The Muncher Series

Edutainment games can be a tricky thing to create. A company can’t just slap this year’s popular character on a title, add a little educational material, and expect to get game of the year. This, of course, hasn’t stopped some from trying, as the existence of both Mario is Missing! and Sonic’s Schoolhouse proves. No, in order for these kind of games to work, they need to be… well, entertaining as well as educational. They need to be able to keep someone enthralled in the game to the point that the fact that they’re learning something is almost forgotten.

The games I’m the fondest of are the Munchers games, a series developed by the Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation (MECC,) perhaps better known for their infamous “You have died of dysentery” Oregon Trail, released this series of games from between 1985 to 1991 for the Apple II, Macintosh, and MS-DOS computer systems. I do remember playing one of them, either Word or Number Munchers, at school during my 3rd Grade year and then receiving both from my parents as presents. I put a lot of time into them, at least until I found Commander Keen and other Apogee-published franchises.

The gameplay for basically every game in the series a fairly straightforward. The player controls the frog-like Muncher around a grid, gobbling up the correct answers to the objective at the top of the screen. Periodically, spherical-shaped monsters called Troggles will enter the grid to try to eat the Muncher, with each kind of Troggle having their own gimmick. Clearing the grid of correct answers advances to the next level, with the Troggles getting progressively faster as the game progresses. The game is essentially endless like many classic arcade games, with the game ending if the player runs out of lives or decides to quit.

After every third stage, a short cutscene plays, usually done in a style similar to the Road-Runner and Wile E. Coyote shorts. The shorts can vary based on which version of the game is being played, with the Apple II and MS-DOS versions of Word Munchers have identical themes while the versions of Number Munchers being different. Some of these cutscenes are even themed, with the Apple II version of Number Munchers featuring a series called “Moments in Muncher History” and “Muncher Olympiad” for Fraction Munchers.

Super Munchers, the fourth game in the series, adds a few new gimmicks to gameplay. The topics covered are things like people, animals, or planets rather than math and vocabulary. Digesting correct answers fills up a “Munchmeter” that, when filled, allows the Muncher to become the near-invincible Super Muncher. The Munchmeter gradually decreases over time as long as answers aren’t being gobbled, and the Muncher brought down to normal if it becomes empty or if an incorrect answer is munched.

A sequence of mini-games replace the skits in Super Munchers. These games follow Super Muncher’s hunt for the nefarious Dr. Frankentroggle and are usually a fairly simple memory game. Failing these games only means that the game will have to be played again after three more rounds. Completing all these games will show one final scene with Dr. Frankentroggle, after which the mini-games start from the first.

The main Munchers series did have one spin-off game, Troggle Trouble Math. I have not played this game myself, though what little I do know of the game is that it is a major departure from the classic Muncher games and much more story oriented. The Muncher is supposedly abducted by aliens, and its up to Sparky the Math Dog to find him. Gameplay revolves around exploration, with the educational material being word problems and equations.

MECC later did remakes of sorts with the (Mega) Muncher Deluxe series, which I actually do own but have only played briefly. The gameplay is virtually unchanged, with only the grid a little smaller and a character dropping a cookies that give invincibility being the main difference. The games feel munch… err, much zanier than the classics as well, with the Muncher having a permanent sugar high and the classic Troggles being replaced with less generic but rather bizarre ones. There is a bit of spoken dialog as well, which I feel can be a little obnoxious. The Deluxe version of the Muncher seemed to have become the company mascot up until MECC shut its doors in 1999.

The Muncher series was one of my favorite game series I played when I was a kid, and when I played them again for the purpose of doing this review, I found myself enjoying them once again. The biggest problems with the games is some outdated data and being incompatible with current systems. However, free software emulators like DOSBox can help deal with this issue, and there’s plenty of places to play the games online. If you’re interested in a few entertaining edutainment games, the Munchers series is worth checking out.

Muncher Games on the Internet Archive

Number Munchers
Super Munchers

Number Munchers
Word Munchers
Fraction Munchers

CaptObvious42

While he most definitely doesn’t live in his parents’ basement, CaptObvious42 is otherwise the very definition of a nerd. He’s a fan of many things considered retro, with his biggest obsessions being science fiction series both known and obscure, detective shows mostly out of the 80’s and 90’s, video games mostly from the Genesis/SNES years, and dinosaurs.