ZOOMBINIS! (NSF56K, Wusses)

Rent · March 2010

This thread, this thread right fucking here, is about the best goddamn learning game of all time

Moar liek Carmen Sandigaygo amirite

Have fun with your yellow fever and burying your children in some lame ass state like fucking Nebraska or some shit, ya tosser

Super_Solvers_-_Gizmos_%26_Gadgets_Coverart.png

Super_Solvers_-_Gizmos_%26_Gadgets_Coverart.png

Honestly I've never played this game so...hah hah look at the lame ass boxart, only lamers would buy such lame ass boxart NERDS

Yeahhhh here we go here is some shit right here

I am an utter lamer who hasn't played one of the best PC games of ALL FUCKING TIME, what is this Rent?

The 'Zoombinis' line of games were a series of games published by The Learning Company the guys behind basically any game you played in school at any time (for reference, they made all the prior-mentioned games in this thread thus far).

Goddamn check out all this fucking learning you're going to do, fucking hell you don't even need to go to school any more after this shit. After this you mine as well take the SATs and go to, at the very least, a pretty good State University. Maybe Stanford if you're lucky, but that's pushing it

Starting with The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis (a name that is either one of the worst names of a game ever or completely awesome depending on how much of an insufferable hipster you are), these games titular stars were the Zoombinis, a race of little blue people that looked sorta like Mr. Potato Head crossed with Mario in some weird ass powerup form (Spring Mario, etc)

A whole mess of Zoombinis. Probably reflecting on how awesome they are. Because that's what Zoombinis are, fucking awesome

I'll let Wikipedia set up the premise

The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis (also published under the title "Zoombinis: Logical Journey") was the first title to be released in the series. The game is based around the "Zoombinis", a race of small blue creatures which are depicted with varying eyes, noses, hair, and feet. They are peaceful and successful, living on a small island called Zoombini Isle. Their lives are interrupted by a race called the Bloats, who offer to expand trade routes and improve the Zoombinis' quality of life; instead they take advantage of the situation and enslave the Zoombinis. The Zoombinis therefore decide to flee and search for a new home, and on their journey they encounter a variety of logic puzzles which the player must solve.

Hmm I wonder where I heard that before

Zoombinis never shied away from teaching the hard truths about how much of dicks random [strike]white people[/strike] explorers on ships promising you nice things can be

Anyways, so what you do is bring Zoombinis over in groups of 16 from one end of the Island over to the other. But first you had to make them using their TOTALLY AWESOME CHARACTER GENERATOR

Suck it Mass Effect. Can you replace springs for SHEPARD'S legs? Yeah. Yeah that's what I fucking thought.

As a side note what the hell kind of name is Lupheepi? At least we know where Final Fantasy gets its character names from

Anyways after you made your set of 16 Zoombinis using the TOTALLY AWESOME CHARACTER GENERATOR (or just randomly had them all made because you're a lazyass), then you had to get them to the other side of the Island.

Sorta like

+

, I guess

Wikipedia again:

There are 12 puzzles in total, split into four legs, and the Zoombinis must complete three legs (9 puzzles) in order to reach their new home. The first and last legs are compulsory and are completed by all Zoombinis; for the second leg the player is given a choice to take either the north or the south path.

Man only nine puzzles? Lame, right? Hahaha yeah that's what you think.

OH SO YOU THINK THIS GAME IS EASY, EHHH? wrote:

the player has to save 625 Zoombinis in total...The four difficulty levels are Not So Easy, Oh So Hard, Very Hard, and Very Very Hard, and each difficulty level is color-coded. Once a leg has increased in difficulty, there is no way to revert the change.

Wait 625 Zoombinis to collect? Hmm GameFreak you have some 'splainin to do. At 16 per trip, that's...how many is that, Captain Carrot?

Captain Carrot wrote:

That's like 3,720 times! And a half.

Oh ho ho ho Captain Carrot you're such a scamp!

But no seriously that was dumb and so are you.

Also, this game has no "Easy" mode. You know why? Because Easy mode is for pussies, and pussies don't save Zoombinis, they play Reader Rabbit or some shit.

