TV School House I - RCA Studio II

1977

Entry posted by Guest September 9, 2005

1,711 views

Here is a scan of both TV School House I and II for scale comparisons. (In case you've never seen one of the RCA "longboxes".)

I didn't even try to coax my son to play this one because it isn't a game and it requires knowledge that he does not yet posess.

Remember your SATs? If you are not old enough to have taken them yet, then try to remember any standardized test you've ever taken. This game pack is like those tests -- except the questions are a lot less interesting.

The main component of this package is the test manuals. I guess the box, which is twice the size of a regular cartridge box, was enlarged to accommodate these manuals. Inside each of the two manual varieties are 18 quizzes. The subjects quizzed are pulled from Social Studies (covering geography, history, government, cultures, graph interpretation and map reading) and Mathematics (covering addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, measurement, Roman numerals and logic). The way the programmers decided to handle the tests is clever and somewhat sneaky.

You put in the cart, you start the game and you select less time or more time (1 or 2) for answering the questions (about 10 seconds for 1, 20 seconds for 2). You then select a quiz number. I'll use the first quiz in the Orange Series (Advanced) booklet as an example.

The quiz page for quiz number 1, has a map of Europe at the top. Selected countries are labeled with a letter from A to H. Beneath this map there is a two-column answer grid. In the left column there is a number for each row, going from 0 to 9. In right column there is the name of a country. Social Studies, Quiz 1: European Geography, consists of the RCA Studio II displaying a letter and the test taker inputting the number corresponding to the correct answer from the answer grid. For instance, Letter A on the map of Europe is situated on the outline of the country most of the world knows as Portugal. When the Studio II puts up a letter A, you answer the question by pressing the numbered button for Portugal, which is "8". The game gives you points based on how quickly you answer the questions, up to 120 points per quiz.

The cart comes with four quiz books, two each of yellow and orange, so two players may participate at the same time. This two-player version pits the test takers against each other. The first to answer correctly gets the points. Answer first, but incorrectly, and you're locked out of your keypad until your opponent answers.

So, what's so sneaky about this? Well, it's how the programmers get around any memory limitations imposed by the machine. You've got four sets of 9 quizzes.

The answer to question A in quiz number one for Social Studies (Orange book, European Geography) is 8.

The answer to question A in quiz number one for Mathematics (Orange book, Addition) is 8.

The answer to question A in quiz number one for Social Studies (Yellow book, State Location) is 8. etc. . .

Essentially, they've stored 72 letter-number combinations and then created 4 different sets of quizzes to fit them. Clever and sneaky.

Anyway, this doesn't even count as a game, so technically, I shouldn't have even bothered talking about it or "playing" it. But it was in my the little pile of RCA Studio II carts so, what the hell. I do think it's interesting to see this attempt at a pseudo-standardized testing environment on a console back in the early days. In fact, I would speculate that this sort of thing is what the corporation may have had in mind all along. Try to sell these "testing" cartridges to the schools. It really seems to be the only thing this system is good for. That, and running the Voyager probe.

TV Schoolhouse II: First Blood next entry. (I was going to say TV Schoolhouse II: Electric Boogaloo, but I couldn't stand my spellchecker telling me I was spelling "Boogaloo" wrong.)

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Nelio 288

Posted August 23, 2012

Cool! The game mentions Portugal! It's more than I can say for many games even from the 90s! I remember when Colonization came out and how annoyed I was that they didn't include Portugal! That's outrageous in a game about, well, world colonization.

And even Civilization, it took them many iterations until they included Portugal. I think it was on one of the last Civ 3 expansions.