I first played this game while in elementary school. Now that I have a child of my own, I found myself thinking back to the educational computer games that I played in my youth. This is the first game that I can remember playing on a Commodore 64 in school. My friends and myself would race to the one and only computer in the classroom at spare moments to get in a few minutes of playtime.
The game, as most others of its time, was a fairly simple one.
It involved moving the character (boy or girl) around a series of caves laid out much like a mine. The character would have to avoid pitfalls, scorpions and the like to advance in the game. Whenever the character fell down, a portion of the lifeline would be lost. These are symbolized as band-aids, and there are five at the start of the game. Periodically, the Word Wizard would appear and say a word for you to spell. If you got the spelling of the word correct, you received paraise and a bandaid. If you spelled the word wrong, then you received no bandaid, and the Word Wizard would tell you try again next time. When the last bandaid is used up then the game
is over.
The game uses the joystick to move around and the keyboard to key in the spelling of the words. The graphics are standard Commodore 64 fare, which is to say that it is poor by today's standards, but average or better for the time period.
Looking back, this is obviously an educational game, but as I recall, I never saw it as learning at the time, which probably means that the game was very good indeed, if it was able to get kids to learn and enjoy the experience. In my opinion, this game, and indeed, games of this era, good because they are simple, straight forward and fun. Despite the fact that technology has improved immensely in the meantime, I find that these older games retain their fun quotient in a timeless manner, unlike many newer games that don't have a lasting appeal. I also think that today's programmers should look closely at educational games of yesterday for inspiration. When I was young, I tended to choose the educational games because they were more fun than the non-educational games, while today's children seem much less likely to do so.
In closing, I want to say that this is a very good game despite its age and remains a classic for me.
