Video Game Advice for Parents
As a parent who loves to share his love of video games with his kids (and anyone else who is interested), it is exciting to stumble across one that gets some real play time. I must say that I purchase 10 times more games and systems than actually catch the interest of my kids. It is an expensive hobby and I’m sure many parents get bit by the marketing hype only to see it tossed to the side and never played and enjoyed. Since I’m thinking about games that my kids like (I like them too) I think it would be a good idea to mention another big favorite in case anyone is interested:
Animal Crossing (Nintendo GameCube): This game allows your kids to become citizens of a small town populated by little 3D cartoon animal people. You live life in this town as you would in real life, you have a job a house (complete with a mortgage) and you can have hobbies, collect or create art, make things and sell them, fossil hunt, plant flowers, design clothing, catch fish, hunt bugs and discover secrets hidden everywhere. The town has a general store, post office, train station, light house, town square, museum, police station, city dump, boat dock, streams, lakes, beaches, forests, gardens, trails and waterfalls. The game uses your system clock to know the true date and time. The game has real seasons to match the real weather outside and current time of day. All of the clocks in the game are correct and the town has events throughout the days, weeks, months and years to match real events and holidays! They have fishing tournaments, Halloween festivals, monthly lotteries, Saturday night concerts, birthday celebrations and you even get gifts from the towns people like Nintendo NES system games that you can actually play! You can decorate your home any why you like and upgrade it as you make more money. The town has occasional visitors that sell and trade goods or simply challenge you to a friendly game. This is a game that plays on forever. My daughter has put in over 100 hours to date. The in-game money is a unit called a Bell and she has earned enough to upgrade her house 2 times and spent enough to allow the town general store to upgrade from a small one room store building to a huge supermarket! My daughter is really learning the basics of earning and saving money, paying bills and how to avoid impulse buys in order to save for something more substantial. These are valuable life lessons that are certainly better learned in a simulation than in real life. I wonder how many other 8 year olds understand these concepts. The town supports up to 4 human players. The game allows you to create other towns using additional memory cards and each one can have up to 4 human players. The cool thing is that the hourly train will let you board in one town and visit the others. Each town has a unique layout and its own special plants and goods. You can do some shopping and bring them back to your town to sell plant or farm for more money. This game is very open ended and it seems like it can go on forever!
Animal Crossing (Nintendo GameCube): This game allows your kids to become citizens of a small town populated by little 3D cartoon animal people. You live life in this town as you would in real life, you have a job a house (complete with a mortgage) and you can have hobbies, collect or create art, make things and sell them, fossil hunt, plant flowers, design clothing, catch fish, hunt bugs and discover secrets hidden everywhere. The town has a general store, post office, train station, light house, town square, museum, police station, city dump, boat dock, streams, lakes, beaches, forests, gardens, trails and waterfalls. The game uses your system clock to know the true date and time. The game has real seasons to match the real weather outside and current time of day. All of the clocks in the game are correct and the town has events throughout the days, weeks, months and years to match real events and holidays! They have fishing tournaments, Halloween festivals, monthly lotteries, Saturday night concerts, birthday celebrations and you even get gifts from the towns people like Nintendo NES system games that you can actually play! You can decorate your home any why you like and upgrade it as you make more money. The town has occasional visitors that sell and trade goods or simply challenge you to a friendly game. This is a game that plays on forever. My daughter has put in over 100 hours to date. The in-game money is a unit called a Bell and she has earned enough to upgrade her house 2 times and spent enough to allow the town general store to upgrade from a small one room store building to a huge supermarket! My daughter is really learning the basics of earning and saving money, paying bills and how to avoid impulse buys in order to save for something more substantial. These are valuable life lessons that are certainly better learned in a simulation than in real life. I wonder how many other 8 year olds understand these concepts. The town supports up to 4 human players. The game allows you to create other towns using additional memory cards and each one can have up to 4 human players. The cool thing is that the hourly train will let you board in one town and visit the others. Each town has a unique layout and its own special plants and goods. You can do some shopping and bring them back to your town to sell plant or farm for more money. This game is very open ended and it seems like it can go on forever!
posted by John Reder @ 8:20 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home