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I've been trying to track down an educational game I played at primary school. This was in the UK, and would have been around 1994 to 1996. The game was based on Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days; as I recall, you played as two children following the same route that Phileas Fogg took around the world, with various educational minigame/puzzle style activities at certain points of the game. The only one I remember at all clearly is one of the final ones; you are in a hot air balloon, and need to jettison items to stay aloft, by selecting the heaviest item from the list. I think some of the listed items were a teddy bear (possibly) and a cello (certainly).

We used to play the game in pairs over several sessions, so I believe the game had some way of storing each student's progress; I think my friend and I might have been the first (only?) pair to complete the game and make it all the way around the world.

Searching the internet for the game the only potential match I have found is Sherston Software's Around the World in 80 Days for the Acorn Archimedes. This fits the time period, and it's educational software from a UK based company, which also fits. But I've been unable to verify as I can't find any screenshots or gameplay videos online, or anyone mentioning anything about the game. There are a few images of the game discs and associated material:

enter image description here

but these don't ring any bells for me, other than a vague recollection that we did have to switch discs at some point. Is anyone able to direct me to some screenshots from this version of the game, so I can check if it's the game I'm remembering?

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    How are we supposed to know what you remember? It might be a good idea to reformat this to focus strictly on what you remember (and what has been excluded).
    – Raffzahn
    Commented Oct 20, 2023 at 22:10
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    I can understand this would be perplexing and vexing Showsni - there's a lot of matches and screenshots for the DOS game of the same name which has the player using cartoon artist tools to solve puzzles, but that is a completely different game to the one you're looking for, right?
    – knol
    Commented Oct 21, 2023 at 0:01
  • @knol Yes, the EA Kids Paintbox Pals DOS game is a completely different one.
    – Showsni
    Commented Oct 21, 2023 at 15:08
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    @Raffzahn Yes, I think it would need someone who'd played or seen the Sherston game to be able to confirm - does this game include the hot air balloon weight minigame, and are the protagonists two children following the trail of Phileas Fogg.
    – Showsni
    Commented Oct 21, 2023 at 15:10
  • @Showsni: I can't find a place to download that title from. Some Archimedes games are available, but not this one. You could buy a disk and image it yourself, or try to ask people in the community about downloads. Of course, copyright is a touchy subject for some. This forum covers 32-bit RISC-OS software and looks active.
    – Nick Westgate
    Commented Oct 30, 2023 at 3:24

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There doesn't appear to be much about this game on the Internet. I can find two sources:

  1. Acorn User's April 1994 issue has a screenshot and a brief news item about the game, telling us that the player characters are two children, Freddie and Francis (a boy and a girl, both descendants of Phileas Fogg himself), and showing the in-game art style using the Golden Gate Bridge to illustrate San Francisco.
  2. CJE Micros have "new old stock" for sale. If you were desperate to learn more, you could buy a copy from CJE Micros, and play it in an emulator to see if it really is the game you remember.

And you've already found the Centre for Computing History's copy of the game with box art on the web; again, they might be able to run the game in an emulator for you, and confirm or deny your memories.

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