Foodman

[Drasir-Vel]

As a child i remember playing this game in school. It is a danish DOS game, and in it you move through all kinds of delicious food. I found myself actually getting pretty hungry after playing this for some time. You're going through a supermarket, and you're trying to get to the exit on the ground floor, 4 floors down. The problem is, you die of starvation extremely fast, so you have to eat all the time. And that's where the game get comprehensive. you must choose wisely what foods you eat, and balance your diet so you don't get too much fat, or too little carbon hydrate, and not too much sugar, and also remember to get enough A and C vitamin. So for example, eating a bottle of dressing: bad. Instead eat lots of vegetables.

The game used to be downloadable from Kræftens Bekæmpelse's homepage, but i can't seem to find it anymore. But i've got it on my computer.

[Chroelle]

I loved this game too. I remember playing it as well at my school when we had EDB (Old School Computer class). The sentence at the bottom screenshot says: "You died from obesity." Quite morbid. Only knew you could die from consequences of obesity and not from the weight surplus itself... Perhaps you fell through the floor - but then that would be the fall (or actually the impact) that killed you then. Perhaps somebody else overweight fell on you, and their obesity killed you - but then again it would be either suffocation or the blow of the impact that caused you to die... hm...that is one tough nut to crack.

[Chroelle]

As some of you know I started doing some work towards becoming a consultant regarding IT and kids. In one of the books I have been reading it mentioned this game, and actually why it was released. The game was made to support a test wether kids could "connect" things learned in computerclasses wiht reality. And as such they made the game, so that kids could learn about eating properly, getting the right nutritions, and what was healthy food, and then took them grocery shopping, but most of the kids, however good they were at the game, were not able to connect the knowledge they had made in the game in a way where they could tell if some foods were good for you or not. The kids still wanted pizza, and such unhealthy stuff, and had no idea howcome it was a bad idea.
The lesson learned form this was not that computers dont learn kids stuff, but that they need a real life environment to fully grasp the knowledge they got from the computers.
Good reading, and funny that this game just got mentioned.