Among the earliest computer games I remember playing are games for which I was able to find the names of, and games whose names I simply have no idea about. I may have started with point-and-click games geared towards children, but I distinctly remember playing more adult-oriented games with my father as well. At any rate, here are some to start:
Arthur’s Birthday Party (1994), Little Critter: Grandma and Me (1992), Harry and the Haunted House (1994)
Arthur’s Birthday Party, Little Critter: Just Grandma and Me, Harry and the Haunted House were all from the Living Books series. These point-and-click games involved a page-by-page story where you could click on different parts of the page to play small animations before continuing. For example, the brass (?) American bald eagle on the top of a flagstaff would spread its wings and do a little dance to the beginning of the American anthem when you clicked on it, an apple would fall from the tree and/or produce a worm when you clicked on it, a horn would sound, and so on. They were pretty creative with the animations and you would often find something new to click on on a replay.
Just Grandma and Me was a particularly poignant game for me, since I saw even at an early age the storyline from sun-up to sundown as a parable for life and death. Basically, Little Critter and his grandma go to the beach. But where was the rest of the family: Grandpa, parents, siblings? I know that would undermine the storyline of the whole game, but it was concerning. Everyone looked way too happy.
All I remember from Harry and the Haunted House was that the kids hit a baseball into this creaky old house and somehow think that trespassing there to find the ball is a good idea. They eventually find the owner to be a pleasant person, but along the way there was one page with a painting of an old sailor, who starts singing the chorus to the song “Drunken Sailor” when you clicked on it. That made an impression on me.
Paintbox Pals: Peter Pan (1993) and Around the World in 80 days (1994).
Next up is Paintbox Pals: Peter Pan and Around the World in 80 Days. You would also follow the storylines of those classic tales that changed depending on your choices in the game, and in these games you have to solve puzzles and challenges using one of your anthropomorphic paintbox pals, a pencil, a paintbrush, an eraser, and something else. For example, Peter Pan might have to cross a river or stream, so you would use the pencil to link together a bridge, or there might be fire in the woods that you would put out with the eraser. The eraser was easiest since you would just click on something and it goes away; you didn’t have to actually draw anything. There were usually more than a couple solutions to each puzzle and outcomes to the story by picking a different Paintbox Pal each time.
The most memorable parts of Around the World in 80 Days were the Egyptian mummy and Hollywood Alien puzzles, which were both kind of frightening to me. Apparently there was also a Jungle Book version of Paintbox Pals which I never played.
Zoo Keeper (1994)
Beyond an encyclopedia of animals with collectible “fun facts” pages that I really enjoyed reading growing up, and visiting zoos in general, Zoo Keeper was probably the other game that stimulated my interest in wildlife and nature. In the game, some animals have had their habitats ruined and you have to fix that and put the culprits behind bars (ironically). Lots of animal facts and animations.
Various others
There were a number of games that I simply don’t remember the names for and only remember bits and pieces of. There was a game where you had to solve a puzzle (might have been early math) to gradually open doors featuring cubist paintings, one of which was Picasso’s Three Musicians. There was a game where you could place “stickers” of medieval or pirate characters onto backgrounds to create your own scenes. There was a game where you could grow fantastical vegetables and flowers in gardens and sell them in a market; I particularly remember trimming hedgerows into whimsical shapes and growing sunflowers with babies’ faces in them. And there was a game that I remember you could also create your own scenes with floating shapes set to music, of which one of their samples was of floating, rotating dancers from Matisse’s Dance set to exotic vocalizations.
Equally honorable mentions include Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and Swampgas, a game where you flew around the US to different states and cities in alien spacecraft. Both expanded my geographical knowledge of the US and the world.
Oh, and Ski Free, a classic.
These early games were geared towards children, but in the next MML post, I will describe my early exposure to games that were decidedly not made for children, and how that impacted me. At any rate, any game that allowed for autonomy of choice in storylines and creating scenes and arranging shapes or stickers on a palette to create new worlds was highly instrumental to my development.
