Five Bizarre Educational Games

When my parents got our first computer in the late ‘80s, they were absolutely certain that I would use it to do homework. It wasn’t just a big grey machine on which to play Dizzy and Roland on the Ropes; it was a powerhouse of educational advantage that would allow me to do all kinds of things. In reality, I didn’t do much learning at all, but that’s not to say that software houses didn’t also believe that computers and videogames consoles would be a perfect place for kids to learn. Some of the educational software released over the years has earned a place in our hearts, but that’s a story for another day. Today, I present to you, five of the most unusual, strangest, and darn-right odd pieces of edutainment.  

Typing of the Dead

This is probably the most well-known on this list. Typing of the Dead took Sega’s famous House of the Dead series and replaced the guns with keyboards. The story and gameplay were pretty similar to the first game in the series, but instead of shooting zombies with a lightgun, you had to type the words they were carrying before they bit your face off. The fact that the protagonists of the game had their weapons replaced with odd-looking keyboard harnesses was of course the cherry on top. 

I had always assumed that this game was created to show off the Dreamcast’s keyboard accessory, but actually, it was an arcade game a couple of years before. Apparently, Sega’s WOW Entertainment was just bonkers! The cabinet featured two full-sized keyboards in order to allow two players to type side-by-side. Given that it had to stand out against some real arcade classics like Crazy Taxi, Metal Slug X, and Point Blank 2, it was a bold move to have a cabinet that looked like the office cubicle from hell, but it worked, and the home versions later went on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies amid huge critical praise. 

Zombie Dinos from the Planet Zeltoid

The CD-i from Panasonic is often touted as being one of the worst game consoles of all time. I’ve got a bit of fondness for this piece of gaming history however and I’ve always disputed this description. Not because it didn’t have some truly awful games, it totally does, but because it’s not really a games console. Games were actually seen as being a rather small part of the CD-i’s capabilities initially, with Panasonic choosing instead to focus on multimedia aspects such as Video CDs, interactive music, and educational software. Because of this, the machine has a whole wealth of insane learning titles, especially in its home country of The Netherlands.

Zombie Dinos from the Planet Zeltoid is one of these titles, which mixes computer graphics, puppetry, and real-life actors to teach children about dinosaurs. Mainly it’s a lot of “click here to find out a fact”, followed by a quiz. Oh, and there are zombie dinosaurs digitally added into stock footage of Earth, because why not? It’s one of the most nineties-sounding games too, a hair-metal style soundtrack and characters with “attitude” saying things like “rad” and “kapish” every few minutes cement it firmly in that period of time where Sonic the Hedgehog and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles were all the rage. 

 

Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon

I learned about this game through this very website when our editor dabbled with it as part of our “So I Tried” series. It's a crazy piece of anti-smoking education from the creator of the Mega Drive versions of Pac-Mania and WWF Raw. It wasn’t released in my country, but this North American release for the SNES isn’t one of the region-exclusive titles that I particularly pine for.  

It’s essentially a collection of mini-games based around the titular protagonist, who has been shrunk down to tiny proportions in order to cleanse the inside of the CEO of a tobacco company. Other employees from said company are keen to keep Rex silent, so they’re trying to kill him whilst he’s inside their glorious leader and if that sounds confusing it’s only because it is. Rex has to blow up cancerous cells and clean teeth, all the while defending himself from “microbots”. Studies suggested that, apparently, it did encourage children to learn more about the harmful effects of tobacco, so at least there’s that. 

Granny’s Garden

From a US exclusive, to a British one. This was a staple inclusion in British schools in the mid to late ‘80s, usually played on the BBC micros that were ubiquitous in classrooms back then. It’s a relatively simple adventure game that asks children to practice reading and spelling skills, participate in basic logic puzzles, and save some missing children from being eaten by a witch with the aid of a talking mushroom and some kind of goat that eats keys.

I’m pretty sure that “Granny” is the witch, but I don’t think the game ever really tells you that. It’s a fairly early example of moon logic in games, and even replaying it as an adult, I found some of the puzzles a bit obtuse. And replaying it as an adult is perfectly possible, as around 40 years on, 4Mation games still sells it on its website! If you remember being traumatised by the low-resolution witch as a child, then you can subject your own children to a hand-drawn modern version of that same trauma for just £15.  

Catch the Sperm

There are plenty of games that feature sex as a selling point, but there aren’t that many that use sex education. This mobile title from Phenomedia was released for the UNICEF and Swiss Federal Office Of Public Health’s campaign “Stop AIDS”, which was intended to… well, stop AIDS I guess. Apparently, you can do this by firing condoms directly at individual sperm. Given that the average human ejaculation can contain anything up to 750 million sperm, this seems a rather wasteful way to do it and I can’t help thinking that perhaps using them as intended might be more efficient.

Just in case this wasn’t strange enough already, there were various official theme packs released for it, featuring themes like Carnival, Christmas, or Swiss Football. In the early days of the game, it was possible to register high scores for a chance to win a mouse mat featuring fake sperm suspended in liquid. You couldn’t make this up, although I honestly wish I was. 

So there you are, five games that probably traumatised, amused, or confused children across the ages. With computers being ever-present in our modern lives, it absolutely makes sense to encourage kids to do some learning while they play; but perhaps the games on this list might not be the best examples of that.