Munchers

Screenshot of Number Munchers; the player controls the green "muncher" character seen at center.

Munchers was a series of educational/edutainment computer games produced by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) for several operating systems. They were popular among American schoolchildren in the 1980s and 1990s and were the recipients of several awards. The two original games in the series were Number Munchers and Word Munchers.

Gameplay

In all the Munchers games, the player controlled a green "Muncher" character across a grid of squares containing a short numerical or word expression. The objective is to consume all and only the grids containing information satisfying a specific criterion (determined by the mode of play) while also avoiding the deadly "Troggle" monsters (name probably derived from troglodyte) which roamed the grid.

Eating a grid containing information that did not match the criterion of the play mode chosen or being caught by a Troggle resulted in the loss of a life.

If all grids containing information matching the criterion were eaten from the screen, the level ended and the player was presented with an amusing short scene, similar to Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner scenes, in which the Muncher foils the Troggles' plans to catch it and often destroys the Troggle in some comical manner. The game gets continually faster and harder each level.

Troggles

There were several type of "Troggles." Each type of Troggle moved in a specific pattern. There were five species of Troggle, each of which was given an English and a Latin (binomial) name:

• Reggies (Trogglus normalus) - magenta in color on the Apple II, red in color in DOS, purple in color on a Macintosh; simply moves in a line unless redirected by a safety square in its path.
• Bashfuls (Trogglus timidus) - green in color on the Apple II, blue in color in DOS, pink in color on a Macintosh; moves in an arbitrary manner on the gameboard, unless approached by a Muncher, in which case he moves away from the Muncher. Became purple in later releases in the series.
• Helpers (Trogglus assistus), - also green in color on an Apple II, and also green in DOS, but magenta on a Macintosh; this Troggle eats all answers, leaving nothing behind. Became purple in later releases in the series.
• Workers (Trogglus laborus) - purple and white in color on both the Apple II and DOS but magenta and white on a Macintosh; this Troggle adds new answers and/or changes existing answers as he moves around.
• Smarties (Trogglus smarticus) - a green Troggle on most systems (yellow in DOS) with large teeth and glasses, and the most difficult enemy to avoid; always follows the Muncher on the board.

Tips and tricks

Better players of the game used a number of tricks. First, they memorized the fixed Troggle movement patterns, making possible such tricks as "dogging" a Troggle: following along right behind, just one square away, from the Troggle.

Troggles pause momentarily after each move; players do not need to pause, and thus players move faster than and can always outrun Troggles. Indeed, as long as a player keeps moving, a player cannot be eaten by Troggle unless the player walks into the Troggle or becomes surrounded by multiple Troggles.

Since Troggles appear from off the side of the grid, players should typically avoid the squares at the edges of the grid to avoid being surprised by a Troggle. However, because there is a set number of Troggles that can appear on the grid at once (a higher number at higher levels), once that number of Troggles is on-screen, a player would be safe venturing to the squares at the edge of the grid.

Since a player gained extra lives whenever the player accumulated enough points, it was possible for a player to eat all relevant squares in a level except one, and then sit around and wait for Troggles to repopulate the grid with information. This had the advantage by that staying on the same early level, the level remained at the same easy setting while the player was able to rack up both points and extra lives.

If the Muncher stands in a square next to a square occupied by a Troggle, if one times the move correctly, one can move into the Troggle's square just as the Troggle moves out of the square into the square previously occupied by the Muncher. The sprites for the Muncher and the Troggle will pass through each other without the Muncher being eaten by the Troggle.

On rare occasions the safety square will appear on a square already occupied by a troggle. In this case the troggle is instantly vaporized with a comical sound. This would explain why troggles are reluctant to enter the safety square in the first place.

Easter egg

An Easter egg in the game was that between December 1 and Christmas, the Muncher would wear a Santa Claus hat (however, one would have to own a computer that remembered the date, or was never turned off, since not all computers had this technology at the time the game was popular).

Versions

The Munchers series included:

• Number Munchers
• Word Munchers
• Super Munchers
• Fraction Munchers
• Math Munchers
• Super Number Munchers
• Super Word Munchers
• Word Munchers Deluxe
• Knowledge Munchers Deluxe
• Troggle Trouble Math

The original version only allowed navigation through the keyboard arrow keys. Later versions featured better graphics and added mouse support.

External links

• Muncher series at MobyGames