Real talk: I think learning is always fun. (Yes, I am absolutely a Ravenclaw. Why do you ask?) But when it’s a literal game? Then it’s even better, especially when you’re a kid. This is probably why there were so dang many fantastic educational '90s computer games — the rise of home computing (and, by extension, the rise of computing in the classroom) during the 1990s opened up a whole world of possibilities, including tons of ways to make learning a blast for the up-and-coming generations. And you know what? These games are still fun. And yes, I say that as a fully grown adult; don't knock going back and replaying the games you loved when you were 10 until you've tried it. Seriously.

As is often the case with the things we remember from the '90s, a lot of the games those of us who grew up during the decade filled our days with were originally developed and released long before the ‘90s. That's perhaps the reason '80s babies also have a certain degree of fondness for them; many of them actually dated back to the decade in which we were born. Some were part of long-running series, while still more of them received a number of remakes and reboots as technology improved. Though the graphics may be laughable now, just remember — once upon a time, they were the pinnacle of technological achievement.

So, in the spirit of nostalgia, here are 15 computer games from the ‘90s that made learning incredibly fun. Most of them are available to play on the internet now, so in these cases, I’ve also included links to where they can be found — frequently either an app store or the Internet Archive’s glorious collection of browser-based, emulated DOS games.

Oct 16, 2016  Kid's Typing is an educational game of Sierra. 90s Disney Interactive Computer Games (Windows and Mac) - Retro Game Review - Tamashii Hiroka - Duration: 20:02. TamashiiHiroka Recommended for you.

Have fun, kids!

1. Number Munchers and Word Munchers

The Munchers series was created by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium — or, under a name with which you might be more familiar, MECC. I don’t know about you, but I have vivid memories of seeing those four letters scrawled across a huge number of the educational games I played at school; the company dated back to 1973 and was also responsible for games like the business simulator Lemonade Stand and the storytelling game Storybook Weaver.

The Munchers series' conceit was simple: They taught kids the basics of math and grammar. Number Munchers was originally released in 1990 for the Apple II, while Word Munchers had arrived a few years earlier in 1985. Gameplay-wise, both series functioned kind of like a turn-based version of Pacman; the object WAS to “eat” all of the numbers or words that correspond to the instructions on the screen (multiples of five, etc.) without getting caught by a Troggle.

What exactly are Troggles? No idea, but they're insatiable.

2. Math Blaster!

The original Math Blaster! was released in 1983 by the now-defunct developer Davidson & Associates, but it wasn’t until the ‘90s rolled around that the series really hit its stride. Between 1990 and 1999, a whopping 20 games were released in the Blaster Learning System — and somewhat astonishingly, a few more follow-ups trickled out between 2000 and 2008. Math wasn't the only subject addressed by the series; Reading Blaster!, for example,taught language arts. A Science Blaster! Jr. was also released at one point, but due to lack of popularity, it was the only entry in the series to tackle science-based topics.

Math Blaster! is available to play online now; additionally, a bunch of ports of the math-teaching game arrived as Android apps in October of 2013, so the series appears to be alive and well (if somewhat frozen in time).

3. Scooter’s Magic Castle

Like many early computer games, Scooter’s Magic Castle consisted of a relatively large environment full of what we now call mini-games. Released under Electronic Arts’ EA*Kids umbrella in 1993, the game involved players either assuming the role of or simply helping out an elf-like creature wearing a blue tunic, red sneakers, and a red baseball cap turned backwards (the '90s!) as they worked their way through a variety of activities. These activities were designed to teach everything from problem-solving to typing; you could even make terrible MIDI music by jumping up and down a set of colorful stairs.

Scooter's Magic Castle also has a super earworm-y theme song, so if you now have it stuck in your head for the rest of the day… sorry. My bad.

