Games on School PCs

[paranoid marvin]

How about a feature on those games we use to play on school computers in the 80s? There were some great entertaining educational games which I'm sure the majority of us have played at some stage. There must be many which we have forgotten about , or can't remember the name of
For sure many of them are dificult to play nowadays as emulators/roms are not as readily available

(I dont think we've had such a feature before?)

[Antiriad2097]

those games we use to play on school computers in the 80s?

That would be approximately none. We weren't allowed near the computers, except for a BASIC course where there was a single Speccy and that'd be used to run the stuff we'd written. A course that taught the teacher quite a lot. We'd get a few minutes at the end to have a look at new games other kids had brought in, but they were run of the mill arcade titles, not educational stuff.

Even when my own kids were growing up I never saw an educational 'game' that looked remotely fun, so we didn't buy any. All the reviews were decidedly average at best. They did like Sonic though.

[paranoid marvin]

those games we use to play on school computers in the 80s?

That would be approximately none. We weren't allowed near the computers, except for a BASIC course where there was a single Speccy and that'd be used to run the stuff we'd written. A course that taught the teacher quite a lot. We'd get a few minutes at the end to have a look at new games other kids had brought in, but they were run of the mill arcade titles, not educational stuff.

Even when my own kids were growing up I never saw an educational 'game' that looked remotely fun, so we didn't buy any. All the reviews were decidedly average at best. They did like Sonic though.

'Edutainment' games werent much fun on home machines , but the ones on the (even then) low-spec school machines were actually quite entertaining

[retroisland]

Well we used to have immense fun on the school BBC's playing several games like Frak!, Zalaga and Granny's Garden, and also programming with languages like Logo and Comal! I've written a piece about it on my website :

http://www.retroisland.co.uk/bbc.htm

Malc

[TMR]

i don't actually remember seeing educational games on the Link 480Z or BBC Micro hardware we had... we played the odd game of Planetoid on the Beeb, but to be honest there were too many people willing to drag Spectrums or C64s into school to flatten the Snake clone on the RM kit. =-)

[psj3809]

Dont remember playing any educational games at school or in break. I think most people remember playing Frak! whenever they could when the teacher wasnt looking or during 'computer club' when you were meant to be learning but you simply loaded up Frak!

With so many games to play on my Speccy, mates C64, friends BBC i was never interested in any 'educational' games back then

[drewbar]

We had Apple II's (and clones - ? apricots) at the school I went to in Oz. I remember lining up to get a crack at Conan, Swashbuckler, Wizardy, and Ultima. Got to love the monochrome green and orange screens!
I remember playing something called Lemonade Stand in class to teach us about becoming budding young Gateses or should that be Gati?

[fgasking]

Along with Snake on the RM, I remember a little train game that a few of us used to play. We used to play Grannies Garden and Killer Gorilla, until someone broke in and pinched the Beeb

Also on the RM was some other kind of game where you are stuck in an static asteroid belt and have to enter coordinates to navigate through it, possibly you had a limited amount of lazers that you could fire too.

[Scapegoat]

Our 480Z's were networked onto a Winchester Hard Drive (a massive 20 mb iirc) and bruied deep in the file system was a Colossal Cave game and a sort of Night Rider (like the 2600 version) game.

[Confessor]

I remember having installed Leisure Suit Larry on some of the computers in the school lab. And of course, who can forget the Quick-Basic vehicle "gorilla.bas" with the apes throwing bananas at each other ?

[David]

Granny's Garden was great.

We also used to have a weekly "TV TIME" where the teacher would wheel in this old telly on a big trolley, and we would watch some dodgy BBC Schools prgramme.

Afterwards, there was always an accompanying game for the BBC Computer.

Geordie Racer was great

[merman]

Mr Ee, Repton, one of those stock market type games, and an educational one where you have to guide a canal boat through a lock...

On the Archimedes we used to get away with playing a lot of games, particularly when I was computer room monitor

[mikeb]

I seem to remember when we got an Archimedes and someone put Virus... erm I mean Zarch on.

Everyone was completely silent for about 2 minutes, which was quite unusual for a bunch of unruly schoolkids..

[JetSetWilly]

we had the Nimbus machines at my secondary school and they all had Prince Of Persia and Star Trek 25th Anniversary on them.
lost many a lunch time to both.

[luzur]

all we had in my school in the late 80's was a Compis computer (google it)
which we were allowed to play a game called "Math Labyrinth" on

in the 90's we mostly played Duke Nukem 3d