Sid Meier's railroad game wasn't bad, it just was a completely different game than Tycoon. SMR was made to be fun -- even the introductory video made this pretty clear.
The one thing I really didn't like about SMR was the interface. It was really clunky to work with because you couldn't zoom out much, you were stuck with a severe isometric view, you couldn't lay double tracks automatically, I had a lot of difficultly being able to judge how much it was going to cost.
It's been awhile since I played it and I didn't play a lot of it because of the interface. It was a pretty game and it ran well, the I was having entirely too much trouble just trying to manage the build interface. Once I got the lines up and working properly, actually managing the train cargo was pretty easy. The cargo interface was smooth and pretty intuitive, and there were a few things I liked about it over the Tycoon series. It's not exactly a "baby simulator" in comparison to the Tycoon series, but I could believe people having an easier time learning to play SMR than Tycoon 3.
Oh, let's see.
Seven Cities of Gold is a pretty decent game for geography and supply managment in the 1500's. There's a lot of balance between exploration and income, and as far as I can remember, the rivers and mountain ranges were pretty darn close to actual conditions.
I mean, technically, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego stuff. For the very-young crowd these days.
Any game with zombies in it. It's important for children to know what to do in the event of a zombie outbreak.
I kind of feel the Infocom text series have a lot of utility. Learning to map and mark your route, some of the puzzles are *very* logical in nature, and others take some kind of deduction skill to solve. Plus they take quite a bit of expermentation and require abstract thinking due to the text interface. They really do have a lot of merit to them.
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