4. The Carmen Sandiego Series

No list of educational ‘90s computer games would be complete without an appearance by this mysterious, trench-coated criminal mastermind. The four major entries in the series — Where in the World, Where in the U.S.A., Where in Europe, and Where in Time — were all first released by Broderbund between 1985 and 1989; the deluxe versions of Where in the World and Where in the U.S.A., however, came along in 1992 and 1993, and as a result, it’s those versions that most ’90s kids remember so fondly. There was no better way to learn geography — and hey, Where in the World deluxe is playable at the Internet Archive, so it looks like I just figured out what I’m doing with myself this weekend.

Fun fact: A Facebook version of Where in the World was available to play in 2011; I’m not sure how I missed it, but it stuck around until 2012.

5. Kindercomp

I’m really dating myself here, but Kindercomp is probably the first computer game I remember playing. Initially released in 1983 by Spinnaker Software Corporation, it was exactly the kind of game that appealed to very young children: It consisted of six mini-games that taught kids their way around a keyboard by having them draw pictures, match pairs, and other simple activities. The one I remember is the 1984 version, but the Internet Archive has a whole bunch of ‘em available, so knock yourselves out. If you have a kid in your life who's around 3 years old, it might be a fun time to play with them!

6. Mario Teaches Typing

As a child in a house full of gamers, naturally I adored Mario Teaches Typing, which first hit the scene in the early '90s. One of a number of educational Mario games released between 1988 and 1996, it put the pixelated plumber to good work teaching us how to type. Hitting the correct key would prompt Mario to hit blocks, jump on Koopa Troopas, and more. Nintendo had almost no hand in the development of these games (a far cry from the tight hold the company tends to keep on the reigns of its properties nowadays), but they proved popular all the same.

I’ll be honest, though: I actually learned how to type by frequenting chat rooms. As a result, I can type an impressive number of words per minute; however, I definitely don’t use the “correct” fingers. Ah well. Whatever works, right?

7. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing

Mario was second perhaps only to Mavis Beacon in the world of beloved typing programs — and what’s more, it’s still around: The first version debuted in 1987, and it has remained in production, continuing to get new and improved updates, pretty much ever since. You can download it for free right now if you like.

I was, by the way, absolutely devastated to learn recently that Mavis Beacon isn’t a real person. She was invented to give a face to the program in an era when human people weren't regularly associated with computer and video games (everything is a lie). 1985's The Chessmaster 2000had shown how effective putting a real person on the cover of a computer game could be; the wizard on the box was played by actor Will Hare, reported Vice in 2015. Mavis became the next incarnation of this strategy, as depicted by Renee L'Esperance.

8. 3D Dinosaur Adventure

Launched by Knowledge Adventure in 1993, 3D Dinosaur Adventure was little more than a glorified encyclopedia specializing in what we knew about dinosaurs at the time (much of which has since been determined to have been terribly, terribly wrong, even if the brontosaurus did make a triumphant comeback in 2015). That didn’t matter, though, because dinosaurs.

Also contained within 3D Dinosaur Adventure was a mini-game called 'Save The Dinosaurs' — which, to be perfectly honest, was downright terrifying. It required players to make their way through a series of maze-like hallways to find and rescue 15 types of dinosaurs before time ran out — and by 'before time ran out,' I mean 'before the comet that wiped out all of the dinosaurs crashed into the Earth, while you and the dinos were still on the planet.'

No pressure.

9. Odell Lake

Like the Munchers series, Odell Lake was created by MECC and therefore a fixture for many an elementary school computer lab. It debuted in the early 1980s, but it stuck around for long after that; it’s why so many of us ‘90s kids remember playing it when we were young.

In all honesty, it wasn’t really that exciting — all you did was swim around as a fish, trying to figure out whether you should eat, ignore, or run away from every other fish you encountered. I’m also not totally clear on why this was classified as an educational activity; Giant Bomb suggests it taught kids about food chains and predator/prey relationships, but I... clearly did not get that takeaway from it. But hey, I suppose survival skills are important, too, right?

Odell Lake is a real place, by the way; it’s in Oregon. Just, y’know, FYI.

