The Learning Company actually _did_ make two other Zoombinis games in addition to remaking the original game, but you don't actually lose the Zoombinis that get left behind. IIRC, they just go back to the last checkpoint (Zoombini Isle, Shelter Rock, or Shade Tree) to be put into a new party of 16 -- or if you don't want to split the party, you can return to the map to send _all_ the Zoombinis back. (This is also how you make the puzzles harder, outside of practice mode -- each time you complete one of the four paths without leaving any Zoombinis behind, the difficulty of the three puzzles on that path is increased, unless it's already at Very, Very Hard.)
For years, I've had "FLEENS?! You're not Fleens! Whatever you are...MAKE ME A PIZZA!" burned into my mind because we had this game in our school's computer lab. I don't think I ever actually got far enough in the game to learn who the heck the Fleens were; never enough time in computer class to finish. But yeah, I remember this game being stressful as a kid! Like, the minute you find out you could lose the Zoombinis, it was like "Wait, WHAT?! Did my favorite little Zoombini with the ponytail and sunglasses and roller skates just DIE?!" Didn't help that the game was honestly pretty hard for a kid that had no clue what a logic puzzle was.
I loved this game when I was able to borrow it from the Library back when Libraries still let you borrow software, heck I didn't even know it was an edutainment game back then so I think it did its job very well of secretly teaching you stuff that would otherwise make you go "why would I want to learn when I could be having fun?" as is the childhood mentality.
Great review, Clint! I've loved this game since I was a kid, and it's great to see it reviewed. I still find it funny how I'm actually working on a video about this game currently. Maybe it was fate, haha.
Oh jesus, thank god you reviewed this.. I remember how much fun I had in Primary School playing this when we occasionally had lessons on the computers. I had completely forgotten the name and was desperate to remember, the nostalgia!
Circa 2002 our district had an “intermediate building” for 5-6th grades, which used to be a middle school of award-winning design. The library had a separate room (typewriting room?) which was lined with humming iMac G3’s running OS 9, obviously superior to the handful of OS 8.6 Apple LC’s that each classroom had. Near the end of computer time the computer teacher would play Zoombinis on the library projector, with us seated away from our computers to raise our hands and such. What a forgotten classic!
I remember playing this in elementary school. I think it might have been one of the first game I ever actually played. I really liked how in the beginning you could customize all your zoombinis. Never experienced that before in a game. This game went hand in hand for me with Math Ace Jr. (I tweeted you about that one), which was another cool edutainment game that had a lot of charm & fun mathy mini games. There was also the original Math Ace, which I think you'd find interesting as well.
I remember this! We had it at school. That pizza game use to drive me CRAZY! I don't think I ever made it to the end but it was still fun. Great review!
YES! Thank you for covering this game. In elementary school this game was the reason we sped through our typing tutor game so we could devote the rest of our computer lab time to Zoombinis. I loved making all of my Zoombinis with propeller feet. This is my first time commenting so thanks for all of your awesome retro reviews (especially oddware and your retro computer reviews). If you really want to make my day, check out another edutainment game from my childhood, Fisher-Price Great Adventure Castle. It's a point and click adventure/logic game aimed at 4-7 year olds.
I remember getting a bundle of educational games by The Learning Company as a kid. Zoombinis was the only one of those games that I still fully remember. Though the CD case said “Zoombini’s Mountain Rescue” the game itself was actually this one! This is actually the first time I found out what the name of the actual game was. Thank you for finding the answer to a question looming over me since I was 6.
I have been searching for this game for the longest time now, I remember playing this game multiple times at my primary school IT room, I could never get past the dam pizza puzzle though from what I can recall. I am in university now and have finally found out the title of this game through the most obscure google searches I have ever done. Here and there this game would come to memory and I just had to know what it was called. I finally found it, it brings back so many memories.
I'm another one who loved this game growing up and spent countless hours playing with my cousins. I picked it up again a few years ago, decided to beat it to see what the ending would be, and was quite disappointed to find that there basically was no ending. They let you play the last path with however many zoombinis you need, so less than 16, but once they get to Zoombiniville, it's just done. You can look at all the zoombinis and special buildings, but that's it IIRC. Anyway, thank you for covering this game and for the many hours of nostalgia and entertainment you provide!
I played this in the 90's. I loved the fact it had a storyline but cor the amount of Zoombinis you have to save to finish the ultimate journey really tests your mind as the difficulty rises.
I am nostalgic for the original format of the game. I have to say that I absolutely love the remake of the Zoobinis! it made a timeless system of games feel so fresh even though it plays the same as it did over twenty years ago. Looking back at it, it does reek of the 90's and I still love it. The artist for the remake I cannot praise enough! I can't stop staring at the graphics as I play. And even if I'm tired of solving puzzles, I keep playing even longer because it just looks so pretty. Sorry, I didn't mean to brag about the new version of the game, But I highly recommend it. It's much easier to download from Steam than to order the old copy, and potentially go through hell trying to get an old disk to work on a new computer.
I spent so many hours playing this back in the day. It was something actually fun to play when I was stuck waiting for my single parent teacher mother at her school.
