Toddler Game Suggestions

[drake999]

I forget the name of it, but there is a Sesame Street game for the Nintendo Entertainment System which would be excellent for toddlers and features some very clear digitized voices. I think maybe it's called Sesame Street Countdown.

[mattrixk]

Thanks everyone for the suggesions.

@xaGe: I'll add those Kirby games to the list.

@flop: How could I have forgotten about Donkey Kong Country? Also, the Monkey Island series is my favourite game series. I have the enhanced editions of 1 and 2 on my Xbox 360. I tried with them when he was little. I thought the artwork would get him, but it's just a lot of walking around and talking with not much happening and it just didn't hold his attention. It might be better now that he's older, so I'll try again.

I think Quake might be a bit too much for a 4 year old though.

@space-cadet: I remember seeing Thomas games, but I've never played them. I'll check them out.

@meleu: That's a great idea with printing out the maps. unfortunately I've never played a Zelda game, so I wouldn't be great at helping him out.

@backstander: I'll check that thread out. I did do a search for similar topics before posting this, but I didn't find any. I guess I wasn't using the correct search terms. Tony Hawks is a great idea, since the rider pretty much just moves under his own power all he has to do is steer.

@drake999: I didn't know there was a sesame street game, but it's not surprising now that I think about it. I'll give it a look.

Again, thank you everyone. This list has given me plenty to get started with.

[meleu]

@mattrixk said in Toddler Game Suggestions:

unfortunately I've never played a Zelda game, so I wouldn't be great at helping him out.

Neither did I. The guides in gamefaqs.com are very rich and helpful. But the reading is a task for the daddy :-)

BTW: Goofy Troop (SNES) may be a good game to play in coop with your kid. It has some funny puzzles to solve. If that hands-up/hands-down mechanics confuses him maybe it's better to try it later, but you really should try it with him someday. ;-)

[mattrixk]

Thanks @meleu. I didn't know about Goof Troop, I'll give it a go.

[pjft]

Great thread, and one I had wanted to start a few weeks ago.

My 3yo loves watching me play Pacman, Qbert, Frogger and Crazy Taxi. The last one was a mistake, as the video happened to be playing. He also likes it when I read to him the stories from Thomas the Tank Engine on the SNES.

He can't however get to grips with controlling a game yet with a pad, though he gets the concept on am iPad with the touch based games. What controller are you using for him?

Best.

[xaGe]

My son hate games pads other than a Wiimote. He's been a keyboarder from day one.

[mattrixk]

@pjft I have 2 PS3 controllers set up on my Pi at the moment, but I do have an 8BitDo NES30 (the square one, not the pro) that I use on my PC. I bought it because I thought he'd have a better go with a smaller controller that has fewer buttons, but I haven't gotten around to setting it up on the Pi yet. I've heard that the 8BitDo and PS3 controllers don't share the bluetooth very well, so I haven't wanted to risk messing them up.

Those are some good suggestions. What system do you have Crazy Taxi on? Is that a PSX game, or something else?

@xaGe: We do have an old Wii, so I might look into trying Mario or something on that. We have a pawn shop near here that has a bunch of older games for Original Xbox, PS2 and Wii, and I think even has some PS1 games. I don't go there too often because if I did I'd end up buying most of their stock (which I really can't afford).

[meleu]

@xaGe said in Toddler Game Suggestions:

My son hate games pads other than a Wiimote. He's been a keyboarder from day one.

It is our responsibility to teach them from an early age. :-)

Here is my youngest son learning some Leona's special moves (The King of Fighters 2002):

(Of course I'm kidding. He is just doing some random movements on the stick.) :-)

[mattrixk]

@meleu Still, he's loving it, and he'll be a champ in no time. (side note, we had that bear too. We just gave it to the neighbour's new little one).

[celly]

@mattrixk both my daughters when they were younger were really into the Puzzle Bubble/Bust-a-Move bubble games. We had MAME and I think a copy on PS2. Matching colors and puzzle solving. Nothing too crazy or violent. My 6 year old son however, is into Minecraft and Terraria. And thats it. Nothing like his older siblings.

[mattrixk]

Hmm, the wife likes puzzle bobble too. I think we have a copy on Wii. I'll have to look into that. Cheers @celly.

[xaGe]

@meleu that's an epic photo!

... Also super jealous of that arcade controller setup your rocking in that photo!

[xaGe]

@mattrixk see my son was and is spoiled as far as the Wii goes. I soft modded it soon after we bought it, hooked up a USB hard drive and loaded it up with just over a hundred Wii games and several hundred Snes, gba, Genesis and NES roms.

For wii titles he started playing around 3 or 4 with me in coop check out Kirby's return to dreamland, Kirby's epic yarn, Epic Mickey 2 and Donkey Kong County. All four games 4 years later are found memories for us both and he still likes them. DKC can be a bit hard for the little ones though.

[pjft]

@mattrixk No, no - it's Dreamcast, so that's why it doesn't get a lot of play time. I end up reducing the resolution to 320x240 to have it achieve reasonably smooth gameplay, but all in all it's also not a game I play much (in fact, I had never played it before the Pi).

He also likes to see Super Sprint - in fact, I once asked him to just press "X" (the accelerator) while I tried to manoeuvre the car in the track, and it was a fun, short-lived, co-op experience :P

On the PSX there could be some nice ones - Klonoa comes to mind.

But, once again, these are games he enjoys seeing (in fact, sometimes I just let the attract mode play for a while). He cannot yet play because he doesn't fully get the controller, but I'm sure he'll get to it. He won't be playing King of Fighters with @meleu 's son though ;)

Puzzle Bobble is a nice one - my wife likes it. I'm not sure how much he'd like it, but we'll see.

Let me make a slight shift to the thread here, with the following recommendation:

Sonic 2 is a game I showed him once, because it can be played co-op but the second player has infinite lives / i.e. does not die (he also does not have a lot of say in the outcome of the game, but it's good to have him around).

Any other games on the RetroPie systems that would have a similar "friendly" co-op mode? We could always consider using cheats to grant them infinite lives or immunity (there's a Pac-Man cheat on MAME that makes the ghosts always be eatable, so I can just let him wander in the maze trying to understand the controls), but wondering about games that were designed like that from the get go?

[backstander]

I just though about 2 more toddler games:

• Bob the Builder - Fix it Fun! for the Gameboy Color. I played that one with my son and he really enjoyed it.
  

• Kids on Site is a Full Motion Video game for the Sega CD and MS-DOS.
  

[meleu]

@xaGe We also have to teach them to be versatile by training with different styles of joysticks.
Here is the youngest defeating Dark Queen (Battletoads - NES) with an 8Bitdo Zero:

[lilbud]

@meleu If only we could use this gamepad on the raspberry pi

[A Former User]

i have a good one. Diego's Safari Rescue for the DS.
"Join Diego, Alicia and Baby Jaguar as they help their friends Erin the Elephant and Juma the Animal Rescuer save the Serengeti. A Mosquito who doesn't like elephants has turned into a magician, and now she's using her magic to mix up all the African animals. Even worse, she's turned all the elephants into rocks -- oh no! Join Diego's Rescue Team to help them find a Magic Drum that can break the mean Magician's spells and save all the animals." - Amazon

[mediamogul]

@lilbud

If only we could use this gamepad on the raspberry pi

Marrying it with some arcade control components would probably be doable and it's certainly an ideal controller. If I had kids I would definitely run with this idea.

[lilbud]

@mediamogul I still have some of these controllers...and the system. I loved this system when I was little.