Learn basic math skills with Number Munchers. Keep your Muncher away from the Troggles by munching on multiples, factors, prime numbers, equalities, and inequalities. If you can stay away from the Troggles and earn enough points, you'll be part of the Muncher Hall of Fame.
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This game rocks hard. Loved this game. Maybe it's why I'm good at math.
When I was a wee Vee, my favorite color was purple. These days I grew into a pink boy, but I think I have an idea for why it was originally my favorite. Back in Kindergarten we had our own folders that sat at our tables, we would open them to find little laminated pieces of paper in them with colors pertaining to what activities we would be doing for the day. Purple was the one I always hoped for, because it meant I would be computer labbing for about half an hour.
As you would imagine, Number Munchers was among the games I would play on my class's shitty Apple IIs. You're probably thinking, "wow what tomb did you recently crawl out of? You old Vee!!!! GO BACK TO YOUR SHUFFLE BOARD YA OLD LADY!!! State of your American education system using 20 year old PCs!!!" It's probably true we used Apple IIs due to low budget, but honestly Apple IIs survived for a while and I wanna say the ones we used were kinda nice looking, granted it's been too damn long for me to even recall the last time I actually ate breakfast, and please don't call me old, I am a healthy 21 year old thank you very much.
For the younger folk at large who make up 98% of this website, this is basically an arcade game akin to Pac-Man combined with the goal of educating the ins and outs of numbers such as multiples, equations, and prime numbers. This is handy for me, because newsflash! I'm not a very smart person, at least in the numbers sense. Wandering a 5x6 square grid you take your adorable green lad around the board munching the correct answers to what the game asks of you. An incorrect munch means a bad tummy ache and losing a life. In the meantime, these demented scary assholes named "Troggles" have their presence announced by the left side of the screen before wandering onto the board. You start with only one of these bozos pestering you, but eventually up to three start showing up. Careful around these guys, because they'll chomp and munch you real good....along with any other Troggle they happened to move into the same space with! Freaked the shit outta me seeing them cannibalize each other like that. These guys mean business. There's only one Muncher to eat and they know that! Munch or be Munched, that is the way.
Troggle Roll Call!
I never really liked the names for these guys, and honestly back then I doubt we would call them by their official titles. For now, starting from Reggie going clockwise towards the middle, I christen them...Norm Macdonald, Bert the Bashful, Scary Gary, Curious George, and finally Sneed the Shitheaded Nob. My favorite is Scary Gary, because he always gave me chills as he walked onto the screen and proceeded to eat Norm or Bert with his spooky teeth and unthinking stare. The Troggles are but a race of spherical Wile E. Coyotes, constantly out to eat the Muncher and utilizing ACME brand cartoon nonsense to trap the Muncher, complete with their traps backfiring on them during this game's cutscenes in-between sets of stages.
Apologies for boring y'all to death with the long-winded nostalgia review, but it surprised me how I enjoyed coming back to it despite the 20 years of additional knowledge I have attained since last I played, thinking I would treat this as trivial. I thought I was The Countess of Counting, but it seems I am in fact the Dairy Queen. Thank you Mr. Muncher for giving me that vibe check that I in fact suck eggs at multiplication tables.
You can play this super easily in-browser, so go and give it a try and either say "thank you Mr. Vee for the cute game" or "thanks for goddamn nothin'!!!! spits tongue out at you".
:P
As you would imagine, Number Munchers was among the games I would play on my class's shitty Apple IIs. You're probably thinking, "wow what tomb did you recently crawl out of? You old Vee!!!! GO BACK TO YOUR SHUFFLE BOARD YA OLD LADY!!! State of your American education system using 20 year old PCs!!!" It's probably true we used Apple IIs due to low budget, but honestly Apple IIs survived for a while and I wanna say the ones we used were kinda nice looking, granted it's been too damn long for me to even recall the last time I actually ate breakfast, and please don't call me old, I am a healthy 21 year old thank you very much.
