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Erika Furudo complains about how Midnight Rescue! was sanitized and made Woke when it got remade in the 90s.

#80s #90s #The Learning Company #Super Solvers #Midnight Rescue #Morty Maxwell #remake #opinion #criticism #funny #When They Cry #Umineko #umineko no naku koro ni #Erika Furudo #references

Have you played Super Solvers: Gizmos & Gadgets! (1993)?

Yes

No

I watched someone play it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onOct 1, 2024

Requested by anon

#super solvers gizmos and gadgets #super solvers #gizmos and gadgets #video games #gaming #video game polls #polls #tumblr polls #platform #puzzle #racing #educational

Looking back at this post, I'm randomly struck by something. While I generally prefer playing the updated CD versions of the Super Solvers / Treasure Land games, there often was something of an edge in the DOS versions that gets lost. Not too much of an edge since they're still educational games aimed at children, but less sanitized than the later versions.

Midnight Rescue, the first ever game in the series, is the most blatant example of this. The original DOS version has the hallways darkly lit, with the walls painted dark blue with some dark red showing beneath a veil of blackness, which along with the music creates an unsettling atmosphere of truly being in a school after it's been locked down for the night. But the CD version completely neutered this, with the place being well lit and the walls being a nice shade of salmon with light gray stone tiles beneath. The MIDI music does it no favors, as unless you have a strong sound driver it won't sound nearly as tense and eerie as it should.

Now, the Super Solvers Reading Ages 9-12 edition fixed things a little, repainting the hallway purple and swapping the light gray stone tiles with dark red bricks to make your surroundings look more intimidating again even if the lighting is still pretty strong, and the mp3 music is definitely more intense than the MIDI version. Unfortunately, it forgot to change the outside of the doors when inside rooms, which still show the salmon walls and stone tiles. Oops!

And of course, there's the matter of the robots. In the DOS version, the music stops when the robots appear, so that all you can hear is the loud, screeching noises the robots make as they come after you. This jump scare factor is gone in the CD version, where the music keeps on playing and the sounds the robots make don't come close to drowning it out.

Outnumbered is a lesser case of this. While once again the hallways are well lit up and the music keeps playing when Telly shows up, so it's less frightening than the DOS version, the MIDI music is a whole new composition that is at least still creepy and good at putting you on edge. Similarly, while the rooms in the CD version again have the outside showing through the door which isn't as scary as the pure blackness from the DOS version, the CD version of Livewire is actually scarier, moving faster and making a way more intimidating sound.

Last, there's the first three Treasure Land games. Now, these games don't really have scary set-ups like Midnight Rescue and Outnumbered, so the edge the DOS versions have are minimal, but still worth noting. In the DOS version of Treasure Mountain, the castle interior at the end of each level played is dark colored and the ladders spread far apart on a single screen, with you having to jump between ladder to ladder. But in the CD version, the ladders are all pressed against one another and you simply climb up through multiple screens.

Treasure Cove and Treasure Mathstorm, meanwhile, first suffer from lighting issues in the transition - in the DOS version of the former it's night when you reach close to the surface and dawn breaks only when you make it out of the ocean, whereas it's already day time in the CD version, while in the DOS version of the latter the sky is always night-hued whereas in the CD version it's a clear blue day. But secondly, they also suffer from plotting issues!

In the original plots of Treasure Cove and Treasure Mathstorm, the Master of Mischief is actively doing something. In the former, he has constructed the Goobie Tube to drill holes in the ocean floor so that he can collect Goobies to use in his magic, which has the side effect of releasing Goobies that pollute the ocean, and he destroyed the Rainbow Bridge so that nobody could cross to his island and stop him. In the latter, he took over the castle like he did in Treasure Mountain after using his blizzard machine, and thus is always sitting upon an icy throne at the end of each level played. Bizarrely, the CD versions change the stories. In Cove, he now just destroyed the Rainbow Bridge to prevent people from crossing to his island to stop him from doing hypothetical mischief in the future, with the Goobies now just being a part of his defense to keep the Super Seeker from recovering the bridge gems rather than a pollutant or fuel for his magic. In Mathstorm, his use of the blizzard machine is just a hit-and-run revenge prank and he otherwise does nothing in the story, meaning he's absent from the castle and you might even forget he's even in the game by the time you complete it.

So yeah, gotta give the DOS versions some respect. They weren't afraid of scaring kids!

#The Learning Company #Super Solvers #Treasure Land #Opinion #Analysis #Comparison

USA 1990

#USA1990 #THE LEARNING COMPANY #EDUCATIONAL #IBM #MACINTOSH #SUPER SOLVERS #SUPER SOLVERS CHALLENGE OF THE ANCIENT EMPIRES!#SUPER SOLVERS OUTNUMBERED!#SUPER SOLVERS MIDNIGHT RESCUE!#SUPER SOLVERS TREASURE MOUNTAIN!

#graphic design #title screen #super solvers

I want to hear your favourite edutainment games from the 90s.

Mine is MISSION T.H.I.N.K, a logic game that is probably subconsciously the reason i fell in love with programming. It may be playable at the link I attached, but always play it on my hand-me-down PowerBook G3.