There have been many, many Lemonade Stand-esque games, but the first one that I played was on the Commodore 64. These days, however, I can’t find much info on it, so I’m probably mis-remembering some of the details, but here we go anyway.
What kid doesn’t want to own a lemonade stand over the summer? Aside from all the normal kids, that is. As much as I wanted to earn money by selling ridiculously overpriced glasses of lemonade, I didn’t because I didn’t want to sit in front of my house in the scorching heat while nobody ever walked by. Thankfully, the old C-64 was able to provide me with an adequate simulation that I could run in the comfort of my house.
In Lemonade Stand you are the proprietor of your very own lemonade stand (duh). You have a sum of starting money, a weather report, and a shopping list. You need to determine how many lemons, how much sugar and how many cups you need to buy, as well as what what you want to charge for a cup of your swill.
It’s all a balancing act, you can sell more sweet lemonade than unsweet, but you can’t sell any lemonade without cups. You’ll sell more lemonade as it gets hotter, whether it’s sweet or not, and not so much in the rain, but the weather report may or may not be accurate (just like real life!). Your goal is to reduce expenditures and expand income in an effort to maximize profit… in a game geared toward children… that was actually fun.
Brilliant!
You had 10 weeks to make as much money as you could. I liked how the weather forecast would be off and you would end up with too much or few of the ingredients. Nothing like a report “high 90’s, humid” for 7 or so weeks. My maximum after a run like that was around the $115 mark.