Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

Spring cleaning is always a difficult task especially when it comes to much loved and sentimental items. Things that bring back memories you value, but are unlikely to be valued or their significance understood by the next generation. Today was a sad day, for today I was persuaded to place some memorable software items that had laid in a forgotten hidey-hole in my study for years on ebay, in the hope that they are seen as collectors’ items and cherished as such.

It was at BETT ‘88 that I first saw the Manhole running on a Macintosh SE on the Apple stand. I’d been interested in the concept of the educational application of ‘interactive fiction’ for a few years, had played text versions of this genre, and even used them in the classroom. I’d also experimented with HyperCard and had copies of simple stories such as “Indigo gets out” by Amanda Goodenough build in this free authoring environment for the Mac. But this was different, the Manhole was entirely graphical and critically, had no purpose other than to enable the user to explore the environment it presented. Its many allusions to characters, books and stories (such as Alice through the Looking Glass, The Chronicles of Narnia and Jack and the Beanstalk) meant the learner had clues with regard to navigation, but the resulting journey was unexpected as it did not follow the story. I had to buy it, even though I needed to upgrade my Mac Plus to run it. Mine therefore was the original floppy disk distribution, although the Manhole became the first computer game to be distributed on CD ROM in 1989.

In 1989, I bought the next creation by Rand and Robyn Miller, Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds beyond the Mackerel. You still explored the environments presented, but unlike the Manhole, access to those environments required thought and critical problem solving. The user had to discover how to fly Cosmic Osmo’s spacecraft, before getting to a planet. However, clever shortcuts were employed to ’space shift’ from one planet to another, exciting your curiosity and challenging the spacial map that you built up in your mind.

Finally, Spelunx and the Caves of Dr Seudo came out. This was again set in strange environments with links between them. This time the Miller brothers provided specific activities that related to educational concepts, such as the pet lizard, where you could alter its environment and see how it reacted (even died if you fed it too much), or the Lightning Simulator, which illustrated the speed of light and sound.

The story of black and white multimedia (or Hypermedia, as it was called at the time after HyperCard), can be found here, while some of those early games live on in “hyperspace” on the site, Gametap. Where you’ll find the Manhole and Spelunx in their later colour and PC only (unfortunately) versions.