10. Reader Rabbit

You know the old saying, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it? That’s pretty much the Reader Rabbit series in a proverbial nutshell: It’s so effective at teaching kids to read and write that it’s survived all the way since the first game launched in 1984. There's a huge list of Reader Rabbit titles scattered throughout educational computing history; at the series' height in the late '90s, six to seven titles in the line were being released each year. The output has since tapered off, of course, but the remarkable thing is that it's still around.

The last major PC release for a Reader Rabbit game was in 2010, but a number of titles have debuted since then as iOS apps. Many of the games are also, of course, available to play online courtesy of the Internet Archive.

11. Mixed-Up Mother Goose

Mixed-Up Mother Goose didn't have a ton of replay value; the point was to sort out all of the nursery rhymes that had gotten 'mixed up' and put them back in order, so after you did that once, your work there was done. However, the world in which the game existed was so delightful that I played it over and over again as a small child. Released by Sierra in 1987, with a handful of remakes appearing at regular intervals throughout the ‘90s, it was a point-and click adventure game that encourage problem-solving; it also gets bonus points for having tons of relatively diverse avatar options — something which was even rarer back then than it is now. (And, y'know, it's still a problem decades later, so that's... really saying something.)

12. Super Solvers: Treasure Mountain

I’ll be honest: I actually have no recollection of playing 1990’s Treasure Mountain, Treasure Cove, or any of the other Treasure titles in this series. Many other people seem to remember these games fondly, though, so I think they deserve an inclusion here. Like many educational games, 1990's Treasure Mountain — a creation of The Learning Company, like the Reader Rabbit series — involved solving riddles that led you to keys that unlocked each successive level. You also collected treasure as you went, returning it to the chest at the top of the titular mountain once you got there. A prize was awarded for depositing the treasure back into the chest.

Treasure Mountain and Treasure Cove both focused on general reading comprehension and basic math skills; however, other entries in the Super Solvers series tackled more specialized skill sets, including deductive reasoning and logic.

13. The Dr. Brain Series

Admittedly, I never played the fourth game in Sierra On-Line's long-running Dr. Brain series, and I wasn’t a big fan of the third — but the first two? Classic. The Castle of Dr. Brain, released in 1991, and the follow-up, 1992’s The Island of Dr. Brain, were a step up from a lot of the other puzzle-solving games out there; they were geared towards slightly older kids, so there was more to each puzzle than simply picking a matching shape or selecting the next number in a sequence. We’re talking intense logic puzzles that might stump even some adults.

Sierra merged with another educational game company, Bright Star Technology, following the release of The Island of Dr. Brain; the franchise was then handed over to a team from Bright Star, which might explain why 1995's The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain and 1996's The Time Warp of Dr. Brain were so different from the first two entries in the series.

14. Eagle Eye Mysteries

Like Scooter’s Magic Castle,1993’s Eagle Eye Mysteries and 1994’s Eagle Eyes Mysteries in London came to us courtesy of the now sadly defunct EA* Kids division of Electronic Arts. Unlike Scooter’s Magic Castle, though, they were meant for an older crowd. The games followed siblings Jake and Jennifer Eagle as they solved mysteries throughout first their hometown, then in London not — unlike a modernized, digital version of Encyclopedia Brown. If you were a pint-sized fan of whodunnits, this was the game for you; it helped you learn how to piece together different pieces of information until a complete picture emerged. A valuable skill to have, I feel.

15. Oregon Trail

Ah, yes: Oregon Trail, the game responsible for countless deaths by dysentery, many drownings of oxen who tried and failed to ford the river, and a plethora of memes. For anyone who grew up playing it, it's the gift that keeps on giving.

Speaking of people who grew up playing it, perhaps unexpectedly large swathe of the population falls into this category. Originally developed in 1971 and launched by MECC in 1974, roughly 20 versions of the game have been released since then — the most of which, believed it or not, arrived in 2018 as a handheld game similar to the Tiger Electronics games a lot of '80s kids grew up playing. Ostensibly, it taught kids what it was like to travel the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon in 1848; practically speaking, though, it mostly taught us about frustration.

