Retro Games - for little kids!

[CargoRunner]

Hello, my nephew is coming up to 3 years old and has just started to get fascinated by computer games.

He loved the bee suit in super mario galaxy but was not interested in any other world. He just played around in that one again and again. But the game is too hard for him to control by himself so you have to sit and help, and there is only so many hours of pointless bouncing up and down in hive world that you can cope with.

He liked space invaders a bit, but he said the rest of my wii games were boring (!!!) or the controls were too hard. wii bowling was too hard as he could could not master the b button on the wii remote.

Can anybody recommend some simple retro games that a 3 year old might like. What games did your kids like when they were young? I am definately going to try him on pacman next time he comes to visit. And his mum says I am not allowed to show him any game with people being beated up, sliced with swords or shot !

[miner2049er]

My youngest is a bit older (5) and she plays Pacman on the MAME cab and Frogger.

On her DS she used to like the Disney Princess stuff and Build A Bear game but she is now well into New Super Mario Bros and she also plays it on the Wii. For her age she is surprisingly good at it.

I just dug out an old GBA SP for her and she is playing some of the Mario games on that too.

[Dhalamar]

How about the original Grand Theft Auto?

[CargoRunner]

Hi Mike, thanks for the forgger tip, I shall give that a go.

GTA, hum, I will probably have to start teaching him some new words like hooker, s*!@t, blow and f*@!k before he can really get into this one !

[Dhalamar]

Hi Mike, thanks for the forgger tip, I shall give that a go.

GTA, hum, I will probably have to start teaching him some new words like hooker, s*!@t, blow and f*@!k before he can really get into this one !

Bah, just sit him in your lap, teach him some life lessons. "You know, if you kill that hooker, you can get your money back!" and "See that old lady? See how slow she's moving? That's only 5 points. You wanna go for the jogger!"

:P

[Dhalamar]

In all seriousness, when my daughter was 3 she got a kick out of the kart racing games like Mario Kart. She liked running around in Mario 64 ... oh wait ... you punch and kick mushrooms in that game, heaven forbid a classmate dress up like a mushroom for Halloween with the games teaching her all that violence. :P Frogger was a favorite. When she turned 5 or 6 she got into those damn Nancy Drew games and Spongebob games.

Try out those licensed movie Pixar games, unless the kid's mother thinks they're too violent beating people up as Shrek or Kung Fu Panda or whatever. lol And the PS2 has a HUGE library of games that are good for kids that are actually worth a shit. The Lego games might also hold some interest, just play it with the kid and let them run around and beat people up (more violence!!!) while you do the puzzles. :P

Now that mine's gotten older (she'll be 10 in October) I actually let her sit down and play Doom one time ... the ONLY time since she didn't like it that much. :P You never once kill a human in those games. Big difference in killing things between Doom and something like Call of Duty since in Doom she was running around killing a lot of those fairy tale creatures she hears about in church.

[Cynicaster]

but he said the rest of my wii games were boring

Perceptive child!

Can anybody recommend some simple retro games that a 3 year old might like.

Defender



j/k

Seriously, if MAME is an option, I'd recommend:

Bubble Bobble
http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_de...p?game_id=7222

Snow Bros.
http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_de...p?game_id=9601

Marvin's Maze
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin%27s_Maze
(I found this game the other day completely by accident in my list of 7000 ROMs. I'd never heard of it but it's really quite fun. Coincidentally, it looks like pretty soon SNK is releasing an updated version for Playstation 3 via PSN.)

Mappy
http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_de...p?game_id=8617

Dig Dug

Bust a Move
http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_de...p?game_id=7247

[tcv]

It might be too hard to play, but Kickman would be good for a 3-year old. Hmm... you'd need a special controller for that, eh.

Food Fight would be another fun one.

What about Dragon's Lair?

[CargoRunner]

Hey guys thanks for all the tips. But it turns out he is a hardcore nintendo fanboy already and not quite 3 ! Dragon lair on the iPad was a popular one as he likes swords but his mum was not a fan. All the rest, the arcade classics, kart racers, shrek and sonic the hedgehog lasted 10 mins before he started asking to play another game. The adults liked sonic and the kart racers much more than him ! In the end Mario 64 was the one he loved, we had several hours on that and then a major tantrum when he had to go home. Nintendo'smario seems like digital crack for kids ! I shall keep trying the other games and see how his gaming taste changes.

[SepticLemon]

When I was very young, I played a lot of Proof of Destruction, a shooter that's like a trippy version of Space Invaders. If I was 5-6 now, the kind of games that are perfect are on the Xbox Indie games. Stuff like Decimation X, a bullet hell Space Invaders game. There are some great simple screen-to-screen platformers such as Arkedo Series "Jump" and Arkedo "Pixel", Johnny Platform's Biscuit Romp is a good platformer too. I would suggest Platformance, but those games are hard as hell though, I wouldn't let a bad sport kid play it, lol. Going back to shooters, Crossfire is agreat game, it's pretty much Space Invaders, but you can warp between the bottom to the top of the screen and attack the aliens from behind. Insanity X on the other hand is a prettier version of Berzerk, and plays real well too, you have a choice between modern, 8 bit, and Atari style no background music, heh.

So yeah, have a look at Xbox indie games.