Anyways so the First Leg always had one of three puzzles:

Allergic Cliffs

The lower bridge is obviously the Cool Kids Bridge. I never got to walk on THAT bridge in middle school

Anyways yeah basically each Zoombini would be "allowed" to walk on one of the bridges and NOT on the other, and they were grouped to each bridge based on certain facial/pedal(?) features (like in the above screenshot it was most likely separated into "Glasses/No Glasses", with maybe "Hat + Hair Combo/No Hat + Hair Combo"

I remember this one being balls hard when I was a kid because you only had five shots to figure out the pattern (every wrong choice pulls a peg out of the ground and you only had six, with the last being pulled out stranding all the Zoombinis on the other side)

Stone Cold Caves

Sorry about the smallness of the image.

Basically Stone Cold Caves but with four paths, and two creepy-ass looking cave guardians. It was pretty goddamn hard on the later levels, if I remember correctly.

My most vivid memory of this level is how much of cunts the guardians are; they'll let a Zoombini get like nearly all the way to the top of the cave then like shake the path so it tumbles all the way back down to the bottom. Pretty dick move if you ask me

Pizza Pass

You know what? Fuck you troll we're not making you a goddamn pizza, there's 16 of us and one of you we can beat your silly wood ass into submission

This is a bit too complicated to explain easily, I'll have Wikipedia handle it:

The Zoombinis arrive on a dirt road guarded by three tree trolls: Arno, Willa and Shyler. There is a pizza machine to the left which has options for different toppings for a pizza and ice cream. The player must create a pizza with unique toppings for each troll. If none of the trolls are happy with the toppings on the pizza, it will be thrown into a pit. But if one of the trolls likes all of the toppings present on the pizza, it will be thrown onto the rock behind that troll instead. Once a troll receives a pizza with all of the wanted toppings on it, the troll will move to stand on their respective rock and wait for the remaining trolls to be satisfied. If the player is unsuccessful in delivering the correct pizza after 6 tries, the Zoombini delivering the pizza will be whacked by the first troll that is present onto the rock. If there are more incorrect delivers, the zoombini will be wacked away by a troll back to Zoombini Isle. The more incorrect deliveries, the more Zoombinis will be whacked away. Once all trolls are satisfied, they will consume their pizzas and the remaining Zoombinis will then be allowed to continue their journey.
There are significant changes to the puzzle as the level of difficulty increases:
Not So Easy: Only Arno is present, and there are five pizza toppings.
Oh, So Hard: Willa is added, giving a total of two trolls. There are now four pizza toppings, and ice cream is added with a total of 2 toppings.
Very Hard: All three trolls are now present. Ice cream toppings remain the same as the preceding level, but all five pizza toppings can now be used.
Very, Very Hard: Same as Very Hard, but now with three ice cream toppings.

It's really not that hard in comparison to Stone Cold Caves but on the higher difficulties it pretty much guarantees that you lose at least a couple of Zoombinis, which sucks, honestly

Also Jesus Christ the trolls can kick you fucking far as fuck, they should be trying out to be the San Diego Charger's starting kicker (HEYOOOO!) then fucking around screwing some innocent little blue natives over

After the First Leg/Second Leg

You end up in Shelter Rock (couldn't find a pic, sorry) wherein you sit, collect your thoughts, and assumingly the Zoombinis recount the horrific events that they have been through, and the permanent, lasting emotional and mental damage brought on them by losing their fellow countrymen.
"Oh my god... we lost Frank. Someone has to tell his wife what happened. Jesus. He was such a good man, and to die like that, like a fucking animal...."

"I don't think we'll ever be able to find Jenny's body. Just...the way Shyler bit her head clean off...dear god, that'll stay with me for the rest of my life."

Anyways, after the brief respite you had to pick 16 more Zoombinis (and no less) to go with you. Unfortunately if you lost any in the last leg, this meant you had to redo it with 16 new guys (luckily you got to store your current amount of Zoombinis at the site).

