The Magic School Bus Explores the Ocean is an Edutainment Game developed by Music Pen and released by Microsoft in 1995. It is the third game in the Magic School Bus Explores series and is based on the book The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor.

Ms. Frizzle takes her students on a field trip to the beach. As is typical for this class, however, the fun doesn't stop at just wading in the shallow surf or building sand castles; the bus can eventually turn into a submarine and take the students on an oceanic adventure. You, the player, get behind the wheel and help the class explore a variety of salt water biomes such as a tide pool, the open ocean, deep-sea vents, and a coral reef. On top of learning about all sorts of marine creatures, Ms. Frizzle puts you on the path toward a hidden treasure, the clues for which are found in the different biomes. Each area also contains a unique mini-game, while the interior of the bus features student reports and science experiment stations related to ocean studies.

This is notably the only game in the Explores series where you never visit Ms. Frizzle's classroom; once you've watched the intro and set up your driver's license, you're sent straight to the beach.

In 2011, a simplified version of the game called The Magic School Bus: Oceans was released on the Nintendo DS.

This game provides examples of:

• Adaptation Amalgamation: Similar to the two previous games, this one combines elements of the On the Ocean Floor book and the TV series episode "Gets Eaten." Like the book, the game is about the ocean in general rather than just one ocean food chain. However, the beach-bus and sub-bus designs are derived from the TV episode. Also, the episode's food chain is the focus of the open ocean mini-game, albeit with anchovies swapped for herring, and killer whales added in after tuna.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The whole treasure hunt storyline is original to the game, appearing in neither the Ocean Floor book or the "Gets Eaten" TV episode. The TV series would later feature an ocean treasure hunt in the episode "Takes a Dive," but that aired two years after this game was released.
  • One of the ocean zones you can visit is a kelp forest, a location not represented in the original book.
• Adapted Out:
  • Unlike in the book, there's no Lenny the Lifeguard. Unless he's that lifeguard who appears in the background at the sandy beach, in which case he's been massively Demoted to Extra.
  • In the book, the bus becomes a glass-bottom boat for the coral reef and a surfboard for the open ocean. In the game, these transformations never occur, and the bus visits those locations in its regular sub form.
  • The class visits a continental shelf in the book, but that location is not included in the game.
• Amphibious Automobile: Of course, it's no big deal for Ms. Frizzle's magic bus to turn into a submarine.
• Anchovies Are Abhorrent: If you click on some of the small fish swimming by in the open ocean, Keesha explains that they're anchovies "like you eat on pizza." Ralphie replies, "Yuck, anchovies!"
• Artistic License – Marine Biology:
  • A few ray-finned fish are shown with eyelids, despite the game correctly pointing out they cannot blink in contrast to sharks.
  • The sea turtle at the beach is shown retracting into its shell. Sea turtles cannot do that.
• Beach Episode: Downplayed. While the game starts off with Ms. Frizzle taking her class to the beach, and you can spend as much time there as you want, it's only one of seven environments that you can explore.
• Blackout Basement: In the deep ocean mini-game, you control a flashlight fish and navigate past other bioluminescent creatures in the dark ocean depths. The early levels are bright enough to see the silhouettes of the other animals, but it later gets so dark that you can only see their bioluminescence.
• Breaking Old Trends: This is the first Magic School Bus game where Liz isn't your guide. It's also the only game where the class serve as your guide instead of Liz or Ms. Frizzle.
• Call-Back: Phoebe suggests that they form a committee for saving sea turtles, and Arnold replies that he doesn't have the energy for another one of her committees. This exchange apparently references the events of the TV episode "All Dried Up."
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: The first two games include the TV show's producer character, with Malcolm-Jamal Warner reprising his role as the voice. Starting with this game, the producer is absent from the game series.
• Cool Shades:
  • The beach-bus sports a pair of sunglasses over its headlights.
  • Shades are also worn by Clem the Clam, despite the fact that, as he acknowledges, he does not have eyes.
• Covers Always Lie: The game's cover art uses the book design of the sub-bus while the game itself uses the TV design. The most obvious difference is that the TV design includes a conning tower. Arnold and Wanda are also swimming with scuba masks despite all the students using Fishbowl Helmets in the game proper.
• Eldritch Ocean Abyss: You encounter some eerie creatures in the deep ocean and hot vent areas. It's especially creepy in the deep-sea mini-game, in which you have to help a flashlight fish navigate through the dark, with the other creatures appearing only as bioluminescent patterns.
• Feathered Fiend: The beach and tide pool mini-games have you play as a crab and a fish respectively, and both feature sea gulls as enemies that will try to eat you.
• Fishbowl Helmet: The students always swim in the water with scuba suits featuring spherical glass helmets instead of more realistic headwear, presumably so the different students can be more easily told apart.
