What are your reasons for turning on the console? To have a good time, to beat your friends, to get lost in a good story, to improve little by little? Nonsense: in the 90s and early 00s, there was a group of people convinced that video games should serve to educate. We could write a doctoral thesis on throwing shells or eating mushrooms to become giants, but these games aimed for us to improve in math, geography, and even sexual health. Because, of course, that’s what we all want to do after school and spending the afternoon with homework: Keep learning! Among all the tangled web of educational games in history, we have taken the trouble to choose the 5 most terrible. Those that make you think “Really, what is the need to learn things?”.
Math Grand Prix
And we start at the beginning, of course, with Atari 2600, which in 1982 launched a thrilling, unique, brutal racing game in which you competed against another player… by correctly answering math questions. Take that! If you fail, the game punishes you with a horrible sound and your car doesn’t move from its spot. If you get it right, the game rewards you with a horrible sound and you advance a little bit. Hilarious, right? Well, wait until you see it in action, because some of its extremely complex calculations are, at least at the beginning, “1+3” or “6+2”. Will you be able to beat this Mario Kart of the absolute mediocrity?
Bronkie the bronchiasaurus
Raya was a Super NES studio that was dedicated, almost exclusively, to making educational video games that are sadly well-known, such as Captain Novolin (to teach children with diabetes about their condition), Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon (which aimed to dissuade children from starting to smoke), or Packy and Marlon (also aimed at children with diabetes). But perhaps none is as strange as Bronkie the bronchiasaurus, aimed at infants with asthma… putting them in the shoes of two dinosaurs who cannot stand the smoke of San Saurian, their city, and must learn to use their inhaler. Good intentions, terrible results.
Catch the sperm
You might be wondering, “Did I read that correctly?” And the answer is yes, of course. In 2011, this mobile and PC game aimed at raising awareness about AIDS featured several characters (represented by sperm) alongside various viruses. Yes, this existed. In fact, there was even a Christmas version where the sperm passed through places decorated with Christmas trees and candles, and they even added a Santa Claus sperm. To play, the player had to shoot condoms with an imaginary gun to catch both the sperm and the viruses. I don’t know if it raised much awareness, but it is quite hilarious.
Mario is Missing
How could we leave behind the educational games of Mario for MS-DOS? Nintendo approved several of them, but the most iconic remains Mario Is Missing, where Luigi took the lead (years before Luigi’s Mansion) and searched for his brother around the globe, because Bowser had turned the Mushroom Kingdom into Earth. In each place Luigi visited, he also had to recover a mythical object from that location (the Mona Lisa in Paris, the Great Sphinx in Egypt, etc.). It tried to be the game that would end Carmen Sandiego, but it ended up being just a simple attempt.
Sonic’s Schoolhouse
And if Mario is there, we can’t leave Sonic aside, of course. In 1996, this PC game was the first in a series of educational titles… And the last one, because, although they were in development, no more ever appeared. In Sonic’s Schoolhouse, the mechanics of -mind you- Doom were revived, but in this case set in a classroom and with educational intentions: players could learn math, writing, and spelling. There was even a space for recess with minigames that resembled, to a minimal extent, what the blue hedgehog usually does! “Minimally,” indeed, is the correct word.