Comments on: Why Classic Video Games Are Great For Kids

By: Ender

Ender — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:54:16 +0000

This is a great article and I have to 100% agree to it.
This needs to go deeply by publishing a small guideline for parents (or whatever) recommending which consoles they should buy for their kids (SNES,GENESIS,DC,ETC) and which games may be suitable for which age, as this seems to be a major concern on adults.
They want their kids to play nice games, they need them @ a cheap price and they need advise on which games would suit their kids.
If somebody is interested we can prepare a guideline together for parents.

Ender

By: UnholyTancred

UnholyTancred — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:18:54 +0000

I’m 18 and my half-brother is only 7 years old. When he got to the age where I believed he could start playing video games, I didn’t give him anything on the PS2 to play. I let him play the old school Mario and Sonic games which he instantly loved and still plays ‘em today.

Recently I picked up a broken Dreamcast, fixed it, and gave it to my half-brother and he’s been loving Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2.

What I’m really happy about is that he’s become indifferent to good graphics/bad graphics and 2D/3D. He can watch me play some new razzle dazzle PS2 game and he’s just as pleased when he’s playing a 2D platformer that came out more than a decade ago. As long as the game is fun to him, he doesn’t care.

By: Thad

Thad — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 16:33:23 +0000

I have a younger cousin who is now 13; I’ve watched him grow up from the days I’d just give him an unplugged controller and let him think he was playing along on to seeing him be a pretty adept player in his own right.

The first game he really clicked with was Sonic Adventure.

This leads me to a few downsides of retro games:

Stiffer controls. This is not, of course, true across the board, but generally speaking you have more control over your character with an analog stick than a digital pad.

Greater difficulty. This is also not true across the board, but in the 8-bit days replay value was based largely around making games REALLY HARD. I was born in ‘82, and it was ‘98 before I finally beat the original Dragon Warrior, ‘99 before I finally beat the original Super Mario Bros, and ‘05 before I finally beat the original Ninja Gaiden. (Aladdin is an example of a fun and gorgeous 16-bit game, but I could never get more than a few levels into it.)

That said, there are games that are as good now as they were when they were released. There’s a reason the Mario, Sonic, Mega Man, Zelda, and Final Fantasy games have been rehashed so many times — sure, it’s to make a quick buck, but the fact that you can still turn a profit on a game that may be older than some of the people playing it speaks volumes. (I gave my cousin a copy of Final Fantasy VI Advance for his 13th birthday, noting that it’s a little bit older than he is.)

By: gord

gord — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 19:15:52 +0000

older games I have played with my niece: hundreds?
newer games I have played with my niece: none?

new games I would say are boring for playing with younger fellows though, they are all either shooting each other or just rubbish.

World of illusion on the mega-drive is fantastic for playing with the youth of today

By: aaron

aaron — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 04:52:09 +0000

idea stealer!

By: Gamerforlife

Gamerforlife — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 23:46:03 +0000

Good read, even though I don’t really plan on having kids myself. If I did, I would definitely have them play the classics and work up from there, so they can have a real appreciation for gaming history and not be like the annoying kids of today who only care about graphics.

And forget emulation, if a kid is going to play an S-NES game it will be on an S-NES controller and when they play Starfox 64, it will be with the rumble pack(can’t get that on the Wii’s Virtual Console)

Okay, I’m done:)