For the younger folk at large who make up 98% of this website, this is basically an arcade game akin to Pac-Man combined with the goal of educating the ins and outs of numbers such as multiples, equations, and prime numbers. This is handy for me, because newsflash! I'm not a very smart person, at least in the numbers sense. Wandering a 5x6 square grid you take your adorable green lad around the board munching the correct answers to what the game asks of you. An incorrect munch means a bad tummy ache and losing a life. In the meantime, these demented scary assholes named "Troggles" have their presence announced by the left side of the screen before wandering onto the board. You start with only one of these bozos pestering you, but eventually up to three start showing up. Careful around these guys, because they'll chomp and munch you real good....along with any other Troggle they happened to move into the same space with! Freaked the shit outta me seeing them cannibalize each other like that. These guys mean business. There's only one Muncher to eat and they know that! Munch or be Munched, that is the way.
Troggle Roll Call!
I never really liked the names for these guys, and honestly back then I doubt we would call them by their official titles. For now, starting from Reggie going clockwise towards the middle, I christen them...Norm Macdonald, Bert the Bashful, Scary Gary, Curious George, and finally Sneed the Shitheaded Nob. My favorite is Scary Gary, because he always gave me chills as he walked onto the screen and proceeded to eat Norm or Bert with his spooky teeth and unthinking stare. The Troggles are but a race of spherical Wile E. Coyotes, constantly out to eat the Muncher and utilizing ACME brand cartoon nonsense to trap the Muncher, complete with their traps backfiring on them during this game's cutscenes in-between sets of stages.
Apologies for boring y'all to death with the long-winded nostalgia review, but it surprised me how I enjoyed coming back to it despite the 20 years of additional knowledge I have attained since last I played, thinking I would treat this as trivial. I thought I was The Countess of Counting, but it seems I am in fact the Dairy Queen. Thank you Mr. Muncher for giving me that vibe check that I in fact suck eggs at multiplication tables.
You can play this super easily in-browser, so go and give it a try and either say "thank you Mr. Vee for the cute game" or "thanks for goddamn nothin'!!!! spits tongue out at you".
:P
Fuck yeah, it's computer lab day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
fufck dude i am EPIC hungry form some NUMNBERS
Basic arithmetic and monsters, what could be better?
To be honest, though, there's a debate I've always had as an educator: Do educational games actually teach you anything that translates to real life or does the math learning just make the game less fun? That is, does the education wreck the game or does the game wreck the education?
I would posit that not a single person reading this mastered factoring or multiplication because of Number Munchers. The game itself could be played without math at all and it would be just fine (I mean, they made other "munchers" games...), so clearly the math part of this is not beneficial to the game. The converse statement is the one that is debatable: is the game beneficial to the math? My theory is that most of the time when you hit space bar on the wrong number it is because you made a mistake, not because you don't know the math. Since the game punishes you for your mistake, you're probably more likely to give up on the game and go play Oregon Trail instead of finding out why 9 is not a multiple of 2 or whatever. So, it's not really an educational game, it is an assessment game.
Playing it all those years ago on the green screen in the computer lab when we were supposed to be... doing something else felt like skipping school, though. Maybe that was the real draw for this game: it convinced parents and educators that learning was happening, but kids didn't care and just wanted to play games!
But it has monsters!
Review from thedonproject.com
To be honest, though, there's a debate I've always had as an educator: Do educational games actually teach you anything that translates to real life or does the math learning just make the game less fun? That is, does the education wreck the game or does the game wreck the education?
I would posit that not a single person reading this mastered factoring or multiplication because of Number Munchers. The game itself could be played without math at all and it would be just fine (I mean, they made other "munchers" games...), so clearly the math part of this is not beneficial to the game. The converse statement is the one that is debatable: is the game beneficial to the math? My theory is that most of the time when you hit space bar on the wrong number it is because you made a mistake, not because you don't know the math. Since the game punishes you for your mistake, you're probably more likely to give up on the game and go play Oregon Trail instead of finding out why 9 is not a multiple of 2 or whatever. So, it's not really an educational game, it is an assessment game.
Playing it all those years ago on the green screen in the computer lab when we were supposed to be... doing something else felt like skipping school, though. Maybe that was the real draw for this game: it convinced parents and educators that learning was happening, but kids didn't care and just wanted to play games!
But it has monsters!
Review from thedonproject.com
legendary