Nice bit of nostalgia considering assembly courses at Northeastern University were MIPS/SPIM when I took them back in... 1992-ish? Was an easy-A class because I had been programming in 6502 and then 68k assembly for years before, but SPIM gave me great respect for the power of virtualizing a system you are developing for.

And MIPS is still a great instruction set to learn the basics on.