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I have a Starcraft 2 story, one of a youthful lad, his female companion, and a magical three-legged cat  . . . no, wait, that’s not right. Ah, it’s a story of game balance, wonderful game balance. By the time our game was over, we had played for 1 hours and 22 minutes in which we came back from certain defeat, as summarized in the map below.

A map of our comeback victory

balance in games means that they can have a certain unpredictability while not being wildly unpredictable, possibly the kind of game that goes back and forth. that means you can feel like you’re doing well one minute and feel certain of loss the next. and if the balance is really good, it works for almost any skill level. advanced civilization would be my touchstone for a balanced game because a player in last place can leap ahead, thanks to the game’s mechanics, such as calamities, or to the decisions that other players make which give you an opportunity. [while i prefer the board game, you can check out the pc game at abandonia.]

For some background, I don’t play a lot of RTS games and never really played Starcraft, but my brother and nephew played it a lot over the years. I picked up Starcraft 2 mainly to have something else to play with them. I’ve played 5% of the single-player campaign and maybe 5 melee games against AI opponents. I’ve focused on the Protoss race so that I can learn them really well, reading a few articles with tips and strategies–although I have a handle on them, I still don’t know all the different units that well. Like most beginner of strategy games, I have a basic plan–build some basic infantry for protection, create 8-10 colossus, build 4 Void Rays, and then attack. It’s been a good plan against Terran enemies so far.

Last night, my brother and I played as Terrans and Protoss, taking on 2 AI enemies. The good thing about Starcraft 2 to help with balance is that you have two ways to configure the AI, as shown in this figure.

1. Set how hard the AI is.
2. Set the handicap, which reduces the hitpoints for units and buildings.

Also, you can set the game speed, which can adjust the game to the player’s skill. So, we played at normal speed against 2 Zerg AIs, one set to medium and the other to easy with no reduction in hitpoints.

My brother and I perhaps too defensive in our gameplay, but we were doing well for quite a while. I had expanded to 3 bases and build a good army of 4 colossus, 15 zealots, 2 Void Rays, close to my goal for an attack. I was in the middle position on the map, which I thought was weak because there were three ramps up to my first base, giving me different positions to defend. We suffered about 3 attacks but beat them back, with increasing casualties each time. My brother’s marines helped the third attack from wiping out my main base, where they managed to take out my first Nexus. Still, I had two others and managed to rebuild my forces. But I was concerned–their mutalisk units seemed to do a lot of damage. I wasn’t sure what was the best counter. Then, as I built back, they sent a small attack at my brother while the largest attack so far in the game came around my backside.

It was a devastating attack, both on my morale and units. My entire first base was destroyed. My second and third Nexus buildings were destroyed, as well as most of my production buildings. Worst, my workers were destroyed while trying to escape. That meant that I could gather no more materials and I had no way to create any other building.  My brother and remaining forces finally destroyed the Zerg attack, however. He lost his entire second base, and I lost my primary base and most of my second and third bases. I decided to build what I could with my remaining resources, but a lack of vespen gas meant that I would not build very powerful units. I managed to get out a couple more more powerful units, the rest I spent on creating Zealot grunts.

This about 40-45 minutes in the game, and I was left with this for an army:

• 3 Void Rays
• 1 Phoenix
• 2 Immortals (one of which was probably half health)
• 15-20 zealots

It was a far cry from the army I had at one point, and further from my goal. I felt utterly defeated. My brother had a similar force, though he had a couple of medic units, about 4-5 aircraft, and upgraded marines. The computer then attacked us again with a much smaller force, but it had a demoralizing effect. I then told him it was time to go down in glory like in a Sam Peckinpah movie. Though he was reluctant, wanting to try to rebuild, I told him that I couldn’t build or gather anymore and that we were at our strongest for the rest of the game. So, we left in unison, going for the base that we thought was the weakest.

It was a path that skirted their main force, but we hit the weaker player’s main base. At that time, player 4 had not created a second base. We then moved to Player 3′s base 4, as shown in the map above.

At this point, our confidence surged because we did, in fact, attack at the right time–the AI had sent a lot of their forces in the three recent attacks. We briefly debated what to do next, but we decide to charge the main base, again with the idea that we were at our strongest. We had lost few units but several were weakened. And we pulled off a destruction of their strongest base. It was a costly campaign thus far, with my losing 2 Void Rays, both Phoenix units, 1 Immortal, 5 zealots. My brother had similar casualties so that we were probably at 40-50% of our original force. At this point, we stopped to heal, though I was nervous about the remaining bases gathering forces. But we healed our strongest units and then moved on.

afterwards, we lost few units and pulled off what I thought was a great comeback, one of the best game experiences I’ve had in a long time. In the graph of the game, my resource gathering was trending upwards for half the game and then dropped to zero. Player 3 and 4 were flat in resource gathering until the very end, whereas my brother and I had a pretty sharp increase in the first half. But at the point where we lost bases and my ability to gather and build, even the graph showed a game that seemed over with. The unit graph, though, showed a slightly different story, one that gave us a chance with our last ditch attack.

