The people born in the late '70s and early '80s are sometimes considered a separate micro-generation, sandwiched between Generation X and the Millennials. I subscribe to this generation, actually. We are a particularly interesting generation, since we have experienced (and are comfortable with) both the times before and after computers and the Internet became commonplace.
We are known as the Xennials, and particularly within the US , our age group is sometimes also referred to as the Oregon Trail Generation, because many Xennials in this country were exposed to the game Oregon Trail, since it was a popular educational game that was installed on many computers in school labs at the time. The fact that this game was so prevalent and familiar to so many people that an entire (sub)generation was named after it would definitely make this game worth mentioning in this topic, wouldn't you agree?
In the Netherlands, one game with a comparable impact comes to mind, and that's Topografie, an educational game by the Dutch game publisher Radarsoft, available for the 8-bit home computers that were popular in the Netherlands in the '80s: Commodore 64 and MSX. (Apparently there was also a version for 8-bit Atari home computers, but I don't remember that platform being very popular over here.)
The premise was simple: the player would control a helicopter in a top-down bird's eye view of a map. The computer would instruct the player to fly to a city, and the player would simply steer the helicopter with the joystick, up for north, down for south, to the upper right for northeast, etc. Once the helicopter reached the city you were supposed to fly to, you would hear a satisfying "ding" sound and then you would be instructed to fly to another city. The game probably had a countdown timer as well, but I don't exactly remember. There was both a Netherlands version (with cities and towns in the Netherlands) and a Europe version (with major cities in europe).
It was straightforward, well-made, educational and quite fun to play. I remember playing the game at school, controlling the helicopter with the iconic The Arcade joystick, hearing and feeling the satisfying clicks of its sturdy microswitches, as I moved the stick to steer the helicopter. It's a shame that this game was never ported to MS-DOS. (There's an idea, though...)
I remember this one time, while playing the Europe version of the game, I was doing pretty well, until the game instructed me to fly to Turku, a place that at that point I had never heard of before, and so I had no idea where to fly. I may have even tried to locate Turkey, thinking that it might be located in that country. 😂 Then I think the timer ran out or something, or it was time for a classmate to take the seat, since we had only 3 Commodore 64s at our elementary school at the time. (Apologies to any Finnish readers here. I was like 10 or 11 at the time. I know about Turku now, and that it's not in Turkey. 😅)
So I guess I can be considered part of the "Topografie Generation". 😁
Hey, I just found an educational game for the US market that Radarsoft made as well. It has a "Heligame" mode, which is basically the same concept as Topografie. Cool! I wonder how well it did over there. (Probably not as well as Oregon Trail. 😉) https://www.mobygames.com/game/maps-usa