A strange little side quest
The rules may be simple on screen, but the backstory around Funny Nose Doctor is anything but tiny. M.U.L.E. arrived in 1983 with multiplayer competition built around gathering resources and keeping a colony alive, an early example of resource-driven strategy play. The same trail leads to another fact: Reader Rabbit's 1986 arrival was part of a major expansion of educational computer software before the CD-ROM boom of the 1990s. It is a good reminder that simple game mechanics can carry a surprising amount of history.