Munchers facts for kids

Munchers was a super popular series of computer games from the 1980s and 1990s. These games were made by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) and were designed to help kids learn while having fun! They were a big hit in American schools and even won some awards. The first two games in the series were Number Munchers and Word Munchers.

Today, a company called Houghton Mifflin Harcourt owns the Munchers brand.

Number Munchers Game

Number Munchers was the very first game in the Munchers series. It was created to help kids learn basic math skills. Just like the other Munchers games, it was really popular in schools during the 1980s and 1990s. A newer 3D version, called Math Munchers Deluxe, came out in 1995.

How to Play Number Munchers

In Number Munchers, you control a little green character called a "Muncher." Your goal is to move the Muncher around a grid of squares. Each square has a number or a math problem on it. You need to "eat" only the squares that fit a certain rule. But watch out! There are also monsters called "Troggles" trying to catch you!

There are five different ways to play Number Munchers. Each one helps you practice different math skills:

• Multiples: You need to find numbers that are multiples of a given number. For example, if the number is 3, you would eat 3, 6, 9, 12, and so on.
• Factors: Here, you look for numbers that can divide evenly into a given number. If the number is 12, you would eat 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12.
• Primes: This mode helps you find prime numbers. These are numbers that can only be divided by 1 and themselves, like 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and 13.
• Equality: In this mode, you find math problems that equal a specific number. If the number is 6, you might munch on "3 x 2" or "3 + 3".
• Inequality: This is the opposite! You must select the math problems that do not equal the given number. If the number is 6, you would eat problems like "4 x 2" or "3 + 5".

You start the game with four lives. You lose a life if you eat a wrong answer or if a Troggle monster catches you. If you get enough points, you can earn an extra life!

Meet the Troggles

The Troggles are the monsters in the game. They have two legs and a big head. Their main goal is to catch your Muncher or mess up the game board. At the start of the game, there's only one Troggle. But as you get to higher levels, more Troggles appear, making the game harder and faster!

There are five different kinds of Troggles, and each one moves in its own special way:

• Reggies (Trogglus normalus): These Troggles move in a straight line. They only change direction if something blocks their path.
• Bashfuls (Trogglus timidus): These Troggles move randomly. But if your Muncher gets close, they will try to move away from you.
• Helpers (Trogglus assistus): This Troggle is like an ant. It eats all the correct answers on the board, leaving nothing for you!
• Workers (Trogglus laborus): This Troggle adds new answers or changes existing ones as it moves around the board.
• Smarties (Trogglus smarticus): These Troggles are the trickiest! They have big teeth and glasses, and they always follow your Muncher, making them hard to avoid.

Sometimes, special "safety squares" appear on the board. These squares have four small white rectangles. No Troggle can enter a safety square, so they are safe spots for your Muncher. If a safety square appears where a Troggle is, that Troggle disappears! But be careful, safety squares can vanish quickly, so don't stay in one for too long.

Also, Troggles can be a bit mean to each other! If one Troggle moves onto a square already taken by another, one Troggle will eat the other.

Fun Cutscenes

After every three levels you complete, you get to watch a funny short video called a "cutscene." These scenes are called "Great Moments in Muncher History." They are a bit like the cartoons where Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner chase each other. The order of these scenes changes each time you play. Once you've seen all six, they start to repeat.

Here are some of the funny scenes you might see:

• A Muncher is chased by a Reggie. The Muncher then gets into an old car, speeds away, and the Troggle falls down, giving up.
• Two Munchers act out the famous story of William Tell.
• A Muncher races a Bashful up a mountain, puts up a flag, and sings a song.
• A Muncher makes a prank call to a Smartie and sings a teasing tune.
• A Muncher wins a beauty contest against two Troggles. (In later versions of the game, this scene was changed to a Muncher stumbling around his dark house, turning on the light, and finding he broke all his furniture!)
• A Muncher carves his own face into a mountain, like Mount Rushmore.

Christmas Surprise

There's a cool secret in the game called an Easter egg! If you played Number Munchers between December 1st and December 25th, your Muncher character would wear a Santa Claus hat! This only worked on computers that had a built-in clock or were never turned off.

Word Munchers Game

Word Munchers is another game in the series, similar to Number Munchers, but it helps you learn basic grammar skills instead of math. It was also very popular in schools during the 1980s and 1990s as a teaching tool.

The way you play Word Munchers is the same as Number Munchers. However, instead of numbers, the squares have words on them. You have to eat words that fit certain rules, like finding parts of speech such as verbs or adjectives. Teachers could even choose which vowel sounds to focus on and how hard the words would be.

Munchers Game Series

Over the years, many different Munchers games were released. Here are some of them:

• Number Munchers
• Fraction Munchers
• Word Munchers
• Super Munchers
• Math Munchers Deluxe (a new version of Number Munchers)
• Word Munchers Deluxe (a new version of Word Munchers)
• Math Munchers for the 21st Century
• Word Munchers for the 21st Century
• Knowledge Munchers Deluxe
• Troggle Trouble Math (a spin-off game)

The first versions of these games could only be played using the keyboard arrow keys. Later versions had better graphics and let you use a mouse to play.

Images for kids

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  Number Munchers gameplay (DOS version)