Also at the second leg, you could choose which way you wanted to go: North or South. Hmm, non-linearity? You got some 'splainin to do, Rockstar.

The North Path (The Marshy Trail/Who's Bayou)

Captain Cajun's Ferry Boat

[

Wait wait why do the propeller guys need to get on the boat? Can't they just float over the water? What the hell game

Baically every seated Zoombini has to have a trait in common with whatever seat(s) next to its seat. The above screenshot is on the highest difficulty, were every seat has at least two seats adjacent and many have as high as six. It can get really ridiculously hard depending how you spec your Zoombini loadout, but you can cheat your way to victory by bringing everyone with like the same color nose or glasses (and honestly every Zoombini should have glasses because goddamn the glasses are awesome as hell). Although honeslty, if you cheat at an educational game...is that indicative of it achieving its purpose or does that make you a total douche? Interesting moral question there

Titanic Tattooed Toads

Man what the fuck is going on here thanks a whole lot Rent

I have absolutely no recollection of this level at all!

Luckily WIKI:

The player must find a path on different shaped, patterned and colored lily pads for huge toads to ferry them across the river on their backs. Each toad has a shape on its back which corresponds to a particular feature (hence 'tattooed toads'). The same toad cannot be used more than twice nor will there be any toads that hop diagonally. If the player chooses a path which doesn’t have a continuing sequence of the shape, color or pattern on the toad's back, the toad will get stuck and the Zoombini will be left in limbo on the lily pads and cannot continue. When the puzzle difficulty increases, there are few or no paths to be found, but half-formed ones. A fairy is shown at the beginning of the puzzle changing the lily pads with a wand. The wand (called the "Swapping Stick") is left with the toads and the player must swap the lily pads with the wand to make a path. Eventually, the wand's power will run out. In the third and fourth levels, crabs emerge from the river at the top of the lily pad field. The crabs have the shape of a particular lily pad on their back and, like the toads, will work their way down the field to obstruct the toads pathway, possibly taking them in a different direction.

I remember the wand, I do remember that. Oh...oh wait now it's kinda coming back to me. Fuck the crabs.

Stone Rise

I really can't think of a snarky comment to put here. Sorry!

Basically Ferry Boats, but each Zoombini has to be linked to the other Zoombinis in the chain by a specific characteristic (i.e. nose, walking implement, hair, etc). Harder difficulties have more links to other Zoombinis.

Also, what the fuck?

What the fuck? wrote:

In 'Very Very Hard' Mode (Red, Level 4) of this activity, in the centre of the field usually will be a line of four stones,(starting with the main stone on the very right and the other three directly left of it horizontally. Linking zoombinis on these four stones, and these four stones only a banner stating that the player has entered the 'Psychedelic ZB Zone' where the zoombinis will start flash, this has visual effect only.

I dunno if the broken English makes this more or less comprehensible. It surely makes it more HILARIOUS, though.

The South Path (Deep, Dark Forest)

Fleens!

Fucking poseurs.

Basically the "Fleens" are the "cousins" of the Zoombinis, and for some incomprehensible reason (maybe it was a Hatfields-McCoys scenario but with [strike]less[/strike] [strike]more[/strike] about the same amount of inbreeding) they're not letting you pass until you can find the Zoombini that corresponds to it in characteristics, so the Fleen can...chase the Zoombini off a branch. On easiest levels this is unbelievably easy, but on the hardest it's unbelievably difficult because red'll correspond to green and the Zoombini's hair will correspond to the Fleen's legtype and oh my god my brain is leaking out of my ears

The 90's ruined EVERYTHING.

Didimension Hotel/Hotel Dimensia

I can't find a pic of this, so instead I'll just put a pic of some Doritos 3Ds. Why? Because they were fucking delicioso, that's why.

It's like it's coming right at me!

Mudball Wall

You gotta shoot balls of paint, combined with symbols, at a grid on specific tiles. The grid is organized in a logical but unknown way.

