Growing up, I always had a certain resistance to explicitly educational games; I would much rather have been blasting aliens than doing maths problems.
However, if you were to cunningly disguise those educational components as a Sierra adventure game I would, of course, be well and truly on board. The folly of youth.
Enter Donald Duck’s Playground, then, second of the Disney/Sierra crossovers to be put together by Al “Leisure Suit Larry” Lowe, and proof if proof were needed that Sierra’s AGI engine wasn’t quite suitable for every type of game…
Ever since the early days of computing, programmers have been finding ways to develop educational software for a variety of purposes.
One such programmer was Douglas Crockford, who was a particular fan of experimenting with the Atari 8-bit’s sound capabilities. One such experiment led to the creation of Interval, a piece of software designed to help you train your aural skills — whether you’re a musician, a teacher or simply someone with an interest in musical theory.
This is actually a really solid program that can still be of use to music teachers in the 21st Century — though quite how many still have an Atari 8-bit in their teaching space I have no idea…
Atari A to Z 