From the Vault columnist. Grew up feeding quarters to the Ms. Pac-Man machine at his uncle's pizza place; still owns his childhood SNES and every Nintendo Power he ever begged his mother for. Writes the retrospectives and the hidden-gem hunts.
Counting spots, literally: Appaloosa’s late Pico maths book lets its sums genuinely grow harder, wrapped in the one Disney property that was always about numbers.
The Pico pitch in its purest form: a talking colouring book where the Magic Pen is exactly the right tool, teaching colour from naming to mixing inside pages children finish because they are theirs.
Simba’s cubhood as a sunny savanna classroom: animal counting and matching with Timon, Pumbaa and Rafiki, pitched safely and warmly at the Pico’s youngest players.
Disney’s river, not Disney’s film: a calm Riverbend nature walk of animal matching and observation that teaches more than most nineties tie-ins bothered to.
Busytown on television, page by busy page: Huckle and Lowly turn Scarry’s vocabulary-by-density into pointing, matching and job-day play that suits the Pico perfectly.
Pooh, Piglet and the changing seasons of the Hundred Acre Wood: an early Pico book organised the way small children actually learn the year, ending with a page to draw their own.
The eerie Mega Drive dolphin, rebuilt for the children who always wanted him: a calm treasure hunt through bright reefs where counting fish never feels like counting.
Tails teaches pitch, rhythm and listening games in Pico’s most focused book: real ear training dressed as play, and the system’s best argument that edutainment could have a subject.
Sonic hosts a fairground of counting, matching and memory games on Pico: no loop-the-loops, but the smartest use of a licence on the system, because the rings are the lesson.
Third-party shooters, European-only arcade conversions, a stock-market board game and the talking tutor cartridges — ten Odyssey 2 games that sit behind the famous names and deserve a shelf of their own.