Eh this shouldn't be too hard, this is easy

OH HOLY SHIT GODDAMN

After the Second Leg/Third Leg

Same thing, campsite, you can store Zoombinis if you need to, gotta make sure you have 16 before setting off again.

I really gotta wonder how badly the Zoombinis are doing right now. After seeing nearly everyone they know and love eviscerated by trolls, crushed by stone guardians, and vaguely freaked out by those mongoloid, disgusting green freaks, I'm concerned for their mental well-being at this point. Hopefully they won't be Courtney Love'd, that would suck.

Third Leg (The Mountains of Despair)

The Lion's Lair

EVERYBODY CONGA!

The Zoombinis encounter a dimly lit cavern where a large, stone lion guards the only way onward. Below the lion is a path consisting of 16 stones. The Zoombinis must be placed on the path, in order, according to certain characteristics, which are shown on the wall. If a Zoombini is placed on the wrong stone, a peg holding up a large gate pops free. When all the pegs are gone, the gate falls and the Zoombinis behind the gate cannot continue. The Zoombinis which are placed correctly on the path can continue their journey. The stone lion lifts its paw, and they can continue to the next puzzle. As the difficulty increases, characteristics disappear from the wall until no characteristics are shown.

On Very, Very Hard it's like a sick combination of Memory, Stone Rise, and Cursor*10. Man.

Mirror Machine

The secret to sex changes: Mirrors. Who thought it'd be that easy

Basically they wheel out a Zoombini, and it must undergo the correct "transformations" (based on mirror placement) for its image to be changed to the one on the center diamond. It has an awesome failure animation, though; if you fail the diamond in the center drops and the Zoombini totally eats shit. It's fucking hilarious.

Bubblewonder Abyss

Why the fuck does every puzzle game have to have a "placing pipes" minigame? Is there some kind of law I am unaware of or something? What the hell, man?

Played that Bioshock game where you connect pipes? It's this. There's some directions specific to certain Zoombini characteristics that are automatically placed on the board to make it harder for you to complete the task. Also, you can only rotate the points, and Zoombinis can't crash into each other (the bubbles pop and they both fall to their screaming deaths...it's...horrible). Also also, on harder triggers you trigger the "Zoombinis begin to go through" button and can't stop it so you're spending all your time trying to figure out where the hell to rotate the points and oh this one has a blue nose so it's gotta go straight and oh a Zoombini passed over a button that reset everything and hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The End! You Win! For Now.

So, you've made it through all the puzzles, and your broken, battered shell of Zoombinis get to Zoombiniville (real name). What do you get for all this trouble?

BADASS BUILDINGS, THAT'S WHAT!

This was totally worth the scores of women and children we had to sacrifice to get here!

You get one for every leg, at every level of difficulty that you complete fully, with no loss of Zoombinis (since there's four legs and four difficulties, that's 16 possible buildings). Hmm...that sounds a bit like Achievements. Looks like you got some 'splainin to do, Microsoft.

And then you get a sweet ass ending animation!

Dude we are getting mad fucking drunk tonight, Frank just brought over a kegger

And then you get to do it all over again! 16 down, 609 to go!

Man this game sounds totally awesome, Rent! Where can I get it?
I don't know! I was hoping one of you fine folk could tell me. Maybe gog or something has it?

So anyways this thread's about this awesometastic game! We should totally discuss it and/ore bitch about how hard as fuck the bubble level is. Because seriously. Fuck that level.

Oh, also, there were two other games. I never played them, maybe one of you have?

God these game covers are so 90's

DISCUSS!

Bacon-BuTTy · March 2010

Why is big ben on a tiny island?

Educational my arse.

Seriously though, I remember being a little obsessed with Zoombinis, spending all of my lunchtimes in our schools computer lab playing it.

I remember lots of other people preferring Gizmos and Gadgets, but I hated it. Although, I still occasionally say "Bananas!" in the same voice as the kid from it.

...Why do I do that?

shadydentist · March 2010

Man, this game was the shit.

Also, I made all my zoombinis as similar as possible to make the puzzles easier.

Smug Duckling · March 2010

A lot of your images are broken.