Also: Never ford the river. Always caulk your wagon and float it.

Your oxen will thank you.

This article was originally published on

• Action adventure (240)
• Adventure (1336)
• Amiga (1112)
• Arcade action (3229)
• Board (185)
• Educational (643)
• Non-English (96)
• Puzzle (687)
• Role playing (668)
• Simulation (1057)
• Sports (1010)
• Strategy (1607)
• Utility (43)

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea1995
Professor Aronnax, his faithful servant, Conseil, and the Canadian harpooner, Ned Land, begin an extremely hazardous voyage to rid the seas of a little-known and terrifying sea monster. However, the 'monster' turns out to be the giant submarine, Nautilus, commanded by the mysterious Captain Nemo, by whom they are soon...

2005: A Game of Macroeconomics2001
2005: A Game of Macroeconomics is an excellent free game that achieves what many expensive releases have tried and failed: teach basic concepts of macroeconomics in an accessible and fun package. Designed by N. Gregory Mankiw, one of the US' most famous economists, 2005 is designed as a supplementary material...

3D Atlas '981997

3D Body Adventure1994
This game is an interactive adventure through the human body. You can zoom down the spinal column, watch blood cells flow through veins, and climb down the brain all in the same day. An interactive encyclopedia helps you understand different things relating to the human body that you might not...

3D Thinking Lab1998
An educational game for ages 8-12, 3D Thinking Lab trains students to visualize solids. Lessons range from the easy (Is this shape a cylinder?), to the complex. (Which of these unfolded hexagonal prisms match this shape?) There are 26 lessons included, as well as Dr Gee's Solid Shifter Machine,...

911 Paramedic2002
This medical crisis game brings the stylized life and death drama of Legacy Interactive's Emergency Room games to the unpredictable city streets of Los Angeles. Through 35 missions, players take the role of the paramedics who provide the crucial first professional treatment to victims injured on the streets and sidewalks...

A to Zap!1995
Hours of learning fun! The Sunbuddies will captivate your children as they learn important early learning concepts. Twenty-six different activities provide hours of fun. ...

A.J.'s World of Discovery1992
Who's this little fellow on our screen? He's A.J., that's who. And he's about to invite you to his own 'World of Discovery'. A.J.'s World of Discovery is an educational game where kids can play numerous mini-games: an Arkanoid clone; a funny face maker, where you can freely change facial features or randomly...

ABC Fun Keys1989
Educational game where you have to go through different leves with word games. Actual fun made. ...

Advanced DOS Quiz1991
Advanced DOS Quiz, the successor of DOS Quiz is a game that tests your knowledge of DOS commands. It is also suitable for companies who want to test their employees although the author suggests that it is too advanced for a normal office environment. The quiz itself consists of a normal...

Advanced Thinking Skills1992
This game is basically an IQ test to train the brain, comprised of a series of questions drawn from five different categories (Odd one out, Shapes, Building Blocks, Dominoes, and Number Sequences). There are only fifteen minutes to complete the test or players can choose to practise one of the...

Adventure of Hyperman, The1995
When Emma C. Squared unknowingly released the villainous Entrobe from the particle prison, Hyperman flew to the scene. Unfortunately, the scientific savior is a little confused about the way things work on Earth, and needs some help navigating the environment in order to capture Entrobe before he destroys the planet....

Adventure With Oslo: Tools and Gadgets1994
Five programs in one! An animated storybook about a llama named Dolly who is constantly requiring rescue by Jimmy who turns into the many shapes of simple machines; An adventure game taking you on a search of Tooltown and the Valley of Machines for clues and a surprise ending; A Coloring Gallery featuring...

Adventures in Math1983
In Adventures in Math the player takes the role of a treasure hunter who explores a castle. The goal of the game is to find the exit while earning as much points as possible. Points are rewarded for picking locks and finding treasures. To achieve these tasks the player has...

