Rats!

The game's logo

**Rats!** was an educational online catching game developed by Lightspan Inc. and Planet Interactive Inc. in 2000.

It, along with other Shockwave games, was taken down from the LearningPlanet website in October 2022.

## Game Description

Rats! is a great game for practicing a variety of skills in a fun way. The object of the game is help Rusty Rat catch the good items in his basket.

Rusty Rat and his friends have a little game they like to play, and now you can play too! Rusty's friends will drop items from the sky, and you must help Rusty catch them.

You will be told which items are good, and which items are bad. Your job is to help Rusty catch the good items with his basket, but don't catch the bad items!

## Gameplay

The game involves controlling Rusty Rat with the arrow keys to help him collect the right falling items that his friends drop from the sky in his basket, all while avoiding the wrong ones and collecting power-ups along the way. You also get bonus points for completing levels before the time runs out. There are 16 levels in each topic.

Catching a good item gives you points and helps you to finish the level. Catching a bad item causes you to lose a life and makes your character stop for a few seconds. You should also be careful not to get hit on the head with an item.

### Powerups

* 2X - Doubles the points for each good catch.
* High basket mode.
* The Umbrella protects character from the next bad catch,
* Sneaker mode - Character moves faster.
* Extra life

You can collect all of these power-ups, but be careful because catching a bad Item removes all of your character's power-ups.

## Controls

You can press the arrow keys on your keyboard to move Rusty to the right or left.

## Topics

* Shapes
* Colors
* Letters
* Numbers
* Vowels and Consonants
* Lower Case and Upper Case Letters
* Nouns and Verbs
* Common and Proper Nouns
* Adverbs and Adjectives
* Planets

## Rats! on Brian Coukis

On August 27, 2019, 1 day after the Brian Coukis The 90s Kid YouTube channel got terminated, Brian made an 8-minute gameplay video and commentary of the games' "Common and Proper Nouns" topic on his current YouTube channel, simply known as Brian Coukis.

On July 5, 2020, Brian made a full playthrough video of the "Shapes" topic. He has plans to do a full playthrough video of the entire game with all of the topics, including the Planets one, combined into one video.

On November 7, on that same year, Brian made his first drawing of the main protagonist of the game, Rusty Rat, in MS Paint.

## Trivia/Goofs

* Rusty Rat, the main protagonist of the game, reappears in another LearningPlanet.com game entitled "Mr. Elephant's Matching Game". where he is seen on one of the cards of the Animals topic. His turtleneck shirt is red in this game instead of purple like in the Rats! game.
* Occasionally, Rusty's friends can drop an item off-screen, especially when they come in view again, making it impossible to get those items.

## Links

* http://members.learningplanet.com/teachers/appinfo.asp?appid=18 (Info and links to the topics of the game)

* http://www.learningplanet.com/act/rats/rats1.asp?rats\_planets (The "Planets" topic.)