User:Katsumi a.k.a. Upperdecker2562/sandbox/Lightspan Adventures

"Oh, what a tease this is. Imagine getting a free PlayStation from your school but all you get with it is a bunch of edutainment games. It's like getting to go to an awesome water park for free but all the water slides are piss slides."

- The Angry Video Game Nerd

Lightspan Adventures is a series of edutainment games developed by Lightspan, Inc. for the PlayStation. These games were sold to elementary schools across the US from the mid-1990s to the 2000s.

Why They Suck

 * 1) The main problem is that these games take "edutainment" too seriously. While there are a number of good edutainment games that does a good balancing education and entertainment, the Lightspan Adventures games instead focus more on education than entertainment — and in a very bad way.
 * 2) Most of the characters' design in these games (with the exception of the 2 IRL hosts in Math on the Move!) look too bland or absolutely terrible.
 * 3) * The worst offender is Kaz from KazMania, an ugly slug girl whose head is disproportionately lopsided.
 * 4) * Then there's P.K. the Toucan, whom AVGN described as, quote, "another nightmarish misfit mascot of Lightspan [sic]."
 * 5) ** Speaking of P.K., his animation quality gradually decreases in later games.
 * 6) Most of these games have little to no gameplay whatsoever. What you get is a frontend of boring interactive quizzes, with occasional FMV cartoons.
 * 7) * Math on the Move! is probably the worst example, due to it consisting of videos and no interaction whatsoever. There are some arcade games in the game, but they are fake and cannot be played in any manner. Thus, the only thing that is technically interactive is the main menu. If you think it sounds so familiar, you are not wrong.
 * 8) * Write Away is the same thing as Math on the Move!, containing only videos, and also like Math on the Move, the only thing slightly interactive is the menu, but Write Away is about actors acting out stories that kids sent to them.
 * 9) * In Calamity: The Natural World, you need to read articles and answer questions, which is pretty tedious. To quote AVGN: "Oh, this is teaching me a lot! This is teaching me how to scroll down! I mean, who's gonna read this? I'd rather have Captain Nemo pilot the Nautilus directly into my jejunum!"
 * 10) Some games do have a bit of actual gameplay, but it is riddled with problems that it isn't enjoyable.
 * 11) * K9.5: Live in Airedale at least has an Arkanoid-style minigame which you can play (after finishing the quizzes), but it's slow, mundane and has little replay value.
 * 12) * In KazMania, the controls are unresponsive.
 * 13) Apparently, Sony did not bother do any quality control over these games. They somehow instead let Lightspan Inc. publish these games, ignoring the fact that one of Lightspan's games, Math on the Move!, was actually a bunch of videos crammed into a PS1 disc.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) These games can be fun to play, and can help your kids learn to some extent. However, this does not help much with the games' overall quality.
 * 2) The FMV cutscenes in Calamity: The Natural World were well-made.

Videos
KKjodfe0lgE