Super Solvers: Midnight Rescue!

Super Solvers: Midnight Rescue! description

Super Solvers – Midnight Rescue is an educational game in the genre of children's detective, originally addressed American schoolchildren 7-14 years devoted to reading. This thing was the start of the Super Solvers series, which later was supplemented by mathematical and logical games for the same audience.

The plot is teetering on the brink of madness: an elderly, unkind, and technologically savvy Master of Antics (Master of Mischief) named Morty Maxwell is going to hide the school building by painting it paint invisible. Since childhood this person was attracted to the entertainment in the night-time, so this time the execution of the plan scheduled for midnight. Wanting to simplify matters, the Wizard creates a group of robots-painters, under the guise of one of which he enters the building. It would seem that the average student needs a standing ovation, but our hero — Super-Razvedchik — sent to meet the offenders in order to prevent antisocial antics. Armed with a camera and a magnifying glass, wearing a baggy jacket and pulling the cap over my eyes (which makes him look like a thief), Razvedchik appears in school for a few hours before midnight.

As in any detective, we need to gather evidence and grounds to prosecute the attacker. Guilty (in this case a robot) and tips his convicting, changing with each passage, and the location of the tips also varies, though not in very wide limits. From the majority of analogues, the game has a well-developed arcade components. Moving across locations is happening in "real time", but time is working against us: if we fail to find the Master of Antics until midnight, all is lost — literally. The hero must jump over all the pins here and there (and hurling into it various items) robots, as well as periodically to replenish the film, which he shoots these robots to sew their photographs to the point. For each unsuccessful encounter with the iron painter takes either time or film.

But to photograph each of the five robots little. To find out which of them hides Morty Maxwell, we need to extract hints from several texts scattered around the classrooms and corridors. Alas, for studies available only two high school level after the first level will be familiar to you far and wide, despite the fact that the machine where you want to take the film, appears not always on the same place. A limited set of locations greatly impoverishes the experience of the game, but the text component developers have managed to diversify to a much greater extent. And not surprising, because, according to the authors, the game teaches careful reading and quick orientation in the text, plus helps the child to expand your vocabulary. The player invited short articles, announcements, excerpts from the diaries of Maxwell and his mother, letters from his friends and teachers, fables, research reports and excerpts from stories. Strange to say, but all of these texts are scattered by the Master of Antics and supplemented rhymed riddles from him. Mystery is always linked to just read. Selecting the correct answer from several options, we get the clue, and after gathering a few clues and comparing them with pictures of robots, you can learn in one avatar of the Master.

The arcade elements are nothing more than a nice addition — the transition between the texts. However, with the set points and the transition to a higher level the difficulty of the game increases slightly: robots move faster, need to photograph them more than once, often empty of clue where instead of text, you get a mockery of a tricky Maxwell.

The game boasts a pleasant hand-drawn graphics and easy interface. With musical accompaniment more complicated: the classical compositions of Edvard Grieg and Duke Field is, of course, good, but in severe midi arrangement any energetic music tiring.

In a time when computer games in schools was a gimmick, Super Solvers – Midnight Rescue was quoted quite nice and stand out a primitive educational products of the period. But today the game is harder to find an audience, especially outside English-speaking countries. Children under 10 years who are learning English as a foreign language, the texts may seem complicated, but the older pupils quickly get bored of the gameplay. So definitely recommend the game only for lovers of children's detectives, nostalgic Americans and collectors.

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Source: Archive.org, Mobygames.com