H Is For Horse And Other Hodge Podge

When we were recording our podcast this week, Blake Grundman described our grab bag of topics as a hodge podge. That phrase knocked loose an old childhood memory of a Commodore 64 game called, fittingly enough, Hodge Podge. A quick Internet search found that it's been archived and you can play it online in a browser. Hodge Podge is a primitive educational vocabulary game created by Leonard Bertoni & Rich Scocchera for preschool children that maps each key on the keyboard to a specific related animation and, sometimes, music. Press H and you'll be greeted with art of a horse....

When we were recording our podcast this week, Blake Grundman described our grab bag of topics as a hodge podge.  That phrase knocked loose an old childhood memory of a Commodore 64 game called, fittingly enough, Hodge Podge.  A quick Internet search found that it's been archived and you can play it online in a browser.  Hodge Podge is a primitive educational vocabulary game created by Leonard Bertoni & Rich Scocchera for preschool children that maps each key on the keyboard to a specific related animation and, sometimes, music.  Press H and you'll be greeted with art of a horse.  Press Q to see the quick worm scootch across the screen.  E, as it turns out, is for Empty.  Press J to see the word JUMP literally jump across the screen.  Hodge Podge is one of the first games I remember playing for the Commodore 64 in 1985 along with another word-based edutainment title, Sea Speller.  Goodness, games were so simple back then.  Soon the Mario brothers would show up and then nothing would ever be the same again.