Math Gran Prix (Atari 2600)

Edutainment games are an unusual art. The delicate balance of trying to teach young players helpful real world knowledge while contextualizing it in an enjoyable manner has always been difficult to achieve, but there are many success stories, and plenty of people have fond memories of games like Math Blaster, Number Munchers, and Mario Teaches Typing. In fact, plenty of games not intended to directly teach players have managed to teach young audiences new vocabulary terms, math, or problem solving skills just because the reward for learning them was a more enjoyable game experience. However, the early days of gaming certainly had some of the sloppiest attempts to try and make learning fun, and like so many other edutainment games of the time, Math Gran Prix seemed to think slapping math problems on a barely interactive game would work, and considering the people who would buy it were likely well-meaning parents, trying to make it fun was hardly a real concern.

Math Gran Prix styles itself like a car race but without any of the speed or thrill. The two vehicles participating in this sluggish race alternate taking turns moving across the game’s singular race track, only able to move 2 or 3 spaces at a time. Clearly some inspiration was drawn from board games here, these essentially just being pieces you move across the board based on how well you do at the game’s math problems. Each player turn you get to pick whether you want to go for a 2 space or 3 space question, the 3 space meant to be harder but it can sometimes swing to being just as easy as the two space options. Honestly, save on the hardest difficulties, you hardly need to worry about 3 spacers being noticeably harder than the 2 spacer questions. The race track is very short so even if you try to meet the game on its level and sometimes choose the smaller movement option it will be over before you know it.

The most important consideration when playing Math Gran Prix is what kind of math problems you want to tackle. The three main game modes are one that uses addition and subtraction questions, one that only uses multiplication and division questions, and one that uses all four types of math problems. Each mode is available in three different difficulties that could be considered to be Easy, Normal, and Hard, but for the most part you shouldn’t expect the math to get too challenging even on its highest setting. Most of your questions will keep things simple enough to figure out, but to the game’s credit it can throw in some curveballs. The highest your answers will ever reach is three digits and even then the game is reticent to go there, usually keeping your solutions in the single digit range, and while many answers will be easy to immediately figure out to someone who knows simple math, the game will throw in things like dividing a three digit number by a two digit number or multiplying two two digit numbers together to throw off the intended young audiences. These do seem rare, and while the game claims to have an invisible tutor that caters the questions to you based on how well you’re doing, it has gone from those three digit division problems to questions as simple as four minus four so this seems a pretty dubious claim.

The difficulty of the math will be subjective, so even though it definitely leans towards the easy side, let’s assume you are a kid struggling with it and need some help practicing it. Well, let’s hope you don’t have the difficulty switch in the A position. While the game’s modes already separate things into three difficulty levels for each problem type, you can add some needless pressure to the affair by adding in an invisible 1 minute timer to every question. The general easiness of most of the game means this usually wouldn’t be felt if left on and even the hardest division questions are still simpler stuff to figure out thanks to a lack of fractions or negative numbers, but if your child is trying to learn to do the math well, this arbitrary timer that they can’t even see means that if they are struggling to figure out one that might be pushing them to think, they have to outpace this unseen time limit to earn their reward for trying. The time limit is easy enough to turn off of course, but it doesn’t really feel like the most thought out way of trying to help a kid learn to do math when an unknowable time crunch constantly pressures them to act fast on any question that isn’t immediately obvious.

A time limit option could have some debatable usefulness if you do want to become a speedier math whiz, and really, most of the game elements so far definitely make for some edutainment that is perhaps far too easy and plain, but nothing downright criminal. But then we get to the racing. In Math Gran Prix, you race against a game controlled car that seems to always move on its turn. You won’t move ahead if you get your math question wrong, and if you did flub a single question, the race might as well be over. The AI race car has no barrier to progress save for some occasional artificial stupidity where it might move forward 2 spaces instead of 3 for no reason. If you fall behind, making up that lost ground depends on the AI choosing not to win, and even if you answer every question correctly, winning the race is still tied to completely random factors. Even if you manage to pull ahead of the other car, if it can land on the same space as you it will bump you off the track and wreck your car, the car requiring an entire turn and a math question to repair. To be fair you can bump your opponent off the track as well, but if one car is bumped off, they can usually repair and then bump off the other car the next turn, meaning that things can drag on as you alternate running each other off the road until the pattern is somehow broken. However, since you’ll always know how many spaces need to be moved to bump them, it is again a matter of hoping the AI will inexplicably shift its tactics and just not take the free bump-off so you can gain some ground.

