Moptown Parade is one of the first educational titles that The Learning Company released (the original Apple II version came out in 1981). It is meant to teach children from ages 4-7 basic pattern recognition and logic skills (I personally think 1 or 2 of the games are probably more for slightly older kids), and 8 games are included. The characters that the player is playing with are called Moppets (where the "Mop" in "Moptown" comes from), of which there are two types: Gribbits (with tails) and Bibbits (with large feet). Each of these have some other physical characteristics: They can be fat or thin, tall or short, red or blue (or any combination). The games are based on these attributes.
The 1st game is called Make My Twin and is for one player at a time. The player is presented with a moppet (on the left), and then has to answer a series of questions about the moppet's physical characteristics and answer correctly to make a perfect copy (on the right). This is meant for younger side of the age range.
The 2nd game is called Who's Different. This game has to options (difficulty levels) - The first is for younger players, and simply entails picking out which moppet (of 4) is different than the others, and then which physical characteristic is different for that moppet. The second, more advanced option present 4 moppets that are all different from each other; the player has to determine which one is the most different from the others, and which characteristics are different.
The 3rd game is called What's The Same. This one has 4 moppets living in a house, and all of them share at least one characteristic that is the same. It is up to the player to figure out at least one characteristic that is the same between all 4 of them.
The 4th game is called Who Comes Next. This game presents 4 moppets, and the player has to figure out what the fifth moppet should be. There are 3 patterns that the game randomly selects from, so the player needs to figure out which of those patterns is being presented, and then select the moppet that should be next in that sequence.
The 5th game is called Moptown Parade (also the name of the entire game collection). The player's goal is to build a parade of 5 moppets (the computer supplies the first one) where each new moppet the player adds to the parade has to be different than the previous one. There are 4 skill levels - which is how many differences there must be when selecting the next moppet. This is an exact number of differences that must be matched; not a minimum. It gets progressively more difficult depending on how many differences was requested. If the player succeeds in getting 5 different moppets following the rules, then each is given something to carry in the parade, and that is drawn on the screen.
The 6th game is called Who's Next Door. The house motif (used in Who's The Same above) is used again, but in this case 2 moppets are presented in the top row, which form a pattern of having one characteristic changed. The player is then presented with a 3rd moppet, and they have to create the 4th one by changing only the same characteristic that was changed between the first two.
The 7th game is called Change Me. In this game, 2 moppets are presented: The first and last ones of a sequence of 4. The player has to figure out what characterstics need to change to turn moppet #1 into moppet #4. There are two skill levels (called Rule's, which is how many characteristics need to change between each moppet (1 or 2) in order to make the sequence work.
The 8th and final game is Secret Pal. This one is the most difficult of all, and is loosely based on the board game Mastermind. In it the player is trying to guess which moppet with which physical characteristics is the Secret Pal. The player enters all of the characteristics for a moppet, and the game will let the player know how many are correct by showing a yellow mark for each correct one... but it won't tell the player which ones are the correct ones.
An interesting historical note: The Learning Company that made these games was originally founded in 1980 by Anne McCormick, Leslie Grimm, Teri Perl and Warren Robinett (of Atari 2600 Adventure fame), and was initially partly funded by the National Science Foundation.
Title: Moptown Parade
Authors: Leslie M. Grimm & Ron Mummaw
Publisher: The Learning Company (originally sold by Follett Library Book Company)
Released: June 1983
Requires: Color Computer 1,2,3, 16K RAM Extended BASIC, tape or disk.