Super Solvers: Challenge of the Ancient Empires! (1990)
Genres:Strategy, Platform
Themes:Educational
Story:An entry in the Super Solver series, Challenge of the Ancient Empires requires players to use problem solving skills to learn about ancient civilizations.
It was simple, it was clunky, it was barely understandable. It was one of the first (if not THE first) games I played by myself. It gave me a crash-course on history even with me hardly understanding any English back then. It taught me challenge, despair and success. Solving logic puzzles in this game made me actually score better on an IQ test (!!!)
No game since has ever been able to repeat the experience I had with this game: gaining real life skills and knowledge while playing a video game. There were some incredible people behind this that knew how to make an educational game actually work.
I now play this game with my children - let this be a testament to how impactful it is.
This is a forgotten (given the number of votes) classic, that NEEDS to be preserved on GOG, as it is still as good as it was on release and the engagement and educational value hasn't changed one bit.
We need a complete Super Solvers collection. These games were my childhood, and got me into so many subjects broadening my interests, teaching me things well before they'd be explored in school, and having fun with an actual game the whole time. These were on the better end of the Edutainment genre. Without Ancient Empires I would not of been into history growing up, and humming these tunes throughout my adulthood. Please bring it back!
One of the very first video games I ever played, I was young enough to not be able to remember how old I was when I played it.
If it weren't for this game, I would probably never have had any interest in history - this was the starting point. Though I could never fully beat the game, I at least completed "explorer" mode which was my proudest achievement until the 4th grade.
The whole super solvers series does a fantastic job of presenting fun gameplay that teaches children basic math, reasoning and language skills, and it gave me one heck of a head start once I hit school. They are very clunky and dated, but still posess significant entertainment value beyond pur nostalgia. They'd make great mobile games, if the controls could be worked out.
The whole Super Solvers collection needs to be on GOG, but Ancient Empires in particular brings back such strong memories for me....
We had this installed in our grade school computer lab. You know how computer lab back then was an excuse for kids to play Oregon Trail instead of working? We had that, too, but we also had this, and I was addicted. For reasons unknown (can anyone else report this happening in their area? Did our school in particular stand alone in just making this up?) it was installed as and colloquially referred to as just "Egypt." I can safely say "Egypt" was one of my favorite games growing up... and it took years of searching and researching to find again as an adult, since I had no idea what its actual title was! Trying to find "Egypt" on abandonware sites got me nowhere, obviously.
But here it is. Now, all we need is to put Challenge of the Ancient Empires on GOG and I can finally be that kid playing Egypt in computer lab again.
Edit: Oh, if it does make it here, please make the sound card (or lack thereof) options configurable, as well. It sounds so much better with a Tandy or whatever the rich kids had instead of the ear-splitting PC speakers, yes, but those were my experience. That will always be what that game sounded like to me. Anything else would be like those graphical upscale filters in emulators: possibly arguably improved, but no longer my experience that I remember.
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