Mixed-Up Mother Goose is a 1987 adventure game by Sierra and the brainchild of co-founder Roberta Williams, creator of King's Quest, Laura Bow, and Phantasmagoria. It's one of a few games from Sierra that were made for young children, compared to the rest of Sierra's library.
After falling asleep one night, you dream you are whisked away to the home of Mother Goose, who tells you that her nursery rhymes are all mixed up, losing a crucial item of theirs that completes their particular rhyme (Little Jack Horner's pie, Old King Cole's pipe, Tommy Tucker's bread and butter, etc.)
Since this was intended for little kids, the UI was heavily simplified. The original AGI version lacked the Text Parser used in other Sierra games. Talking to someone was as simple as just walking up to them. To pick something up, you simply walk over it.
In 1991, Lori Cole of Quest for Glory fame developed a Spin-Off, entitled Mixed-Up Fairy Tales which replaces Mother Goose with a dragon named Bookwyrm and the nursery rhymes are replaced with fairy tale characters like Snow White, who has gotten lost in a forest, the Bremen Town Musicians, who have split up, and Jack, who misplaced his bag of magic beans. The plot is mostly the same, but instead of a child entering Mother Goose's world via a dream, the child is sucked into a book in a school library, and each sequence is just a bit more detailed and lengthy. It also used a simplified version of the icon interface Sierra was using for its other games at that point instead of hotkeys.
Mixed-Up Mother Goose and its spin off Mixed-Up Fairy Tales contain examples of:
- Big Good: Mother Goose, obviously. Bookwyrm in Fairy Tales.
- Creator Cameo: Roberta Williams appears on the box of the original version presumably as the titular Mother Goose reading her nursery rhymes to some children.
- Cruelty Is the Only Option:
- Helping Humpty Dumpty requires bringing him the ladder he needs to climb the wall, even if the player knows he'll be injured when he falls off.
- Similarly, helping Jack and Jill requires bringing them the pail, despite knowing they'll be injured falling down the hill afterward.
- Bringing Little Miss Muffet to her tuffet, despite knowing she'll be scared away by a spider.
- Dunce Cap: Follow Mary into the schoolhouse after giving her back her lamb and you'll see one of her classmates sitting in the corner wearing this.
- Escort Mission: Played with. Some characters like Little Miss Muffet and Peter Pumpkin-Eater's wife are lost and you have to help them find their way back to where they belong. None of them are especially annoying except for the Fiddlers Three in the original version, as if you bring them to the castle without first getting the Pipe and the Bowl, they'll inexplicably leave if you try to swap them for whatever item in placed in the castle, and you'll have to get them again.
- Fairy Tale Free-for-All: Fairy Tales contains a mix of fairy tales which the player has to sort out. note
- Fetch Quest: What the other type of mission involved: finding whatever item was needed for the next big plot event, like Jack's magic beans or Cinderella's glass slipper.
- Summon Everyman Hero: Our world of fantasy is in disarray! Let's pick some random preteen to sort it all out for us!
- Time Stands Still: When the player in Fairy Tales expresses concern that their teacher will notice they're missing, Bookwyrm replies that this is in effect.
- Video Game Remake: Probably the contender for "Most Remade Game" in Sierra's whole library, with a total of three remakes. The first one (1990) was an SCI version with EGA graphics, the second (1991) being a VGA version with a point and click user interface, a lot more dialogue and actual singing, and the final one (1996), with the name Mixed Up Mother Goose Deluxe, included SVGA graphics, voice acting, new musical arrangements composed by Guy Whitmore, and came with an audio CD containing said new musical arrangements with instrumental karaoke versions.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: At the beginning of Fairy Tales the player's avatar gets told by a librarian the library closes in five minutes. Despite the couple of hours they spend in the world of fairy tales, only those five minutes are up when they finish and leave the book again.