I played this in 3rd grade back in '01 it was so freaking cool. i grew up on humongous games so im a product of edutainment. but i was so freaking excited when i finally got a copy of this game at home. its just a solid game, glad to see you enjoyed it even going back years later
Thanks to this I've been able to find a game I played as a kid that I've been looking for for literally years! I hadn't seen anything under broderbund lists that matched what I was looking for, but when you mentioned "Active Mind Series" for teachers I thought maybe since Zoombinis was also on all the school computers maybe the one I was looking for was to. Lo and behold, it was Math Workshop from the same series~ If you could get your hands on/also make a video of that game I would be super grateful! And entertaining video, as always.
Thank you for this review, LGR. I've always wanted to see someone do a in depth review of this game. I think the pizza making game my my most favourite one, as you could just make loads of a crazy pizzas. :)
I gotta say, I LOVE LGR! I have learned a ton about the PC world before my generation and it is AWESOME, LGR content is one of my favorite things to watch on RU-vid, like clockwork every day after I get home from work
I actually remember this game! It was actually something I *liked to play*, not something I *had to do*, like it was homework. That right there is the key to good edutainment, you have to make it likable and not feel like a chore.
I still remember playing Zoombinis with a friend back in the late 1990's. We were only 3-4 years old and had the hardest time playing with it, but we still continued to play it even though we had no idea what we were doing.
I really gotta try and track down one of the later XP compatible re-releases off of ebay: more of a pain for us brits though as far as I can tell the 2004 xp compatible version never saw the light of day in the UK; when they renamed it to "Maths Journey" over here all they did was just ship the 1996 version again albeit with different packaging. I remember the version we had to be fairly buggy; severe problems with the game crashing randomly on cut-scenes for no reason and sound going out of sync. This didn't just happen on our home pc, it also happened on the school computers we played on at primary school at the time; really sucks because when it worked it was devilishly clever logic game that was fun to play. Great review LGR!
I remember when I played this game at the children’s area at OMSI (Oregon Museum and Science Institute) while I was… I think in Kindergarten. I only played it to the stump troll guy, and couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do. Glad to finally know the name of it.
Such a good game. I remember some of these puzzles got genuinely quite hard on the higher difficulties. A few of them could be cheesed by having party load-outs with a lot of common features, like the riverboat one.
FUUUUUCK DUDE. Watching this just unlocked a part of my childhood that I've NEVER thought about! We had this game in like elementary school and I liked it a lot. We played it in groups and everyone got to make their own characters and I think we all tried to see which group would save the most first or something. I feel like I also had this game at home too since my parents were all about getting me these edutainment games. Funny that I never thought once about the story for this game, little kid me just wanted to win. Jesus, this was nice to remember.
this was the fucking shit in 1st grade. one time we had an entire lesson in the computer lab dedicated to zoombines only and the teacher tried to teach us all of the puzzles. i only got as far to the pizza level....
Brilliant ganen. Mine had a pink coloureds cd ROM. I remember as a kid having trouble even loading the game in Windows 95 - this program caused illegal operation, and as a 7 year old I was proud going into the settings to get it working! :) Memories!!
I remember playing this in school. I also remember playing Need For Speed 2 SE in school too. But this was good enough that i didn't mind playing it when i couldn't play NFS2SE.
I had this game as a kid! And we had it in our classroom. We were allowed 10 minutes in pairs once a week. Clearly not enough time for it's awesomeness!
I was OBSESSED with Zommbinis as a kid. We had this game on the one computer in my class and every time i played it, i tried to get further and further. Most of my class couldn't get past the pizza puzzle.
Aaah! I loved this game when I was little! I found it really hard because I started playing it before I could read but somehow I still loved it. Oh, the memories... :3
lgr wow flashback! I still have this game (I loved it and have kept the CD). really enjoyed it at the time, and after installing it recently I still found myself enjoying it. used to love the speech on this game. . I used to have 'Maths Workshop' by broadband software. we had it at our school. ever tried it?7 it had some crazy sound fx and mini games.
This is one of the games I remember playing at my elementary school. For the longest time I remembered the little round blue guys on skates and springs, but I could not remember the name of the game. I would describe it to people and they would have no idea what I was talking about. So I though I was remembering the game wrong but here it is. So I was not making it up after all. Oh the nostalgia is strong with this game for me.
I can't remember the last time I thought about this game. It's probably been twenty years since I last played it. Goddamn. Thanks for the burst of nostalgia.
I remember this! Oh, I loved it soo much! This and some game with clock bombs were my favorite edutainment games from school. At home, I had Jumpstart.
Man I remember playing this game and having fun with it. Bubble Wonder Abyss is one of my favorite games to play in it personally. If I had to criticize it though is that on the harder difficulties some of the puzzles become downright unfairly hard and frustrating to solve. A prime example is the Lion's Lair where on the hardest difficulty there's no hints on the wall, so it's all down to luck/trial and error. Other than that though the game is fun and I definitely recommend it to people.
This game was next to chew quest on my shelf! Thanks for the review. Also, I think in later versions (2001+) the intro about the bloats was stricken from the game. I've played through this so many times and I've never seen that before
I found a loose copy for $2 just recently and really excited to try it after seeing your play thru. Not sure I was smart enough as a kid to have figured this out, looks tough!
I remember when I was in elementary school, any time it was a rainy day we would all stay indoors and play in the computer lab. It was a race to see who could get this game first. There was maybe 3 copies to share between 15 kids. Those who didn't get this played some other game where you build igloo's as one of the puzzles. Can't remember what that one was called.
