History
The first remake of the Davidson fundamentals line came in 1989. The original Math Blaster was written in Applesoft Basic and the Microsoft equivalent. Under Mike Albanese, the Davidson programming crew created a cross platform development system based on Fig Forth. The product was well received and was the first of many Forth based products developed at Davidson.
After starting off with a huge bang and providing the base for the establishment of a very successful public corporation, the Blaster series eventually fell victim to marketing cuts. In an attempt to sell both up and down the age band more and more, Blasters were produced with increasingly thin, fuzzy and overlapping target age groups. Eventually the line came under fierce attack from the Gross brothers of Knowledge Adventure, led by Barton Listic. Knowledge Adventure countered with a simple grade-based segmentation with their JumpStart logo. Eventually, Knowledge Adventure was acquired by Davidson and the company lines were merged.
In 1999, coinciding with the CBS Saturday Morning cartoon "Blaster's Universe" produced by Nelvana, the characters once again changed, probably to be more identifiable as people, with Blasternaut becoming Max Blaster, a 12-year old boy obsessed with science and space in the 21st century, and his Galactic Commander becoming G.C., a cool 12-year-old girl who looks like an earthling but is really an alien. Together they must secretly work to save G.C.'s universe, using logic and creativity to outsmart the intergalactic outlaws. Spot, the robot companion was dropped, with a robot dog named "MEL" ("Mechanically Enhanced Lapdog") replacing him.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, for the most part after Davidson began its series of being bought and merged into other companies, these titles were renamed and repackaged with no change in content. One example is the 1999 release of "Math Blaster for 3rd Grade" in which the box art shows the brand's all new CBS cartoon characters, while the screen grabs of the game show a very different Blaster character and style; "Powerful Praise" quoted on the box shows 4½ stars for the game while admitting it was "previously published as "Math Blaster Ages 6–9," but ironically that was itself previously published as "Mega Math Blaster."
In October 2005, Knowledge Adventure released a new version of Math Blaster subtitled "Master the Basics." This new version differs in that it claims "state-standard" math content, and has a Math Blaster character with no space suit. The basics cover a limited range of math including addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, but only deals with whole numbers, and does not include fractions or decimals. The style of game is similar to many video games, like the Blaster series always has been. The story concerns saving humans from a robot controlled society. The main villain resembled a big eyeball named Cyclotron and Galactic Commander and Spot seem to be Descreased, replaced by a computer program named AIMEE. This game features the "New universe" explained above.
Read more about this topic: Blaster Learning System
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