• Giant Squid: There's one present in the deep ocean. This being an educational game, it does not act like a Sea Monster. If you click on it, the kids do comment on it looking frightening, and D.A. will even mention that sailors used to believe giant squids were sea monsters.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: Completing levels in the mini-games earns you Fish Cards with pictures of various sea creatures that you can print out. Contrary to the name, the animals depicted are not exclusively fish.
• Green Aesop: The game has a good deal of environmentalist messaging. Most notably, there's the trash-collecting mini-game in the kelp forest. Also, there's always a piece of garbage that needs to be cleaned up at both the beach and the kelp forest. And in Wanda's report on food chains, she talks about how pollution affects them and how we need to protect our oceans.
• Hollywood Darkness: The deep ocean and hot vent areas should be pitch black, but they're only portrayed that way in the deep-sea mini-game.
• Last Note Nightmare: The short theme for the diatom puzzle is peaceful and relaxing, but the end note is very dark.
• Linked List Clue Methodology: You find the treasure by working your way through a series of three clues. Downplayed, as it's not made clear how these clues are connected to each other. Whenever you solve a clue, Ms. Frizzle just tells you the next one.
• The Maze: In the coral reef mini-game, you control a shark navigating a variety of mazes through outcroppings of coral.
• Mega-Microbes: In the open ocean, you can shrink the sub-bus down to see phytoplankton up close, much like what happens in the "Gets Eaten" TV episode.
• Message in a Bottle: The treasure hunt begins with you finding a message in a bottle at the beach.
• Multiple Endings: Every playthrough randomizes the ocean zone where the treasure is located. Additionally, there are three different versions of the game's Worthless Treasure Twist.
• Nature Clean-Up: The mini-game accessed from the kelp forest area tasks you with catching human trash that has fallen into the ocean water.
• No Animals Were Harmed: The game's credits state that, "No marine life was harmed during the making of this product (except the sushi we had that one night)."
• Palmtree Panic: You start off the game at the sandy beach, which you can also return to at any time. The area has two activities, the crab mini-game and the sand castle builder.
• Punny Name: The deep ocean mini-game has you playing as Luminesca, a bioluminescent fish who has to avoid predators to reach the other side.
• Shark Fin of Doom: At the beach, Carlos wears a fake fin and pretends to be a shark.
• Shout-Out: The first level of the tide pool mini-game is called "The Tide Is High," likely after the song from Blondie.
• Soapbox Sadie: Phoebe, as per usual. Several times throughout the game, she expresses concern about some poor critter, only to be told that it's actually adapted to deal with the situation that it's in.
• Softer and Slower Cover: One of the songs that plays during certain mini-games is a slower, ethereal-sounding instrumental version of the main theme.
• Species Surname: The beach mini-game has Clarence Crab, and the coral reef mini-game has Shannon Shark.
• Steel Drums and Sunshine: The music that plays as the bus drives up to the beach is a remix of the main theme with a steel drum.
• Stock Sound Effects: When you're inside the bus, a sonar ping constantly plays because that's what submarines sound like, right?
• Stop Poking Me!: There's a feature where Clem the Clam will spout factoids about whatever ocean zone you're in. Clicking on him will cause him to react this way.
  "What are you clicking on me for? If you want to learn some more fun facts about the ocean, click on the pictures, and I'll tell you all I know."
  "Hey, watch where you're clicking on me!"
  "Come on, click on things!"
  "(laughing) Aah, that tickles!''
• Sub Story: Of course, the bus is a submarine throughout this game.
• Swallowed Whole: In the deep ocean, clicking on the gulper eel causes it to do this to an unfortunate hatchet fish. Carlos subsequently comments on it:
  Carlos: That gulper eel is a lean, mean, eating machine. That one just ate a fish bigger than itself! It's Ralphie's hero.
• Threatening Shark: Averted. Sharks are treated with the same level of awe and wonder as everything else.
• Tide Level: In the tide pool mini-game, you control a fish that needs to jump over rocks to get to its home tide pool. The water constantly rises and lowers, but each level has a different average height of the water. When the water lowers, it can push your fish into a rock for an instant death, making the levels set at lower tides especially difficult since you also have to periodically avoid the rocks while swimming.
• Treasure Hunt Episode: For this adventure, your goal is to follow the clues to a treasure that's hidden somewhere in the ocean.
• Under the Sea: Naturally, the overwhelming majority of this game takes place underwater. The sandy beach is an exception, but every other area you can visit is some type of underwater environment.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The lifeguard doesn't seem to have any reaction to a school bus leaping over him and transforming into a submarine before his eyes.
• Vine Swing: In the tide pool, clicking on the rockweed can cause an animation of Ms. Frizzle swinging on it while doing the Tarzan scream.
• Virtual Paper Doll: The back of the bus has a feature where you can dress up Phoebe or Carlos. It allows you to mix and match parts of several different outfits by using arrows on either side of the screen.
• Worthless Treasure Twist: The treasure always turns out to be an intangible concept related to the ocean. It changes with each playthrough, but there are three versions: the treasure is either ocean animals living together, the plants of the ocean, or just "the ocean itself." You, the player, get a printable certificate that's themed around which of these treasures you discovered.