Toddler Game Suggestions

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

0_1491756385722_upload-56cbbb7c-3900-49d0-9222-df33a69108d1

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.

PetroRie

Well, I think GTA 5 or Manhunt is a good game for your 4 year old boy... Just kidding lol. I would say Super Mario World 2 - Yoshi's Island (SNES):

Yoshi Island on the SNES is in my opinion the Nr. 1 Kiddie game available on the SNES. He really should try it out, even as an adult I have had a lot of fun with this game. A real masterpiece! The SNES had many games which are child friendly, just to name a couple:

Super Mario ALL-Stars (platform game).
Super Mario World (platform game) very easy Mario platform game. It's a true classic. One of my favorite SNES games, this is one of those epic timeless games a game you could play everyday without getting bored out of it.
Super Mario Kart (race game)
Donkey Kong Country I, II and III (platform game) imo one of the BEST SNES games, great graphics, great music, this game is just epic and timeless. The games are pretty hard on later levels, but thank God for save states (and cheats).

On Sega Megadrive/Genesis I would say; all the Sonic games. All of them are platform games, child friendly and very fun to play they never get old or boring.

And of course ... TETRIS. I was addicted to this game in my childhood, I used to try to beat my best score everyday.

XVO

As a four year old, I loved the Mario Bros and Land games on the Nintendo systems, also you could try bomberman for the pce (just to see if he likes it) if yes you have many games to play ;).

Wasn't there a coöp Asterix and Obelisk for the Snes?

And don't forget World of Illusion staring Mickey and Donald on the Genesis ;)

celly

@mattrixk I almost forgot about the old point and click games, playable through ScummVM. Fatty Bear, Freddie Fish, Putt-Putt, Spy Fox to name a few. Great games to get the mind going and fun for them too.