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They parroted our scripts in glorious ’90s techno-voice, adjustable by pitch and tempo (so you could really capture those nuances of character). (This never happened, btw.) My parents, however, did gift my sister and me The American Girls Premiere, which provided a different type of immersive experience.įelicity and her friends across the timeline of American history lurched across our computer screen, flailing in prerecorded gestures. They considered it too expensive, so I plotted to win enough money through seed catalog sweepstakes to purchase one myself. I salivated over the Felicity doll and accessories in the catalog, even cutting out items from the catalog to play with as paper dolls when it became clear my parents would never buy the doll itself. I was a diehard Felicity fan (though reviewing her character now, I’m… concerned by aspects I overlooked as a kid).

The game was first released in 1997 by Pleasant Company, maker of the American Girl dolls and books, and produced by The Learning Company (which essentially reskinned Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium’s Opening Night, which let you stage your own mystery dramas ). And for me, as a wannabe writer, The American Girls Premiere was a favorite, giving me an opportunity to be a playwright and director. While we would watch my dad play bloody Westerns and reboots of classic jungle adventures ( Pitfall), my sister and I would spend hours on educational games. And to play games on CD-ROM that did not require access to the internet. I would go on to use this computer to write reports for my mom. We got our first home computer sometime after 2000. In many tech discussions, we assume broadband and wireless is a given. My current personal tablet isn’t even built to work with dial-up. Even now, when I plan to visit home, I prepare myself for slow data service on my phone as my only access to the internet. Through my undergrad studies, when I commuted from home, we only had dial-up taking its screeching time to connect to email. It falls behind in its adoption or access to computers, to the internet (especially broadband), and to smartphones - not only because of the average socioeconomic status, but because of geographic isolation and a prioritization of self-reliance and privacy, both of which computers, and even more so the internet, threaten. Sure, you should be doing homework, but Carmen Sandiego is on the loose!Īppalachia, as a region, has a unique relationship with technology. You drove through a holler to get to our house, but we lived in a brick split-level on the hill beyond.Ĭomputer Lab Week is our ode to the classic “school” games, like Oregon Trail and Number Munchers, that kept us from being productive. Our dad was an engineer at one of the plants that stunk up the sky on the way to the mall across the river. Vance book, and we were relatively privileged - white, middle-class. We lived in Appalachia by virtue of our home in southeastern Ohio, on the border of West Virginia where my mom was born and grew up. My parents started homeschooling my sister and me when I went into fifth grade. Not that a middle-school girl from Ohio recognized that at the time.

The raised images of the core American Girls™ on the cover - Felicity, Josefina, Kirsten, Addy, Samantha, and Molly - held a 3D promise of stories to be rewritten and written anew, to (seemingly) define for ourselves what it meant to be a girl and to be American. The version we were gifted was the Special Edition Collector’s Set, which cost a whole $10 more and came packaged in a fancy tin destined to become a pencil holder.

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And if there was a game that gave us free rein to explore this dramatic side, it was The American Girls Premiere. My sister and I would often travel the Trail together, naming and crafting stories around our pixelated adventurers, waxing poetic on their tombstones. A countless number of pioneers died of dysentery in Oregon Trail.

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It was hard to beat the satisfaction of the grocery check-out simulator in Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. But there were games - edutainment, I guess I should qualify, given the internet’s stark distinction between games and games - to distract me. There was some sort of mold that grew in the Ohio humidity and it made my eyes itch.

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