The Animated Memory Game

A memory game from the old days that put a few mouse clicks in your hand and said: see what is hidden. Nothing more, nothing less. The Animated Memory Game from 1994 is exactly what the name promises — a simple matching of cards that tries to be fun thanks to animated pictures.

On the floppy disk an old DOS program without major ambitions awaits you. The task is primitive: you flip two cards, and if you remember where each one was, you match them into a pair. The pictures are animated, which was supposed to be tempting in the nineties, but the peak of that animation is a character's twitch or a blink. The sounds are quiet, sometimes annoying, sometimes absent.

The controls? You click the cards with the mouse. You play calmly, seated, with no virtuoso combinations and no pressure on your reflexes. If exercising your memory stops being fun after twenty minutes, you will not be alone. The game does not pretend to be more than it is. It has no story, does not tug at your heartstrings and does not force you into anything. It is cards and waiting until you remember, or come up with a strategy (which you hardly have in a memory card game).

What has aged? Actually nothing, because the game was not “modern” even in the nineties. It is pure mechanics without glaring errors, but also without any reason to play it today instead of better versions. The quality of the animations matches its time, that is, average. The graphics match DOS, which was already stepping aside at that time.

Today you can play it in the browser when you want a strangely nostalgic experience from childhood or when everything else gets on your nerves. It is not bad — it simply is. Memory card games play a role in teaching small children, and this game focuses exactly on that. For a forty-year-old this means: an interesting rarity that you try, work out what it is, and move on.