My son will be turning 4 this November and I plan on giving him a personally customized RetroPie with cartridge-like NFC cards as his first console on his birthday. My goal was to provide an easy-to-use system with games you simply need to insert and remove. No need to download, update, consider storage, or worry about damage to actual hardware. Just hand him a new game card and he can play it. If it breaks, I can fix it.

The custom NFC powered RetroPie I made for my son. Games will range from NES to NEOGEO. A PC, Wii, and PS2 will come later. While doing the mods to the RetroPie wasn't too difficult, curating a timed list of games has been a project I have spent many hours on over the course of the last 3 years. Watching game collection videos, reading lists, recalling my own experiences, playing (and replaying) the games myself, and seeing my son develop has been a gradual process that required my own lexicon and expertise on the subject to grow. I've always wanted to do some game reviews and cataloging them here will help my thought process and possibly provide some guidance to others on the grand question of "what games should I give to my kids, and when?" As someone who has spent most of their life playing games since around 1990 and a father, I feel qualified to broach the subject of "games for kids". Similar articles can be either flawed by rose-tinted glasses or relegated to the standard clueless click bait lists. Tablet games are far too anti-social and potentially nefarious with ads and/or microtransactions, and Leap Frogs are just boring. With my own experience in mind, I will be beginning with console games starting from the mid 1980's. This decision is not based purely on nostalgia, but for comprehension for a 4-year-old. I'm not just going to give him games I played as a kid. Many of the games I'm considering I never owned or only played recently.

Ummmm, sure I guess... Endless time sinks or very complicated. Source: Screenrant I have considered games from other time frames as well, but I feel the 8-bit consoles hit the perfect balance of welcoming toy with good design and is the best starting point for playing video games. The NES, Game Boy, TurboGrafx-16 and Master System generally had simple controls, simple functions, fast action, detailed graphics, catchy music, are fun to watch, have multiplayer and have short play sessions. While there are certainly plenty of games of this era that are cruel or overly complicated, the best ones are true genre defining classics that can still be purchased today and are widely talked about. These are the first games that I will focus on, starting with Arcade to NES conversions.

Still and always relevant. Perfect for little kids. Source: Polygon The goal here is to provide some sense of game evolution. Single screen arcade games will transition to scrolling, which will transition to more complex game design, which will transition to the 16-bit era when he turns 5 or 6, and so on. Each birthday potentially beckoning a new generation of games. If all of this sounds too clinical or academic, it's more about bonding. I love video games, from Pac-Man to Elden Ring, and I want to share them with my son. If I hand him a copy of Earthbound when he's 12, it's more about letting him know that it exists, it's a special game, and I want to talk about it. Even if he doesn't appreciate it then, he just might when he's feeling homesick in college and sits down to finally complete it. The introduction is the most important part. I don't expect him to finish these games, but just have fun them and think about them. I want the names "Parappa the Rapper", "Gate of Thunder", "Ico", "Gunstar Heroes", "Waverace", "Panzer Dragoon", "Rondo of Blood" and "Link's Awakening" to mean something. More than just endless Fortnite or Minecraft sessions. I want to show him what games can be.

Your experience with what you engage with will change depending on where you are in life. Of course I'll be flexible on the whole thing. If he wants a Switch, PS, or Xbox equivalent with new games when he turns 8, that's great and I'll continue to give him these older games. If he's not into games, then it was fun trying. But since these games are important, low cost, and fun - it's worth a shot to show they exist and give them a try. The best I can do is share them online with my thoughts and his reactions for my own journaling and to help others who are into this stuff. Next post will be game #0001. Originally posted here: https://copy-save.blogspot.com/2022/02/first-retro-games-for-kids-introduction.html

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Day 25