“Ha ha! Now I’ve got you! I will send you home at once.” For a generation of British primary-school children, that was the first thing a computer ever said to them that felt like a threat. It came from the witch in Granny’s Garden, a BBC Micro adventure written by Mike Matson for 4Mation, a small educational publisher in Barnstaple, Devon. Take a wrong turn and she appeared, delivered her line, and packed you off back to the start.
The program cost £10 on cassette when it appeared in the autumn of 1983. By September 1984 it had sold over 4,000 copies, and it went on to be converted for most of the computers British and Australian classrooms used. 4Mation still sells it.
Fast facts
- Author: Mike Matson
- Publisher: 4Mation Educational Software (styled “4MAT” in its early advertisements), Barnstaple, Devon
- Released: 1983, for the 32K BBC Micro Model B; £10 on cassette, £12 on disc
- Later versions: ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC 6128, Commodore 64, Amiga, Apple II, Macintosh, MS-DOS, Acorn Archimedes, and in the 2000s Windows, Mac OS X and iOS
- Ages: six and up, according to the first advertisements
Into the Kingdom of the Mountains
The game begins in Granny’s garden, from which the player is carried into the Kingdom of the Mountains. A wicked witch has hidden the King and Queen’s children, and the player has to find them. Acorn User’s reviewer, Jeremy Vine, described the trip in November 1983: two parts, four locations, a talking toadstool, a magic raven, a spider and a dragon, and passwords to be found before each part could be finished.
Everything happened in the BBC Micro’s Teletext mode, Mode 7: “colourful teletext graphics with occasional moving pictures and sound”, and the “double-height text” 4MAT’s advertisement promised. The player typed one-word answers. Vine liked the program but not its spelling checks: it accepted misspelt words without correcting them, and its error-trapping was “somewhat erratic”. Those, he wrote, were “flaws in what is otherwise a well thought-out program”, and it was “a good attempt at an adventure game at a very young level”.
The witch was the part children remembered. In 2007 Retro Gamer called her line a “chilling phrase”, added that “the abrupt endings to your journey are as frustrating now as they were back in 1983”, and that “those annoying dragons are still the bane of your life”. It still put the game among the best ten on the BBC Micro: “no other education title on the Beeb has been able to pair learning and fun so successfully.”
A program for the whole class
4MAT sold Granny’s Garden “for groups or individuals”, and the tape came with a booklet that suggested ideas for teachers and parents to take further. The game arrived as the government’s subsidy schemes were putting computers, most of them BBC Micros, into British primary schools (the educational software entry tells that story). Teachers used it as the start of a topic, not a lesson in itself.
Personal Computing Today called Matson “another pioneer in the simulation area” in September 1984, as his next program, Flowers of Crystal, joined Granny’s Garden and Spacex, advertised as “the first Space simulation for children”, in 4MAT’s catalogue. “So far over 4000 copies of GG have been sold,” it reported, “which gives some indication of the relevance to the learning situation of the simulation approach for children.” By April 1987 Acorn User was reporting that simulations and adventures remained “top software purchases in primary schools”, and that companies like 4mation had “thrived” on them. In the same issue a reviewer called “Mike Matson et al” “masters of the topic pack”, naming Granny’s Garden, Flowers of Crystal and Dragon World.
New editions
The game outlived the BBC Micro. A ZX Spectrum 48K version appeared, and by the early 1990s Granny’s Garden was on sale for the Amstrad CPC 6128 and the Commodore 64 too. In Australia, an enhanced edition reviewed by Your Computer in April 1992 ran on the BBC, Apple II and Macintosh, with mouse control, and on MS-DOS and the Amiga, where a kookaburra took the raven’s place. The magazine called it “an excellent educational adventure that provides the binding for a cross curriculum study”, and reassured parents that the witch “won’t turn you into a frog, but simply return you to Granny’s Garden”. Acorn dealers were selling a CD-ROM edition for the Archimedes by 1995.
4Mation has kept the original in print. Its website offers “the original 1983 BBC 32K version of Granny’s Garden” for Windows, Mac OS and the iPhone and iPad, and says it has published educational software “since 1983”.
Sources
- Acorn User issue 16, November 1983, p. 109: review by Jeremy Vine (price, 32K, the Kingdom of the Mountains, two parts and four locations, the characters, passwords, the teacher’s booklet, Mode 7 graphics, one-word answers, the spelling and error-trapping criticisms, the witch’s line on screen).
- The Micro User vol. 1 no. 9, November 1983, p. 132: 4MAT advertisement (the “2 stage adventure/project”, “double-height text”, “for groups or individuals”, ages 6+, £10 cassette; Spacex; the Barnstaple address). The same advertisement ran in vol. 1 no. 10, December 1983.
- Personal Computing Today vol. 3 no. 2, September 1984, “Primary Selection”: Mike Matson of 4MAT Educational Software, Flowers of Crystal, Spacex, and over 4,000 copies of Granny’s Garden sold.
- Acorn User issue 57, April 1987, p. 145 (review by Peter Vokes, “Mike Matson et al”) and p. 163 (education news: simulations and adventures as primary schools’ top purchases; 4mation has “thrived”).
- Your Sinclair issue 27, March 1988: a reader’s advertisement offering “Granny’s Garden for Spec 48K”. ZXDB, entry 10994 (database, secondary), lists the Spectrum version as published by 4Mation in 1983. https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/10994/
- Amstrad Action issues 55 (April 1990) to 71 (August 1991), mail-order advertisements: Granny’s Garden for the CPC 6128.
- COMPUTE! vol. 14 no. 139, April 1992, “64/128 View”: Granny’s Garden “a structured adventure game for grades 1-4”.
- Your Computer (Australia), April 1992, “Educational Software”: the enhanced edition, its versions, the kookaburra, the witch, and the quotation.
- Acorn User issue 159, September 1995: dealer advertisements for the Granny’s Garden CD.
- Retro Gamer issue 42, 2007, “Perfect Ten Games” (BBC Micro): Granny’s Garden (1983, 4Mation) and the quotations.
- 4Mation, website (web, secondary): the original 1983 BBC version for Windows, Mac OS, iPhone and iPad; “since 1983”. https://www.4mation.co.uk/