Most of the video games my wife and I played during late childhood stretched and exercised our brains, despite not being classified as "edutainment".
Games like Descent led to extremely developed spatial reasoning skills. Games like Nethack led to a level of meticulousness and a never-give-up, use-every-trick-in-the-book mentality. Games like Starcraft helped develop a sense of complex system dynamics. I was consistently observing the environment, solving puzzles, making tradeoffs and efficiency decisions (do I skip this area? Is it worth crossing that lava to get that powerup?), learning diligence and persistence, and doing controlled experiments to teach me about the games.
I also played a fair number of "edutainment" titles, including one my dad coded himself in the early 1980s, and many of those on your list. They were quite good and certainly helped me exercise my brain, but not to the degree that games like Descent, Starcraft, and Nethack did.
Games like Descent led to extremely developed spatial reasoning skills. Games like Nethack led to a level of meticulousness and a never-give-up, use-every-trick-in-the-book mentality. Games like Starcraft helped develop a sense of complex system dynamics. I was consistently observing the environment, solving puzzles, making tradeoffs and efficiency decisions (do I skip this area? Is it worth crossing that lava to get that powerup?), learning diligence and persistence, and doing controlled experiments to teach me about the games.
I also played a fair number of "edutainment" titles, including one my dad coded himself in the early 1980s, and many of those on your list. They were quite good and certainly helped me exercise my brain, but not to the degree that games like Descent, Starcraft, and Nethack did.