But yes, this game was one of the highlights of my childhood. Man I spent hours saving these little guys.

shadydentist wrote: »

Also, I made all my zoombinis as similar as possible to make the puzzles easier.

This. Made harder levels infinitely easier. Suddenly the fleens all look the same too and it's easy to see the correspondence.

Rent · March 2010

Smug Duckling wrote: »

A lot of your images are broken.

But yes, this game was one of the highlights of my childhood. Man I spent hours saving these little guys.

Fixing now

BloodySloth · March 2010

Is there any way to play this nowadays with our newfangled contraptions? I feel like revisiting my childhood.

jothki · March 2010

Oh shit, there were more games? I need to look those up.

Your description for Bubblewonder Abyss is off, there's no Bioshock-style connection. You just need to figure out which entrance to send particular Zoombinis in, and how you should time it so that they flip the correct paths (some of which alternate whenever a Zoombini passes over them, and which buttons to hit, and oh god my brain is melting.

You might want to talk about the town thing at the end, where you can see the guys that you rescued and look at buildings and monuments that they put up for beating things at each difficulty level.

101 · March 2010

Oh man I remember playing Mountain Rescue when I was younger. It was so good.

Bacon-BuTTy · March 2010

I'm trying desperately to find a youtube video of the Gizmos and Gadgets kid saying "Bananas!" when he picks some up, but I can't and it's driving me a little crazy.

I'm sure I didn't imagine this.

travathian · March 2010

WTF, I thought this was going to be about a zombie game. You know, the living dead that eat brains, not some Mr Potato head ripoff.

Garthor · March 2010

Bacon-BuTTy wrote: »

Why is big ben on a tiny island?

Educational my arse.

Because it was fucking STOLEN, that's why.

It's like you've never played the fucking game.

(Also that's why they're on the Eiffel Tower)

Rent · March 2010

jothki wrote: »

You might want to talk about the town thing at the end, where you can see the guys that you rescued and look at buildings and monuments that they put up for beating things at each difficulty level.

I...uh..I did dude

Dunxco · March 2010

Rent I have no idea what the fuck is going on in this thread.

But I love it. I must find these Zoombinis.

Verr · March 2010

I was trying to remember the name of this game a few weeks ago.

So kickass, I was so proud I could beat my mom on a few of the puzzles.

Digito · March 2010

Oh goddamnit Zoombinis.

So so much nostalgia from when I was a little kid... shit, now I want to play again kinda.

YaYa · March 2010

holy shit Rent

that's a high quality OP right there

also fuck ya'll, Jumpstart 3rd Grade for life

Bacon-BuTTy · March 2010

Garthor wrote: »

Bacon-BuTTy wrote: »

Why is big ben on a tiny island?

Educational my arse.

Because it was fucking STOLEN, that's why.

It's like you've never played the fucking game.

(Also that's why they're on the Eiffel Tower)

So.. someone stole a 1,000 foot steel structure? And stored it along side big ben, the tower made of 2600 cubic meters of bricks and stone that was attached to the houses of parliament, which they also stole?

...educational my arse.

UncleSporky · March 2010

Hell yes.

I always wanted to play through this until I got every single Zoombini. But the games got slightly harder every time you played through perfectly with no loss of life, so you'd have to lose one Zoombini every time.

Yeah, I had a plan.

Zetx · March 2010

I loved Zoombinis. God.

firewaterword · March 2010

This game was great. I remember choking the shitty computers in our computer lab with save files from this game just in case I killed a zoombini and had to go back a step.

This also reminded me of The Island of Dr. Brain, which was also totally sweet.

Which was the one where you had to shoot kewpi dolls at a carnival to start? That's a weird memory right there, but I know it exists somewhere...

l337CrappyJack · March 2010

Oh shit, this game WAS my middle school computer lab. They shouldn't have even bothered installing an OS, just figure out a way to make it so this shit popped up when you turned the thing on and save everybody some time.

jothki · March 2010

firewaterword wrote: »

Which was the one where you had to shoot kewpi dolls at a carnival to start? That's a weird memory right there, but I know it exists somewhere...

