I liked Three Dog a lot more, but there isn't an argument that Mr. New Vegas is better voice acted.
edit: oh, but the best radio host is easily Rhonda, with guest Tabitha.
thatfrood's forum posts
Months ago, packing up for my return to University in the fall, I went downstairs and opened the cupboard by the family computer, the cupboard that contained all of the software we had collected over the years. Ranging back all the way to 1994, when my family first came to the United States, it was an incredible catalog of the electronic history our family had gone through.
From the installation disks of Windows 95 to the bootleg copies of Visual Studio from when my dad first began his business, it was an incredibly nostalgic and bizarrely touching display. My eyes, of course, quickly went to a very particular section of our software collection. I wasn't here for photoshop, visual studio or outdated operating systems.
I was here for video games.
There was something else, I noticed, however. Besides those games I had played at age 8 and up, there was another category of games: Educational Video Games. Carmen Sandiego. Jump Start. Reader Rabbit. Magic Schoolbus. The memories from playing those games strongly imprinted in my mind. I could still remember how absolutely horrifying I found the goo monster that would appear in one of the levels of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? I remembered the sick jamz that played on the radio of Jump Start: 1 Grade.
That was when I had a sudden, shocking, and even frightening revelation. Where were they now? Where was Reader Rabbit? Jump Start? Magic Schoolbus?
“ The original The Learning Company was founded by Ann McCormick, Leslie Grimm, and Teri Perl, three educators who saw the Apple II as an opportunity to enhance the ability to teach young children concepts of math, reading and science, along with Warren Robinett, fresh from a stint at Atari.”
contemptuously.
Reader Rabbit, though? I owe my knowledge of shapes to that dawg (rabbit).
And then I read the rest...
“The Learning Company first went public on April 28, 1992 - Morgan Stanley and Robertson, Stephens & Co. served as the lead underwriters. In 1995 TLC became the target of larger software firms interested in purchasing it. In that year a "bidding war" took place between Brøderbund and SoftKey, with the latter eventually acquiring TLC for $606 million in cash. SoftKey took up The Learning Company's name and continued acquiring other software companies including Mindscape, Inc. in March 1998 for $150 million and, ironically, former rival Brøderbund in June of the same year for $416 million. Mattel purchased the company in 1999 for $3.8 billion from the Canadian Entrepreneur Kevin O'Leary, [2] renaming it "Mattel Interactive", in what has been called one of the worst acquisitions in corporate history. [3] Mattel sold Learning Co. to Gores Technology Group, receiving $27.3 million for the unit. TLC, along with Brøderbund, is now a subsidiary of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; however, some of the acquired entertainment holdings were sold to Ubisoft. “
...
“ As of December 17, 2008, TLC closed its online store, leaving their products to be found at retail stores and other online distributors.
I wanted to choke. What was this? A joke?
Dudes, you know... maybe this is the reason cartoons are garbage and kids are morons these days. Maybe this is why Twilight is popular and Justin Bieber gets any sort of attention. Maybe it's not because the older generation always thinks the younger one is dumb, maybe it's because the younger generation is dumb. Maybe it is because something is missing.
Carmen Sandiego is missing.
For real missing.
This blog entry all started coming together one long bus-ride ago, months after my revelatory moment looking at the catalog of games from my childhood. I opened up Steam and searched my library for a game that could be played with a trackpad and the only game I saw there that was already installed was Chessmaster: Grandmaster Edition. Why I bought the game I don't know, I had a passing interest in chess and it was on sale one day, the devious power of Steam at full effect.
I booted up the game and the game greeted me with two options: to learn or to play.
This caught my interest. I was nothing resembling an impressive chess player by any means, the opportunity to learn to play was an incredibly enticing one. I was dubious, however, as to how helpful it would actually be. Most likely it was a simple tutorial on how the pieces moved.
It was not.
For the next four hours I found myself learning chess in a way that was more in depth and interactive than anything else I would have had access to. By the end of the bus ride I was actually... miraculously... interested in learning more about the game. And by learning more about the game, I mean playing more Chessmaster . My performance in chess saw real, noticeable improvement. I began playing games recreationally, and even skillfully. After I had exhausted most of the lessons in Chessmaster I continued to learn mostly from practice, though I did purchase a book on the subject, but already the videogame I had played had taught me so much about the subject that I could handle myself well on the board.
It was after that experience that I realized just how amazing video games are at teaching , and also how incredibly overlooked that fact is. I was 18 years old, and I was sitting down and playing a game to learn more. Not only that, but it was incredibly effective and very engaging.
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Video Games get a lot of bad flak from the media, and maybe there's something to it. Maybe there isn't. That isn't what this blog is about. I'm here asking a simple question:
What the fuck?
How did this happen? Where did these games go? Were they not effective? I have a hard time believing that's true, especially since my experience with them seems to point to the exact opposite. Remember when we were taught that bullshit about the types of learning? Kinetic, Auditory and Kinesthetic? Well hey, guess what is all of those things? A fucking videogame.
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