Freddi Fish and The Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds

That game was Tuneland, a 1993 music-themed educational title by Dallas-based developer 7th Level, starring Howie Mandel as an animated bear named Lil’ Howie. … In one instant, everything we were doing seemed old and dated. … I had never seen a game do this before, not for kids or adults. And it was stunning, and it had a completely different feel to it. … The guy giving the talk showed some of the art, and how it was all hand-drawn on paper, and then it was scanned in like traditional film animation. As Gilbert recounted at his 2013 PAX Australia keynote address presentation:Ībout halfway through the production of Freddi Fish, I went to this conference, and I saw a talk given by someone from another game company, and he was making games for kids. In mid-1993, Gilbert attended a conference, where he saw a title that would change the direction of not only their current project, but Humongous’s entire output. The team was already working on their next game, an undersea adventure starring a brand-new character, which was to feature a similar art style - until everything changed. The studio had only five titles to its name, most of which featured the company’s flagship mascot Putt-Putt, and similar pixellated graphics as the titles created by Humongous founders Shelley Day and Ron Gilbert during their previous work at LucasArts. In 1993, Humongous Entertainment was still far from becoming one of the most recognizable and successful edutainment companies of the 1990s. This article’s header image is from MobyGames all other resources are cited throughout. It’s the title that launched the studio’s career, introduced a brand-new art style for the company, and challenged gendered notions of protagonists at the time of its release. Today, we’re looking at Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds, the 1994 point-and-click adventure released by Humongous Entertainment.

Welcome back to That’s Edutainment,which looks at educational video games of the past and considers whether they hold up today, focusing on their development and on the relationship between education and entertainment.

Freddi Fish and The Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds