I’m caught between wanting my daughter to play a bunch of my old favorites but I’m also recognizing that some of them I only really like because of nostalgia. Like I bought the sonic collection for GCN and played it recently and didn’t really have fun with it tbh. Like the original one, while a great game for its time, is really about memorizing the levels so you don’t run into spikes or enemies at full speed which just doesn’t seem fun.
Or Super Metroid is another favorite that does stand up to the test of time, but I’m playing Hollow Knight and Super Metroid just feels awkward compares to the newer one, even though Hollow Knight only has a melee weapon as the main attack.
GoldenEye is another one. I spent countless hours playing that back in the day, both single player and multiplayer, but even when Perfect Dark came out, I had trouble going back to it, let alone all the other games that advanced console FPS (Halo where they finally figured out a decent control scheme, or CoD with loadouts instead of the scramble to find guns lying on the ground, though I suspect neither of those games invented those mechanics). While I do treasure the GoldenEye time of my life, I don’t think my daughter would gain anything from having to do that herself.
She’s making her own memories on games like Minecraft, Pokemon (as much as adult gamers complained about the lack of depth, she loves Arcerus or whatever it’s called), or Smash Bros.
I do still plan on introducing her to some amazing games, but I’m not sure that list should be essentially my own video game path. Figuring out that list is kinda tricky.
Not saying your approach was wrong btw, just that I’m not sure how to approach it myself.
My thought process wasn’t really even so much about the games themselves as much as the approachability of someone who has never held a controller before. As much as I prefer a dual joystick, shoulder button, and 4 face button controller now. It is a lot less daunting for a new player to have a simpler input schema. NES had a d-pad, 2 face buttons and the the start button and that was it. For a 5/6 year old who never played a video game before, that seems like a good place to start. The modern controlled is much more complicated and also not sized well for little hands. The few times my wife has tried to play a game with me, just controlling the camera while moving is too much for her. I have a 2 year old daughter who is just starting to figure out what a video game is. I’m wanting to start having her play with me, but I don’t think she will be able to use the controller correctly anytime soon.
Yeah, that also makes sense. My line of thought was more about how returning to old great games might not seem as great after experiencing all the QoL and gameplay improvements that came since, so starting with those ones means they can enjoy them. My daughter is already handling the dual stick controllers well, so I guess is beyond that stage already (though when she was younger I remember her not even understanding that Mario Kart was something she could control and she thought we were picking characters for a movie, especially since the auto-steer and auto-accelerate still give a fighting chance even if you don’t otherwise touch the controller).
I’m caught between wanting my daughter to play a bunch of my old favorites but I’m also recognizing that some of them I only really like because of nostalgia. Like I bought the sonic collection for GCN and played it recently and didn’t really have fun with it tbh. Like the original one, while a great game for its time, is really about memorizing the levels so you don’t run into spikes or enemies at full speed which just doesn’t seem fun.
Or Super Metroid is another favorite that does stand up to the test of time, but I’m playing Hollow Knight and Super Metroid just feels awkward compares to the newer one, even though Hollow Knight only has a melee weapon as the main attack.
GoldenEye is another one. I spent countless hours playing that back in the day, both single player and multiplayer, but even when Perfect Dark came out, I had trouble going back to it, let alone all the other games that advanced console FPS (Halo where they finally figured out a decent control scheme, or CoD with loadouts instead of the scramble to find guns lying on the ground, though I suspect neither of those games invented those mechanics). While I do treasure the GoldenEye time of my life, I don’t think my daughter would gain anything from having to do that herself.
She’s making her own memories on games like Minecraft, Pokemon (as much as adult gamers complained about the lack of depth, she loves Arcerus or whatever it’s called), or Smash Bros.
I do still plan on introducing her to some amazing games, but I’m not sure that list should be essentially my own video game path. Figuring out that list is kinda tricky.
Not saying your approach was wrong btw, just that I’m not sure how to approach it myself.
My thought process wasn’t really even so much about the games themselves as much as the approachability of someone who has never held a controller before. As much as I prefer a dual joystick, shoulder button, and 4 face button controller now. It is a lot less daunting for a new player to have a simpler input schema. NES had a d-pad, 2 face buttons and the the start button and that was it. For a 5/6 year old who never played a video game before, that seems like a good place to start. The modern controlled is much more complicated and also not sized well for little hands. The few times my wife has tried to play a game with me, just controlling the camera while moving is too much for her. I have a 2 year old daughter who is just starting to figure out what a video game is. I’m wanting to start having her play with me, but I don’t think she will be able to use the controller correctly anytime soon.
Yeah, that also makes sense. My line of thought was more about how returning to old great games might not seem as great after experiencing all the QoL and gameplay improvements that came since, so starting with those ones means they can enjoy them. My daughter is already handling the dual stick controllers well, so I guess is beyond that stage already (though when she was younger I remember her not even understanding that Mario Kart was something she could control and she thought we were picking characters for a movie, especially since the auto-steer and auto-accelerate still give a fighting chance even if you don’t otherwise touch the controller).