Edutainment on the Internet Archive

Here are some fun edutainment-type games, remembered from my own childhood, that my kids play in a browser on my laptop,with a mouse and keyboard.

All of these run as JavaScript apps in a DOSBOX emulator. And it's easy to accidentally exit the game, which means the DOS command "dir" comes in handy to list the files in the directory in order to find the name of the EXE file you invoke to get back into the game.

• SnapDragon (1992): Two game modes: a floodfill-only coloring book sideshow, and a main even of rearranging tiny figures/sprites around a scene and then clicking "take (save) photo for later viewing in an album." The saved photos really do persist across sessions. No reading required.


• Reader Rabbit (1987): Three simple reading exercises chained into games: pick the word that's exactly one letter different from the given word; decide whether a word is trash-or-treasure based on whether it matches a pattern like "?AP" or "CO?"; a memory tile games matching pictures to their words. Only requires reading three-letter words. Kinda dull, though.


• Reader Rabbit's Ready for Letters (1992): Click around to guide Reader Rabbit through his grandparent's house. Lots of mini-games, not a lot of actual reading required (but plenty of chances to read and so do slightly better at the games).


• Super Solvers: Treasure Mountain (1990): Wander through three levels of a mountain, snaring little elves and solving their riddles to find each key to the next level. A first grade reading level should be enough, though I help my kindergartner by me reading the riddle and him reading the multiple-choice options.


• Lemmings (1991): The original classic puzzle game. My kindergartner's still growing the reflexes and dexterity for him to advance past level six or so, but we have fun where he tells me what to do and then I do the clicking. Not all that educational, but definitely fun. Note: this doesn't auto-launch for me, I have to go through a doomed initial launch attempt, arrive at a DOS prompt, and type "lemmings" to enter the actual successful launch flow ("VGA" -⁠> "For PC Compatibles").


• Odell Down Under (1994): Pick a species of Great Barrier Reef dweller to play as, then click around eating food and avoiding predators. Requires a second-grade level of reading to really understand what's going on, though, so this doesn't get a lot of play from us right now. Some day!

(Many of the above games were published by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, MECC; hence the name of this HTML file.)