Chronogamer - Math Fun (Intellivision, 1980)

RSS Bot · April 16, 2009

Math Fun (Intellivision, 1980)

Wow, it was hard to find the instructions for this from internet sources! The Intellivision Lives site only has instructions for the Learning Fun I cartridge, which has instructions for two different games. As far as I can tell there's only one game on this cart and it's called Math Master.

The Math Master, surprisingly, must be the ape that runs down the screen towards other animals. It's up to you, the player to solve problems so that the animals move out of our primate cousin's way. (Yes, the principle of "common descent" means that every living thing on Earth is related to every other living thing on Earth, so it's our cousin, but I digress...) So the math problem pops up and you enter the answer using the Intelly keypad. The cool and interesting thing about the input, is that as you put the numbers in they show up as if you were doing the problem on paper.

The problems are displayed in vertical manner. There's probably a "math" term for that, but I don't recall what it is. Anyway, the problems are setup the way you'd see them in grade school, and you'd have to work them out like you would on paper. So if you were to see 12 (on the top) x 6 (on the bottom) you'd have to type the 2 first and then the 7. It actually makes sense and makes it easier to do the addition, subtraction and multiplication problems. It also makes sense because they reverse the input direction it for the division problems. With division, you'd write the answer starting with the larger columns first, so with 128 divided by 2, you'd type in 6 and then 4. Though if the problem were 64 times 2 you'd type the number in 8, then 2, then 1.

Am I describing this well enough? Sorry, I don't have time for a second draft.

Anyway, there are multiple difficulty levels, though I wasn't able to figure them out completely. The Learning Fun documentation says there are 18 levels. But I could only get different colors of the numbers 1, 2 or 3 to show up. I got different colors to show up by proceeding the entry with a press to either 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. This would change the color of the cursor and make it possible to type in that color of 3, 2, or 1. Since there were five different colors for 1 and 2 and four different colors for 3, that makes, what, 14 numbers?

I don't know if it was like that in the original game or not. I was playing a "rev. input" ROM on my Cuttle Cart 3 (awesome piece of hardware. Love it) because my original Math Fun cart was either broken or just plain won't play on my Intellivision II. Anyway, if "rev. input" means "revised input" then I'll probably never know what the original cart was like.

Some of the problems (particularly reached by setting problem level to "5-red" and then either 2 or 1) could get tough. You can have up to 99 problems in a game. The first few would start out with simple division or multiplication but then it would start throwing out 79 x 78 or 27 x 39. I'm sorry, I can't do those in my head anymore (basically, I do the math for the 9 times 27 and then do the 3 times 27x10 and then plan to add it to the first product I got for 9 times 27, but then I forget what I got for that. That's just an example, but there were a bunch like that). I guess I just need more practice, or an abacus.

The "game play" is really more of a "dramatization". The gorilla, with no control exerted by you, comes down the screen on one side of the river. (player two is on the other side) He runs into an animal and stops. A problem pops up. You get it right, the animal gets out of the way. You get it wrong and the ape jumps into the river, where he encounters more animals and math. The math gets easier in the river, but if you get it right you're back on the land again encountering tougher problems.

The graphics for the animals are recognizable. I saw bears and kangaroos on land, as well as cat- and antelope-like beasts. In the water, I only saw hippos and crocs. Maybe they were trying to encourage me to stay out of the water by reducing the variety of life available in that environment.

All in all, as a math program a teacher might give a good student to play as a reward (in the early 80s), it was mildly amusing and did give me problems I had to concentrate (harder than I'd care to admit) to solve. As a videogame given to a child by her well-meaning parents, oh god, no. This would be one of those "play your Math Fun before you watch TV" games parents could use to discourage children from watching TV.

Anyway, I'll inflict Backgammon on myself next time. 30443

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