80s kid video game : Donald Duck's Playground.
Recall Memories with Classic Games. This article is another review of an old video games. Follow me @zulman for more article like this
Hello again guys, how are you all today?
Welcome back to my blog, with me @zulman, you are going to find a review about video games and especially old video games. In today's post, I am going to talk about another old games that was released before the year 2000s. The game that i am going to review today called Donald Duck's Playground. This video game is definitely for kids. However, it is also available for adult. This video game is an educational video game. So, it is one of the game that is good to be played by kids in the hope that they can learn something from the game.
Donald Duck's Playground that i am going to talk about today particularly was released in 1984 for commodore 64 platform. This video game was also released for several another platform such as PC, Apple II, Amiga, Atari and even for MS-DOS. The release year for each platform was different as well. You will see the details about this later in the article.
Review Notice
This review is not going to be like another game review. Here, i will only give you some information the game, It's development and how you can setup your computer in order to play the game. There will be some screenshots of the game as well for you to see how the game is look like. Then, at the end of this article, I will also give you the information on how to play this game on your current computer or if you want to play the game online, you will also found how you can do that here
Now, let's start learning about the video games.
Donald Duck's Playground.
Donald Duck's Playground is a video game that was released in 1984 by Sierra On-Line. This video game belong to the genre of an educational video game. The video game than was also published by Sierra On-Line. This video game use Adventure Game Interpreter as it's engine. The Adventure Game Interpreter is a game engine that was developed by Sierra On-Line themselves. This engine was originally developed for another game called King's Quest that was also in 1984, an adventure game that Sierra and IBM wished to market in order to attract consumers to IBM's lower-cost home computer.
AGI Engine have the capabilities to run animated, color adventure video games music and sound effects. The player control that the video game use this engine will be with a keyboard and optionally a joystick. After the launch of the game King's Quest, Sierra continue to develop another game that have the genre of adventure based on the AGI engine, one of the game that they develop with this engine is Donald Duck's Playground. The engine was still used between 1984 and 1989. After that, Sierra replace the engine with a more sophisticated one called Sierra's Creative Interpreter.
Alright, now let's back talking about Donald Duck's Playground video game. In this game, the player will play as a role of a duck named Donald. The objective of the player is to collect and earn money so that he can buy a playground items for his nephews. In order to archive this objective, the player need to make Donald work or get him a job in any four different work places. Each of this job will shift lasts from one to eight minutes, as the player wants, in which time Donald has to earn as much as he can.
Donald Duck's Playground video game was originally written for the Commodore 64 platform. Later, the game ported to Sierra AGI interpreter for the Apple II, PC compatibles, Amiga, and Atari ST. A version of this game for the TRS-80 Color Computer also followed as well. The AGI engine is actually had not been designed for this type of game. Al Lowe as the designer of the game has described some aspects of porting the game as ridiculous for most notably the cash register section.
Now, let's check out the table below for more details about the game development
| Description | Information |
|---|---|
| Developers | Sierra On-Line (Amiga, Atari ST, C64 and IBM PC) |
| Publishers | Sierra On-Line, U.S. Gold |
| Designer | Al Lowe |
| Engine | Adventure Game Interpreter |
| Platform | Amiga, Atari ST, Apple II, Commodore 64, IBM PC, MS-DOS |
| Release | 1984 for commodore 64 |
| Genre | Educational |
| Mode | Single-player |
The Source of the details information and the cover art image are from: Wikipedia
In the game, the story of the game will center around the job that where Donald work and his playground. So, let check out in details about the job and the playground information.
The Jobs
In the job, Donald will have a different task for each job. He will earns a set amount of cash for each part of his job. There are two level, on the Intermediate level, the wages or the money he earn will be doubled while on the Advanced level, the money or wages will be tripled. Donald will have to work at 4 place. Those are:
- The greengrocer's.
In this job, Donal's job is to sort vegetables that thrown to him from the back of a pick-up truck. There are three different boxes, one of the boxes is for watermelons, one if for pumpkins another one is for cantaloupes. Each vegetable will be thrown at random distance. Donald job is to catch them and put it in the correct box. Failing to catch the vegetable or putting it in the wrong box results in it being squashed and no money earned. Donald will earns 1 cent for every vegetable that correctly sorted. - The toy shop.
In this work place, Donald job is putting toys that given to him from a conveyor belt. He need to put it in the correct place on a shelf. For every 80 seconds or so, a train will pass on a nearby railroad. If the shelf is open at the time, the train will cause toys to drop from the shelf, losing money. Donald need to close the shelf when the train is coming. Donald will earns 5 cents for every toy placed on the shelf. - The railroad.
In the railroad job, Donald need work at a switch console, he is responsible for putting switches on the tracks in the correct order in order to make the cargo train can pick their cargo up from the correct cars to deliver it to correct city. In this job, Donald will earn 15 cents for every delivery routed. - The airport.
Donald in this job is responsible for sorting cargo that was given to him on a conveyor belt. It was almost similar to the toy shops job. Here, each item of the cargo bears the three letter abbreviation of some airport in the United State. Donald need to throw it into a passing cargo van with the matching code. Donald will earns 3 cents for every item sorted.
The Playground.
With the money that Donald earn from his job, he can spend it by buying various items such as ladders and swings for his nephew's playground. These items can be bought from 3 different stores where the player need to be able to count the amount of the coins needed. Every item that has been bought will be placed at a specific place on the playground. By going across the railroad, Donald can call up one of his nephews to play on the playground.
How to play the game.
Now, after you read all the information above, As I said at the beginning of the article, I will give you information on how you can setup this game to play on your computer. You can do so with the help of DOSBox software. DOSBox is an emulator that will allow you to play DOS video game on your current computer. To install DOSBox on your computer, go check out the the video below. In that video, you will see how to install and setup your DOS game to DOSBox emulator.
- Installation Instruction
- Download the game from this link Click Here to go the download page.
- Extract the game and put in a folder that later you will mount to DOSBox as shown in the video.
- Mount the folder of where you put the game in DOSBox and then navigate to the game folder.
- Type sierra.exe and hit enter to start playing the game.
You also can click the link below to play the game online.
Donald Duck's Playground
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GG Reza, Masuk juga tu Binatang....
Hi zulman!
I've followed you for about a month. I see that you have so many interesting articles. Then, you are also consistent in review retro video games. The information which you give to the reader is also quite attractive. Thus, the reader can understand easily about what you want to deliver. I hope that you can write more about the video game review.
Reza sehat....hahahahaha
Mungkin robotnya lelah....