I have really fond memories of playing Treasure MathStorm in my middle school computer lab. My class went nuts for this game, we would beg to play it constantly. Out of the many childhood edutainment games I played back then, memories of this one have stuck with me the most. I was curious about whether or not this game holds up, so I decided to emulate and it and give it a go.

I was honestly pleasantly surprised. Of course this is a very old game for children so I have to judge it based on that criteria, but I found it compelling nonetheless. The story is kind of nonsense but the art is charming and the music has solid hooks - it's not repetitive (for how long you spend hearing each song) or irritating like the music in a lot of these games can be. Each level of the mountain has its own sound and distinct appearance. Even the main NPCs on each level have subtle personality quirks suggested in their animations that are fitting for them; the Time elf on the first level will tap his watch if you take too long to determine the answer and tap his foot in time to your button inputs, for example. The prizes you get for completing each climb are also animated if you press their corresponding number while in the prize cave. These little details weren't necessary for an educational game to do its job but they do a lot of heavy lifting to make Treasure Mountain a place I wanted to be. I don't recall noticing all of these details when I was a kid but I definitely appreciated them now.

I streamed about 2 hours of this for some friends who are also nostalgic about 90s edutainment games and I figured I'd stop afterwards. But as I was ranking up and getting the prizes, I realized that I had never actually made much progress in this game when I was a kid. I was curious about what would happen at the end. So over the course of 2 weeks I chipped away at it. If there's anything bad to say about this game, it's that playing it with the goal of winning sure is a grind. Comparatively, mind you. I've spent longer in other games' repetitive tedium by far but the nature of the doing the same loop over and over with the moderate effort required to do middle school level math (if you were never a math wiz like me) certainly gets to a person. But this game was not made for me, an adult. Children tend to do much better with a structure like this because they have much more time on their hands and fewer expectations of how to best spend it.

I won't make judgement calls here on how good of a use of my time an entire play-through of Treasure MathStorm was for me or anyone my age. It's not the point. But I will say that I actually enjoyed myself. I didn't expect anything big from the ending and it was just satisfying enough. I got to see the end with my own effort and that's all I really wanted from the experience. It was cool to revisit a strong piece of nostalgia from my childhood.

Freaky Trip was... a trip lol. I see what the game is going for. It's got a quirky art style and seeks to be a modern take on the old point and click style Flash games. I did enjoy its vibe. But the logic puzzles weren't entirely logical which made them less satisfying to figure out. A lot of them had cause and effects that were whimsical but also creative in a way that wasn't using a universal logic. I used the hints for nearly every puzzle because it wanted me to do something I would never guess to do. Even knowing the hint didn't always lead me to what I needed to do, but I do appreciate that it doesn't give you free answers either. I think this game would be good to play with children because the chaotic nature of their imaginations would agree with the not-logic of this game. I played Freaky Trip in one sitting and still had fun with it despite my complaints. I can't exactly recommend it, especially because the game does have some bugs that require you to quit to main menu to reset the puzzle, but I can get behind some nonsense when it's in an interesting package like this.