M&M's: The Lost Formulas

released on Sep 28, 2000

M&M's The Lost Formulas is the first M&M's-based video game and was released on September 28, 2000 for both Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. It was published by Simon & Schuster Interactive Productions in North America and JoWooD Productions in Europe and developed by Boston Animation. It is a Crash Bandicoot, Super Magnetic Neo & Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers style game, and also is optionally a game which teaches math.


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Okay Crash Bandicoot clone, if a bit lightweight. There was a very specific era around the late 90s where you had a lot of these. I didn't have access to Crash back then, so I sort of assumed that this was simply a genre of 3D platformers. You could do better than this, but M&Ms gets some credit for bringing in the original voice actors (J. K. Simmons is kind of a big get for a video game, particularly for this era) and for incorporating some alternate Crash Bandicoot level archetypes in the bonus stages - surfing, vehicles, and chases for two.

I was able to get this in a Scholastic book fair because of the game's main selling point (after the license) - it's an edutainment game! Each of the eight levels are broken up into three stages; while the first and third of these are standard gameplay, the second is always an optional math stage. Basically, you come upon a set of rooms, each with numbers on 'em. You're supposed to jump onto the number that completes the given equation. If you don't, the platform vanishes and you lose a life. You do this for a bit until the game decides you're done.

It's... something. The math stages are always pretty unrelated to the overarching plot of Yellow and Red trying to stop the Minis from wrecking the factory. Math's relevance is never explained, and the levels - which generally follow a clear spatial progression through the game world - always stop dead in their tracks for the mathy stuff. Plus, you can just switch 'em off. I'm not terribly inclined to complain, since it's what let me get the game, but it's a pretty bad teaching tool.

Obviously not really worth seeking out these days, but decent enough.

Yellow is the best M&M tho no cap

this was so iconic to me as a kid

Boys play Crash Bandicoot.
Men play M&M The Lost Formula.

Crash Bandicoot but with more Math.
Trashy but fun game

M&Ms the formative years of my life playing this game lol