Adventures of Batman & Robin Cartoon Maker, The1995
The Adventures of Batman & Robin is fun, but the content isn't as deep as it could be, nor is it clear as to what age group this package was aimed. The activities are simple enough for a first grader, but the stories and their accompanying questions are at a...

Adventures of Busy Billy, The1996
Join Busy Billy as he gets up to all sorts of adventures - because in his World, anything can happen. You child will become the all-powerful director, creating their own fun-filled animated stories. Children will be responding to icons which represent familiar objects, so as to fulfil various tasks and...

Adventures of Valdo & Marie, The1997
The Adventures of Valdo & Marie is an educational game for kids. The player takes the role of Valdo who is aboard a 16th century Portuguese ship heading for Japan. On the journey, they will explore exotic lands and deal with pirates, sharks, and storms. The main objective of the...

Old Mac Games For Children Typing 90s Games

Aeronautics Quiz MK 2, The1991
The Aeronautics Quiz MK 2 is a shareware quiz by Martin Mielke. The game features 121 questions, appearing in a random order, about the history of flight, particular incidents of the past, especially of World War 2, or technical aspects of miscellaneous airplanes. Choosing between two or more choices the...

Aesop's Fables1994
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today. Many of the stories, such as The Fox and...

Africa Trail1997
Surviving a 12,000 mile bike trip through Africa is no mean feat, whether you do it in real life or on a computer screen. Time, money, weather and even your own health may well be against you. You start out in Tunisia with $30,000 and three companions, along with a collection...

Agent USA1984
Agent USA is a geography enhancement game that centers around a character that travels by train to different U.S. cities. The object of the game is to find the 'FuzzBomb' which turns ordinary people into 'FuzzBodies'. You plant crystals which regenerate into newer crystals, and when you build up 100...

Alcor Trivia Pro Classic Star Trek (Star-Log I)1992
The Alcor Trivia Pro Classic Star Trek (Star-Log I) is the first of ten Star Trek trivia games by The Alcor Group, Inc.. Each of them offers 150 questions about a special topic of the Star Trek universe. This one is about the adventures of the first Enterprise crew around...

Alf's Thinking Skills1988
Let the warty, mangy, cat-eating ALF teach your children the fundamentals of logic! The game is set into three lessons; the first has the child leading ALF to the Tanner household's cat Lucky, via a route of minor logic problems (such as 3 roads with stoplights, one is green... which road...

Games For Children Online

ALF's U.S. Geography1988

Alf's World of Words1988
Alf's World of Words is a companion title to Vision Software's Alf's Thinking Skills, an excellent edutainment game starring one of America's most famous children TV characters. Like Alf's Thinking Skills, AWoW was designed for preschoolers, this time to teach them the English alphabet and basic words. There are several...

Alge-Blaster 31994

Alien Tales1995
With more than 30 award-winning science-fiction novels as inspiration, this creative game gets kids into reading by getting intergalactic. Young players will try to figure out which of the novels' authors have been replaced by alien imposters answering questions about the stories. The whole thing takes place in a game...

Alphabonk Farm1994
AlphaBonk Farm is a wonderful example of applying a consistent theme to a simple subject. In this case, Headbone Interactive has used a farm and everything one might expect to find around a farm, as a frame of reference for learning the alphabet. The program opens with Farmer Bonk explaining what's...

Amanda Stories1991
AmandaStories was the very first 'point-and-click' program for kids. Not only is there a strong narrative--in ten separate stories Inigo explores his house, his dream, the outside world, and Your Faithful Camel ventures as far afield as the North Pole--but where you click actually determines the course of the story....

Amazing Learning Games with Rayman1996
Join Rayman in his quest to recover the Book of Knowledge which has been stolen by the evil Mr. Dark. The gameplay of the original Rayman game is still present but kids from ages 6-10 must also read, count and spell as Rayman battles his way through the landscapes. As...

Old Mac Games For Children Typing 90s Videos

©2020 San Pedro Software Inc. Contact: , done in 0.003 seconds.

Old Mac Games For Children Typing 90s Games