I remember that. I think it had 'Island' in it somewhere. And the name of the jerk who trapped you there.

Rent · March 2010

There, images fixed

IvanIssacs · March 2010

I have no idea when this game was released but that OP was great.

Tig · March 2010

wow.... somebody else played this game other than me? ZOOMBINIS! FUCK YES :^:

this game looks roughly 10,000,000 times better in my memory

Rent · March 2010

IvanIssacs wrote: »

I have no idea when this game was released

1996

but that OP was great.

Thanks!

Tig wrote: »

wow.... somebody else played this game other than me? ZOOMBINIS! FUCK YES :^:

Dude if you literally went to a school in the last like 13, 14 years you played Zoombinis

YaYa wrote: »

holy shit Rent

that's a high quality OP right there

Thanks!

I try to maintain excellence when I make the rare decision to make a G and T thread

also fuck ya'll, Jumpstart 3rd Grade for life

GTFO LOSER :P

Captain Carrot · March 2010

Rent wrote: »

Tig wrote: »

wow.... somebody else played this game other than me? ZOOMBINIS! FUCK YES :^:

Dude if you literally went to a school in the last like 13, 14 years you played Zoombinis

I'm a senior in college and I hadn't heard of them until we talked about them today.

Rent wrote:

YaYa wrote: »

holy shit Rent

that's a high quality OP right there

Thanks! I try to maintain excellence when I make the rare decision to make a G and T thread

Rent · March 2010

Captain Carrot wrote: »

Rent wrote: »

Tig wrote: »

wow.... somebody else played this game other than me? ZOOMBINIS! FUCK YES :^:

Dude if you literally went to a school in the last like 13, 14 years you played Zoombinis

I'm a senior in college and I hadn't heard of them until we talked about them today.

Well you think 625 divided by 16 is 3,720.5 so obviously you haven't heard of Zoombinis!

UncleSporky · March 2010

I never played it or saw it in school but my sister had a copy we got from somewhere.

My favorite part was the pizza guys. The first dude and the girl were extremely bitchy. The smaller guy was still picky but was at least somewhat polite.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hST8OhqJ8k

Captain Carrot · March 2010

Rent wrote: »

Captain Carrot wrote: »

Rent wrote: »

Tig wrote: »

wow.... somebody else played this game other than me? ZOOMBINIS! FUCK YES :^:

Dude if you literally went to a school in the last like 13, 14 years you played Zoombinis

I'm a senior in college and I hadn't heard of them until we talked about them today.

Well you think 625 divided by 16 is 3,720.5 so obviously you haven't heard of Zoombinis!

Dammit you said you wouldn't tell anyone I said that![/stomps off and sulks]

Lucedes · March 2010

Man, Zoombinis are awesome. I had this game AT HOME (OMG WTF) and I actually found it when I moved out of my parent's house, but the disk was scratched beyond saving, or something, and it wouldn't work.

Lame.

FroggyP · March 2010

This OP is so beautiful it has moved me to tears.

I have played mountain rescue. Definately not as great as the 1st. Thats about all I can remember of it though.

I remember playing the pizza guys always scared me. The thought of doing something nice for someone, messing up, and then getting thrown cus of it? I mean thats terrible!

Gilder · March 2010

I love the Zoombinis. My school had a computer that was used for educational games and such, and for a while they just had stuff like Oregon Trail. You could play it if you finished schoolwork and others were still working, or during lunch break. Then one day they got in Zoombinis and I like to think my grades skyrocketed. I would study so much at home so I could finish classwork as quickly as possible to play Zoombinis. I still have my copy here somewhere. This was such a fantastic game.

Except for that fucking Bubblewonder Abyss goddammit game I was RIGHT THERE. I had them all and you had to come in with your goddamn bubbles and steal one away from me! The journey was perfect! I scaled the cliffs, I stayed in the hotel, I made-a the pizzas. Why would you take it all away from me at the last moment?! The Zoombinis want only happiness! Why do you deny them such?!

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