While choosing the 3 space math problems is almost always the right choice and bumping your opponent off the road may mean you want to pick 2 to smack them, there are other considerations that could almost be considered strategy if they weren’t both the only consistent tactic worth investing in and one that basically decides which car will randomly win the race. Certain spaces on the track aren’t just open road. There are three unusual symbols on the course that have special effects if you land on them, although there’s also a symbol near the end that makes you answer a 3 space question to win but is hardly a factor. The most useless special symbol is the upside-down V symbol known as the Sinker, because if you land here, you can’t be bumped off the road. Conceivably this could be helpful for escaping the bumping loop, but landing deliberately on the Sinker would almost always require you picking this space over two much more helpful options. The X shaped Skipper allows you to have a second turn immediately when you land on it, and that can give you a huge boost to the finish. If you already had the lead while landing on it, you’ve pretty much got a guaranteed victory on your hands. However, the last symbol is the real game-changer and what makes the winner essentially random. Once you know about the upside-down T’s effects, there is no reason to ever go for a different space. This last symbol is the Spinner. If you move forward at three spaces a turn to start you can be guaranteed to hit the first one pretty quickly, and when you land on the Spinner, it will randomly roll a few extra spaces for you to move ahead. You can roll anywhere between 1 and 4 spaces, and since the first Spinner is three spaces from a Skipper, your roll will not only guarantee you some extra spaces, but it can give you a lead your opponent can only really beat if they get a better roll.

Even if you choose to play with another human player instead of the AI racer, it’s hard to imagine two people on the same skill level who won’t encounter the inevitable truth that math knowledge is secondary to random chance here. You must go for the pure efficiency of 3 space questions to succeed and it’s not a hard choice since they are rarely a huge step above the 2 space questions in difficulty. Once you hit the Spinner area though, the race’s results will truly be determined, the lead landing the lap of the luckier player rather than the one with better math knowledge. A kid could do excellently at the hardest math questions here and lose because the AI racer decided to not make stupid moves and got lucky on the Spinner rolls. When the entire focus of the gameplay is gaining ground and the most important part of that is completely divorced from the problem solving it’s meant to be teaching, Math Gran Prix makes any possible enjoyment from this learning framework disappear.

THE VERDICT: Math Gran Prix aims to teach kids vital math skills like subtraction and multiplication, but it is more effective at teaching a child that random luck can screw you over. While the math problems can be accused of being generally too easy and their difficulty seems seemingly random on even the hardest difficulties, there are moments even an older player might need to think for a bit to solve the problem despite the overall heavy emphasis on child-friendly simplicity. The racing framework, however, makes the math questions essentially irrelevant. You either race as efficiently as possible or end up in the dust with little means to regain the lead, especially against the always successful computer player. Factor in that so much of the race comes down to the random rolls of the Spinner spaces and the absurd leads an extra turn can lend, and even perfect math skills won’t let you overcome random number rolls.

And so, I give Math Gran Prix for Atari 2600…

An ATROCIOUS rating. Randomness can make a game fun, and since Math Gran Prix is sort of a virtual board game, it’s not too out of place either. However, the single “game board” featured in this game has its special spaces placed incredibly poorly, making that the game is almost entirely luck-based. Smaller problems like the bumping mechanic just slowing down the game instead of meaningfully changing it or the timer that needlessly adds invisible pressure to the few problems that could be hard for the people who might actually be learning can’t compare to how awful the randomness makes the game. The illusions of the math mattering shatters when even perfect success with it or trying to plan your route end up subject to the whims of a few number rolls. With the always moving AI racer to contend with as well, Math Gran Prix seems to require putting your fate in its hands since no skill-focused challenge will earn you a win.

At least a game like Chutes and Ladders has no illusions about being entirely focused on random chance. Math Gran Prix pretends your choices and math skills matter only to toss it all out when you hit the special spaces. If we do try to think of this as an educational tool for children, it fails to reward the kid for succeeding at the math portion, the real focus being on a few select moments of random chance that play far too big a role. Had the Spinner and Skipper spaces been farther apart, placed more liberally, or pretty much had any variability to them besides one early spot that can lead to a runaway win and a later spot that is too late to change the pace of the race… we would still have a terrible, slow, boring game that poorly integrates its learning element with its gameplay, but it would be one that did at least properly emphasize the math rather than putting a few lucky rolls front and center as the true path to victory.