[Megaten] Zoyon Patrol
 

I remember playing this game somewhere around the late 80s/early 90s on an Apple II computer.

The gist of the game was that you had to gather clues from residents who had spotted strange animals in the neighborhood, and the you would set traps to catch the animal.

It kind of reminded me somewhat of Carmen San Diego, in that you had to collect clues and compare the clues to a database to find out exactly what animal you were tracking. Once you identified the animal, you could choose the proper trap (size of trap, bait type, trap type) and where/when to set it (in a tree, in a hole, daytime vs. nighttime)

If you were successful at piecing together the clues to get the right type of trap, then I believe you captured the animal and put it back in its normal habitat or something.

I believe that all of the animals were fictitious species.

I played the game during rainy day indoor recesses, so it may have been published by an educational software company. Our school was very big into the MECC software, but I have had no luck tracking this down in old MECC catalogs. I am not even positive it was MECC, it could very well have been a different publisher.

Thank you very much to anyone who can provide insight!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoyon_Patrol

Seems it actually was MECC (although I stumbled across this thanks to a similar query from 2005 I found elsewhere, where the poster had a slightly inaccurate recollection of the name).

Wow, this is it! Thank you very much for your help. Yay for the internets!