First time posting, and I've been wracking my brains trying to find this one.
This was an educational PC Game, my best estimate is between 1995-2000, I had it roughly the same time as Bill Nye: Stop the Rock! This game was devoted entirely to inventions, and one thing I remember about the intro was that the main character's name was Howard. The intro was something along the lines of a dramatic narrator saying, "Since the beginning of time, man [made a bunch of stuff, goes on to list a bunch of inventors] Edison... Tesla... Howard... *screech* Howard?!" And then Howard would say something witty, then the intro broke into a 90s rock instrumental before the main menu booted up. The graphics I guess were pre-rendered made to look like 3D images, but everything was from a static camera. Also it wasn't especially colorful like most educational games.
Anyways, there are three minigames in particular I remember:
The first was the garage, where you could build cars or planes. Both had you drag & drop parts based on real world vehicles onto a blueprint; I remember making a frankenvehicle from a space shuttle and a F-117. When you were finished, the vehicle would materialize on the platform like it was Star Trek. Then you could test the vehicle as a robot pilot would try not to crash it through nine different worlds. The flight path/road was always the same, the vehicle would simply crash at a certain point if you didn't build it correctly.
The second minigame was like the first, only instead of a vehicle you built what I can only describe as a kind of mouse maze. You had to get the mouse to the goal at the end using the parts available to you, which included conveyor belts and elevators, and all of the parts had to be connected to a motor and battery by using axles and gears.
The third minigame took place in a scrapyard, and you had to build an appliance by putting the correct parts onto a schematic. A robot arm would pull the parts up from the scrap heap, and if you got the right combination it would play an animation where the appliance would do its thing. One of the simpler ones was a vacuum cleaner, and one of the harder ones was a robot DJ.
If your invention tested successfully, you could go down to the patent office and Howard would type out a patent for you, which you could then print out.
