Filed under: Gaming, Education
ChipWits lives on
Back in the days when Apple pretty much owned the educational market, the Mac was new and Oregon Trail was the pinnacle of edutainment, there existed a little program called ChipWits. I played on my Laser 128, but there were versions for the Commodore 64 and Macintosh. Now some 20-odd years later ChipWits makes a triumphant return as an Adobe AIR app, so you can get your robot on with a Windows machine or a Mac (and hopefully Linux someday).ChipWits is a programmable robot game. You build and program your little robot dude to travel through various environments (called rooms). Each one has specific rewards and risks, which makes programming the robot guy interesting. That may sound dry as toast, but your robot eats pie and drinks coffee. He can see, smell and touch. He can zap bugs but isn't too happy with bombs. The bit of whimsy thrown in with the robot-building makes for a really enjoyable game. Plus, it's surprising how fun debugging your robot can be.
The big improvement in what the authors are calling ChipWits II is that you can now create your own missions. If something like Desktop Tower Defense is your bag, the Mission Editor will appeal to you. Currently you can try ChipWits 15 times and buy it for $14.95. The release price will be $19.95, and the authors are donating 10% of their profits to 3 non-profit organizations.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
amnesia said 7:00PM on 10-12-2007
now that brings back some c64 memories memories!
Reply
William Donelson said 3:36PM on 10-12-2007
Wow! Chipwits! I had this on my very, very old 1985-vintage Fat Mac (512k) for years, but it was never compatible with my later Macs.
I have been a programmer since 1968 (!) and found this little program to be one of the best ways to teach "programming" principles that I have ever seen, and even thought about re-building it for newer Macs in the 1990s.
Fun, easy, addictive, and Educational to boot !
Reply
KerryB said 3:58PM on 10-12-2007
Seconded. I was only 6 or 7 when we got our first Mac (the same, 512k, though we later got a nice 1 MB ram upgrade ;)
I have fond memories of Chipwits and am damn near guaranteed to pick up a copy of this....
Reply
KeynoteKen said 4:54PM on 10-12-2007
I remember having fun with a similar game called Robot Odyssey
http://members.aol.com/Fractal101/odyssey.htm
There's even a free Java port available (Free-er than AIR? :) called DroidQuest.
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/tomfoote3/DQ/id35.htm
Reply
Doug Sharp said 8:24PM on 10-12-2007
Thanks for the nice words about ChipWits II. Mike Johnston and I developed it on the Mac in 1984 - the first year of Macdom.
We just posted a new build of the game. Remember - it is still in beta and we could use your bug reports.
We hope you like it as much as people liked the original.
Gamely, Doug Sharp
Reply