Sesame Street: 123

2 games that teach very basic skills.

Astro-Grover teaches counting, addition and subtraction. The subtraction is cleverly taught as a variation of addition, which is often less intimidating to new students of math. This actually more accurate in mathematical terms anyway. As the story goes, Zips (from planet Zap), have come to Earth to help build cites. While Zips are advanced in many ways, their minds cannot easily comprehend mathematics (much like Albert Einstein). Always the helper, Grover arrives to do the math for them (under the player's directions). The game has a beginning, middle and end (arrival, building, and departure of the Zips) but does not need to be performed in order.

Ernie's Magic Shapes teaches shapes and colors. Ernie and a white rabbit pulled from a magician's hat use stage magic to levitate various shapes of various colors above the stage. Then Ernie levitates another shape above the magician's hat. If the player pushes in any direction, Ernie will change to different shape. The player pushes a button to signify that the shapes match and if they actually do, then the shape above the hat will levitate up beside the one above the stage. If the player is wrong, Ernie will state exactly how by saying, "This is the wrong shape" and/or "This is the wrong color." In the harder variations, the player must construct complex shapes from similar ones. In this game Ernie does what Ernie does best, he sets the player up for failure, constantly offers advice even when does not need to be stated, then points out all failures, and blames Bert. But as always, he does this in a cute and lovable way that everyone likes (except Bert).

In an unusual moment for the Sesame Street gang, they apparently failed to realize the "zips" is a derogatory term in some cultures. This is especially strange for Grover, as he hosts the show Global Grover which is about traveling the world to learn about different cultures. Rest assured, any resemblance of alien Zips to any real world peoples are purely accidental as the term is used here in the American English sense of the word meaning, "go fast" and because it goes well with the word "zap" which is typically associated with aliens.

Note: Bert & Ernie's address is 123 Sesame Street. Bert is not in this game.

(Zerothis) - # 2008-08-27 11:26:44

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collected in
Sesame Street: ABC & 123 (NES)

similar to
Sesame Street: ABC (NES)
Sesame Street: Countdown (NES)