Number Munchers Runs well
1990 · MECC · System 7 · Basilisk II (Mac IIfx) · 640×480 at 8-bit colour
Guide updated September 2026 · needs your own copy
A grid of numbers. A small green creature with a large mouth. A prompt at the top telling you to eat the multiples of seven, and four Troggles wandering in to eat you instead. Number Munchers is a maths drill dressed as an arcade game, and it is one of the few educational programs that children played voluntarily.
Controls
| Arrow keys | Move the Muncher around the grid |
| Space | Eat the number you are standing on |
| Esc | Back to the menu |
MECC's catalogue passed through The Learning Company to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and has not been sold in this form for decades. Same footing as The Oregon Trail, and the same 48-hour promise applies.
Get a copy
- Macintosh Garden — the Macintosh release.
- Internet Archive — MECC's catalogue across several platforms.
How it works & what to expect
| Machine | Macintosh IIfx, 8 MB RAM, 640×480 |
|---|---|
| System | System 7.5.3 |
| Emulator | Basilisk II, compiled to WebAssembly |
| Speed | Light. Fine on a phone, though the arrow keys need a keyboard. |
The modes, and which one is hardest
- Multiples. Eat every multiple of the given number. The gentlest mode and the one everyone remembers.
- Factors. Eat the factors of the given number. Genuinely harder, because it requires you to think in the other direction.
- Primes. Eat the prime numbers. Fine until the grid fills with numbers in the eighties and nineties.
- Equality and Inequality. Eat the expressions that equal — or do not equal — the target. The ones that turn a maths drill into a reading-speed test.
The Troggles are the pressure. They enter from the edges, move on their own schedule, and several varieties behave differently — some follow the grid, some cut across it, some eat numbers themselves and change the board under you.
Why MECC's games worked
The Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium was a state-funded body set up to put computers into Minnesota's schools, and it ended up making some of the most widely played software of the 1980s and 1990s almost by accident. The Oregon Trail is the famous one, but Number Munchers, Word Munchers, Odell Lake and Fraction Munchers were on every lab machine in North America.
What they got right was that the education had to be the mechanic rather than a reward attached to one. You do not answer a maths question to earn a turn at a game; eating the right number is the game, and the Troggle closing in is what makes you answer quickly. That is a harder design problem than it looks, and most educational software since has failed it.
Questions people ask
Is this the version from school?
If your school had Macintoshes, yes. Number Munchers also ran on the Apple II and on DOS; this is the Macintosh release.
What are the Troggles?
The purple creatures that wander onto the grid and eat you. Different varieties move differently, and some change the numbers on the board.
What is the hardest mode?
Factors or Equality, depending on how you think. Multiples is the easiest by a distance.
Is there a Word Munchers?
Yes, the same idea applied to spelling and grammar. It is on the list to add here.
Who made it?
MECC, the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, the same state-funded body behind The Oregon Trail.
Can I play it on a phone?
It runs, but it needs arrow keys, so a keyboard makes it much better.