Playpower.org

I see Wii have the potential training educational in the future. Some of the wish list on educational game and training is not available today but I'm sure it is already on the list.

I think there is a framing problem in the design of the developer cartridge ... NES emulators are designed to help people play image files ripped off of NES game cartridges. But the target here is open development. So a cartridge might be designed that is easier to port programs into from other 6502 systems, and *easier to program ON the $10 computer itself*.

That last point goes to the point that Dr. Mike Reddy makes ... the current design of the "developer cart" is focused on the game-production model, where the focus is on commercializing the software, and game programmers were very willing to invest a lot of effort working within the limitations of the NES because in the mid-1980's it was so hard to reproduce cartridges. But we *want* it to be possible to "grow in place" ... otherwise we are broadcasting, rather than planting seeds of development.

Further, with no experience programming the NES but some programming the C64 ... if you want to port C64 and Apple II programs ... *you need more RAM*. Given lots and lots of banked ROM, 32K RAM might be workable - 2K RAM just is nowhere near enough.

And the target ought to be to have the cartridge be field programmable *using the $10 computer itself*. Then, given the simplicity of the cartridge interface, anything that the $10 computer can do, a micro-controller chip being controlled from a PC can do.

So, start from the $10 system perspective. There is an 8K saved-ram memory map that comes out to the cartridge. The 6502 is happiest with memory mapped IO. So taking the top little bit of that address space for memory mapped I/O leaves a 4K "clean" address space at the bottom ... that is 12 bits of the 19 bits of the 512K flash ROM, by writing into addresses from $6000~$6FFF.

7bits of an 8-bit latch can hold the data for address lines A12-A18, with the top bit low as write enable (this can be wired-or'ed with the R/W line with a diode for the /WE line of the chip). The top 5 bits of those 7 bits can be the address lines provided when ROM bank0 is accessed.

With a 32Kx8it Static RAM, a 4K (minus a few bytes at the very top for the I/O) can be provided with three bits of a second latch. That leaves five free bits, with is the ROM1 bank register.

There is a single 6502 bus chip with two 8-bit registers and enough additional serial processing power to drive an SPI bus fast enough for SD access, so basically this is a three-chip cart ... the ROM, the RAM, the InterfaceAdapter chip ... plus an SD socket.

Now, how to program the cart with a development system? You just need an interface to connect to the 8K RAM address space, so the cartridge programmer is a Famicom cartridge port with a microcontroller that does the programming ... that of course does not have to be designed with an eye to being as frugal as possible, since the cartridge itself can be programmed in the field using a correctly set up SD card and the $10 computer itself.

I think that Personal Trainer: Math by Nintendo for the DS would make a very good 8 bit keyboard game. It trains you to do simple math faster. Also, there are a lot of mini-games in Nintendo's Brain Training series that could inspire educational games. The 8-bit games for older computers weren't as educational as they were entertaining, today's titles are not only better designed, they are based on real educational principles (from advice from experts in the educational field, not from amateur programmers).

Keep up the great work.

http://www.Whymandesign.com would love to creatively enhance your work for example with the user interactivity of the service and the organisation structure http://www.Traidmark.org

http://www.WEBiversity.org is one example of how open source sofware can be used with that business model.

http://www.Playgroundgames.org are also looking for co producers who can benefit from using an international broadcast network to 1. draw communities together (age/gender/race...) and 2. create an archive of the ways cultures play before they are lost for ever.

Ed http://www.twitter.com/whymandesign

I think the decision to include The Oregon Trail in a list of educational video games to be distributed to underdeveloped nations should be considered with much more care and sensitivity. The game seriously ignores many real aspects of American history and completely leaves Native Americans out of the picture. It forgets to mention that European settlers in most cases drove off other peoples who had already made a home in the area. These issues are not secrets. Any internet search should come up with many more examples of cultural insensitivity present in The Oregon Trail.

I would hope that we could keep our educational games as objective as possible, or at least fix serious flaws in presentation during the translation process.

For the record, Oregon Trail does involve Native Americans... For an 8-bit game, I think it does a pretty good job of illustrating the conflicting emotions of people at the time. Not to say the game is ideal, but I do understand its popularity among educators and students.

I'd be interested in what you think of the game, if you play through it again. It can be found at http://www.virtualapple.org/oregontraildisk.html

On the topic of how Oregon Trail originally depicted Native Americans, here is a short summary with a reference to a longer work by Bill Bigelow:

Along The Trail: What does the player encounter along the way?
http://web.wm.edu/amst/370/2005F/sp1/along_the_...

Also: a more recent discussion of the game was a guest talk that some of the original Oregon Trail developers did at the Nerdery this month:
http://blog.nerdery.com/2009/10/blazing-the-ore...

This is why, for me at least, it's important that the end user gets accessible dev tools. My wife trains Nurses for people with Learning Disabilities, and the the Disabled Community has the mantra "Not about Us without Us!" which means the best cutlurally significant and relevant software is probably going to be that which is developed within/for/by that community. Cultural Imperialism is only likely early on, or if the end users are trapped in consumption, rather than production of software.

Eric,

I appreciate your concern about Oregon Trail being used as an accurate
depiction of history (rather than as a simulation of particular
concepts of travel and trade). Two points to consider:

1. As far as I know, neither these games as such nor the list are
intended for *direct* distribution in a curricular sense. Instead, the
primary idea is to consider their designs as relevant *models* for new
original learning designs on constrained platforms. This makes no
particular claims about the merits of their content or form, or their
fitness to a particular educational purpose. On the one hand, a new
simulation about resource management and travel might be implemented
along similar lines in a fictional world with no historical claims
(e.g. Space Trail). On the other hand, a new game might use similar
modeling methods of resources and travel as Oregan Trail, but instead
focus on depicting an alternate dangerous traversal in history marked
by limited resources (e.g. the Trail of Tears, the Bataan Death March,
etc.)

2. I personally don't think that cultural objectivity is possible (or
desirable). There are contexts in which Donkey Kong could (and should)
offend, or in which the idea of a "bookworm" might be culturally
illegible and thus detract or distract from learning. Rather than than
one-size-fits-all learning games, my personal opinion is that the
mechanics and appearance, form and content of learning games should be
appropriate to the learning community -- AND to the learning goals,
whether they be historical, logical, or other. That's why I believe it
is important to encourage broad access to as many new designs and
platforms as possible, and consider as many models from the past as
possible in fostering the design diversity of the future. I take your
point however that there is no reason to be needlessly offensive or
off-putting.