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
9 Comments
It was this and naming characters after my friends in Oregon Trail and watching them all die horribly. Only the real ones know.
This, Oregon Trail and Number Maze were THE fucking GAMES in my elementary school computer lab. I distinctly remember one of the Troggles scaring me to death.
Thanks for posting the Troggle Roll Call. It was definitely the Workers one.
Thanks for posting the Troggle Roll Call. It was definitely the Workers one.
@weatherby man, fuck oregon trail. it made my mom die of dysentery.
@smaench no one fucks with scary gary the worker troggle, they'll stare a hole right through ya before putting you on a tortilla.
@smaench no one fucks with scary gary the worker troggle, they'll stare a hole right through ya before putting you on a tortilla.
any of my Apple-II-at-school bros in here ever play any Odell Lake
I was playing Odell Down Under a bunch as well after replaying this! I should give Lake a try too......
@DJSCheddar oh wow, never would have remembered Odell Lake if I hadn't done an image search! that one was totally submerged in my memories beneath Number/Word Munchers, Oregon Trail, and... there was one about fireworks, I think? I don't know what that one was.
@Vee I'm trying to figure out if there are any behavioral differences between the Troggles, or if there's like an "initiative" system to determine which one eats which if they're trying to move into the same space. any thoughts?
@Vee I'm trying to figure out if there are any behavioral differences between the Troggles, or if there's like an "initiative" system to determine which one eats which if they're trying to move into the same space. any thoughts?
My schools were a bit too new and bougie to keep any old Apple IIs or DOS PCs, but I still remember playing MECC, Edmark, Broderbund, & Learning Company edu-games off something running a shared Novell NetWare OS environment. Those cowards should have given us Myst or something cool like that. At least my old man let me fuck around with his Apple IIc & early-'90s Performa Mac for any of that, though.
@dief88 I actually ran across some info when I looked the game up on wiki! Reggie moves in a straight line always, Smartie always moves toward you, and the rest apparently just move wherever while Bashful kinda just avoids you when you're close by! Unfortunately I couldn't find anything on if there's a hierarchy to which Troggle is on the top of the food chain, I guess it just goes by whoever moves into the square last or picks at random.
DJSCheddar
1 year ago