GAMES THAT JUST BARELY MISSED THE MARK.

I was doing a lot of thinking about my childhood last night and a certain game came to mind. The game: Sesame Street 1-2-3 for the NES. The longing effects it's had on my mind has been nothing short of momentous, but for all the wrong reasons.


23 years later and I still remember how deeply this game upset me, but I can't put my finger on exactly why. I know it had something to do with the moon, but was it just that? Was its dead set eyes and sunken features so jarring that I set it down then and never picked it back up? That I would actually bring my mother into the room to beg that I never play this game again - to leave learning to schools - and return to happier times with Mario and Kirby?

It should be stated that I never had a problem with Ernie and that the use of colored shapes to construct images of stuff like birds is something I quite like and would like to see return in games even meant for older folk.

What could've been an excellent teaching tool for young children centered around a familiar and well beloved television show set in a medium that encourages play suddenly became the thing of nightmares for many (just view the comments section of the video above and you'll see what I mean). And the strange thing is, even though the signs of mental scarring are clear, I don't blame Rare (this game was made by Rare, by the way; not a crowning achievement in the slightest) for what they set out to do. They knew exactly what they were getting into and clearly wanted to make something good and helpful for early development... but they failed miserably due to one or two fatal flaws.

The biggest of which is the overwhelming sense of negative reinforcement of failure pushing the player away as opposed to the positive reinforcement of succeeding encouraging bonding with the product and the lesson at hand. Shigeru Miyamoto once described his game design approach towards Super Mario Bros 1 as giving the player a safe place to experiment with the game before moving forward and finding surprises and rewards that would "make them happy".


Sesame Street 1-2-3 could've used this sort of reward system to help counterbalance what ultimately made its way into the product. You see, in early learning (at least in the States), it's common practice to give young children snacks (animal crackers and juice boxes, typically) in the middle of a teaching session and/or candy or colorful stickers for succeeding to keep them engaged. While this sort of thing isn't possible with a Nintendo cartridge, they could've broken up the lesson with fun mini-games that made the player feel good and gave them something to look forward to.

Instead what we were given were creepy depictions of our favorite Sesame Street characters (friends, really) and a celestial being that was disappointed in us (nobody else in the silhouette of the neighborhood, just us) for making mistakes; mistakes, mind you, that are pivotal to the learning process. The failure jingle didn't help, either.

But the instruments of learning are all there, and that's what disappoints me the most about this game. It could've been so much more if only one or two things were changed to make it less upsetting, but people only remember it for how badly/scared it made them feel and how it made them cry because they didn't understand why they were being punished by their friends on Sesame Street.

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Did you ever play this game growing up and did you have a similar experience? Or do you know of any other games that just barely missed the mark? That despite having what seemed to be every item on the checklist present just didn't succeed in what it set out to do: provide an entertaining experience.

Share below.

EDIT: Shortly after submitting this thread, I found another video hosted on Vox's Youtube channel that further interviews Shigeru Miyamoto about his design philosophy and what's made him such an iconic designer over the years. Most of this you'll probably already know, but I feel it's a good watch all the same.