matematica si Reksio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XYZwx7N2i4)

    [Reksio and spelling/ Reksio si ortografia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paaeWh8Tfjc&t=189s)

    You also had magazines with mini games about some famous books like:

    [Robin Hood](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyufHpyiJ7Q)

    [Robinson Crusoe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7WF8pJ1S2Y)

    Also some random stuff about music with

    [Dragons save music land/ Dragonii salveaza tara muzicii](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c94V5Q_iniU)

    I think these are all originally Polish games that were later adapted in Romanian, not 100% sure if there are some originals as well. [Here is an old websites where you can check out how the Magazines looked like](https://ercpress.com.ro/default.php?p=browse&clid=40&pn=4)

26. Suomen Linnut CD-Fakta. “Birds of Finland”.I used to play it so much. Unfortunately I have already forgot most of what I learned from it.
    Alao Propilkki, ice fishing game. I learned what things you need to consider when going ice fishing. Like what are the best spots (how deep is the lake, where are the currents etc). I just didn’t care about ice fishing in real life too much so I never used that information on anything.

27. Don’t remember the year but it must have been early 2000’s , one of polish newspapers had a free addition of “[moja droga do szkoły](https://allegro.pl/oferta/moja-droga-do-szkoly-13579849989?reco_id=79428876-fca5-11ed-97df-426245eacc58&sid=0e7a5475e04eefd78184d559df6fb9f87c889ad5ac94196dac75ac99722370c3&bi_s=archiwum_allegro&bi_c=Product&bi_m=reco&)” aka “my road to school” It was CD with games, instructional videos and songs, all with very basic graphic teachung you about things like street signs, looking both ways before entering the crossroad et. Etc.

28. Yep, the one I remember best are the [Löwenzahn](https://www.zdf.de/kinder/loewenzahn) PC-games. Loved the show (back then with Peter Lustig), and the games were a lot of fun. Taught me super unteresting stuff, like Star Constellations, Anima Hibernation, how fifferent Biomes are formed, etc.

    Some minigames also creeped me waay out, like one where you had to traverse a swamp at night, or one where you go swim down into the depths of the ocean.