![]() What can we learn from the parable of Logic Quest 3D? It's probably regarded as a failed experiment by the industry, assuming it's even remembered the story of how something with quiet sensibilities for puzzle-solving has proven so fruitless and unprofitable compared against today's high-octane bloodless deathmatch action of DimensionM with its gigantic LAN parties for kids. But back in 1997, Logic Quest 3D was tactlessly shouting it from a car window and no one was listening. Now in 2011, Gabe Newell can say the same thing at NYU and encourage kids to make Portal levels and everyone will applaud him for his stunning insight. The cynical might claim that it was punished for believing it, while the most cynical might say few things in history are so far ahead of their time yet fuck up the landing so completely. Still, this was the rare educational game that respected a child's intelligence and their capacity for reason, paired with the controversial belief that an 8 year old child is capable of 3D level design and systems engineering. Beating the game also unlocked the level editor, a cumbersome tool that would even confuse today's game developers, much less the average child about 15 years ago. The later levels were incredibly complicated intricate networks of walls, doors and switches that reduced the mini-map to a square filled with spaghetti. Predictably, it was also the smartest one by far. So Logic Quest 3D was annoying, ugly and profoundly uncool - one of the more unpopular kids in the computer lab. Why was there a robot in a castle? Where did these oranges come from? Why play this incoherent mess when I could be shooting lasers at monsters or munching numbers? ![]() The adults were trying to trick you again!Īs for the game mechanics: You threw oranges at buttons to open doors and collected "commands" to program an agonizingly slow robot to help you. ![]() The low-fidelity architectural walkthrough engine itself wasn't the issue so much as its jarring dissonance with the lush animated cartoons of the menu screen, like a disgusting attempt at coating broccoli in chocolate. Visually, it didn't compare favorably with Doom or Quake either, a stuttering half-step above the 3D maze screensaver packaged with Windows 95. Its mouse-only, "click to move" interface was like maneuvering a shopping cart coated with Crisco - it felt a bit similar to the control scheme that Tale of Tales used in their 2009 notgame Fatale, which even they generously described as "inefficient." By 1997, many kids had already played their friend's copy of Doom or Quake with much more intuitive controls. The US government was basically training you to be a PC gamer of discriminating taste, to manage your limited computer lab time and only play the best games.Īgain, Logic Quest 3D probably wasn't one of those "best" games. That's why you may have fond memories of playing Math Blaster, Oregon Trail, Outnumbered and countless other titles developed by MECC / The Learning Company. Technology gave schools a quick and attractive fix for the kids' apparent penchant for failure. Many schools decided that the problem was the quality of teaching, that maybe we should replace the teachers with the robotic instructors from sci-fi novels - thus, the primary school computer lab was born, populated with reasonably priced Apple IIe's and games by educational software giant MECC. For most Americans, it's all they can remember now.) (In fact, the now-common narrative of "failing public schools" is fairly recent in the entire history of public education. Way back in 1983, a US government commission on education released its findings as "A Nation at Risk," which cited low test scores in accusing American public schools of failing to educate their students, which doesn't sound familiar at all. You're forgiven if you've never heard of Logic Quest 3D (even MobyGames hasn't) because it's actually a pretty awful game despite its incredibly forward-thinking educational intentions, even by the "you mean we get to play computer games during school?" metric. In 1997, before Half-Life and before Thief, someone made a mass market medieval-themed puzzle FPS with full voice acting, commandable NPCs and an integrated level editor - "for ages 8 and up."
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