Update:

Resource graph

Units graph

Starcraft 2 might not have many features of other RTS games, but I think the balance in the game makes up for much of that. Without a doubt, this one experience has sucked me into the game.

One way of looking at gaming is where it occurs. The mapping of gaming at our house at different times tells a story about our family, about roles and embedded rules and boundaries. It’s not a particularly unusual and even interesting story to any one other than me. But I find the effort to make the map and tell the story interesting.

I’ll assume a simple definition of gaming–places where we play computer, board or card games. I was tempted to look at it with Edward Soja’s work on spaces or Denis Wood’s work on maps, but I think that type of analysis works at a larger cultural level. But it’s at the back of my mind because 1] a family has its own micro-culture and 2] the larger culture is still in play in our homes. A home, even before we move into it, has its own map–a dining room, living room, bedrooms–and we have ideas what goes on in those rooms and who does it, ideas often formed by our culture. For example, when we were looking at houses, our agent constantly tried to direct my wife’s attention to the kitchen, even I do probably the majority of the cooking, especially then. Even though we explained that I’d have a much greater interest in the kitchen, the agent [a woman] continued to call my wife to the kitchen in each house.

Gaming Before kids

The first map shows the gaming spaces in our house before we had kids. Our computers were in separate rooms, and my wife played computer games though rarely. We played several board games between ourselves and with friends at the dining table. The significant point is that little of our common space was used for gaming, and the primary game spaces were separate from each other. These computers notably faced the wall so that the gamer’s back was to the rest of the room. We didn’t own a game console at this time.

The game spaces reflect our marriage at the time–having married in our mid 30s, we still needed and pursued our individual interests, but we made time to come together. You can almost see that in the map as the place where we played games together was between where we gamed separately.

Game spaces before kids

Some parts of the house were undefined in that they had little or no purpose, except as maybe storage. The common game area was meaningful in that it’s one area where we developed our relationship as a couple. Even though I can’t say that we developed our roles through gaming significantly, I think our playing games together reinforced our relationship as one of equals.

Gaming In my childhood home

This is a map of gaming in the house where I grew up. [I grew up in several houses, but this one differs little from the others.] It’s similar to our pre-kids home in that there is little game space, and little of it in a common area. For the most part, we gamed in our rooms–on the bed, floor or desk. I didn’t have computer or video games growing up, although I graduated high school in 1982. Besides not being a wealthy family [I didn't dream of asking my parents for a video console], I was more into playing sports and reading. In later years, when I was in college and met the family for the holidays, we did play games at the dining table–card games mostly but also some traditional board games. Our kitchen, dining area, and living room were almost one room, broken up by visual dividers, such as a sofa splitting the areas.

The kitchen and dining area was always the focus of our houses growing up for many reasons, and our holiday gaming emphasized it all the more. It was loud and the center of activity. Players changed seats, new ones joining as other took breaks. Although my parents didn’t play much, they did come over and watch and talk with those who played. At that time, I developed a love for gaming because it felt good, a way to interact with family. In a sense, gaming removed the familial roles because in a game, everyone plays as equals. And as most adults find, it’s hard for their parents to allow them to grow up. For me, gaming was a way to do that. For example, my mother tends to ‘mother’ me because I’m the youngest, usually by telling me what to do although I know what needs to be done. It’s can be very irritating, as you might imagine. But when the family played games, she was no longer telling me what to do. The games wouldn’t allow her to do that.

So, although the game space here looks similar to what my wife and I had, it was much different because of how it changed roles among parents, siblings, and children.

Games spaces in my parents' home

Gaming today

What does our house look like now when mapped with gaming? Significantly different than before. Because my wife and I now work at home more frequently, I’ve included those spaces as well. I’ve also included the more common areas we play portable games–my wife on her iPhone, the kids  and me on the DS.

Games spaces after kids

Unlike pre-kids when my wife and I were more isolated in our individual gaming, no one really games alone, even if on the DS because someone is going to ask what you are doing or even sit beside you to watch or help. That doesn’t mean no has privacy because we believe that if you ask for it, you should be able to have it. It’s that no one really asks for the privacy or complains.

I rarely play PC games anymore for many reasons, but one is that when I played PC games, I was cut off from the family. My wife commented on it, feeling that I was literally and figuratively turning my back on the family. I gave up gaming for a while, but realized that I enjoyed it too much. I thought a console might be a compromise, so I purchased a PS2 and initially focused on games to play with my son, like Teen Titans. I eventually played my own games, but the difference was significant. My wife can now talk to me while I play, and I can easily pause the game and interact with others. Sometimes, my wife watches and even helps. For a while, she played console games with my son, too.

My first reaction to seeing this map was ‘wow, we play a lot.’  But maps don’t tell time or duration, just a perspective of space over time. I think the map has two significant stories.

• Our kids are important to my wife and me, and we spend a lot of time together. And we have so many more game spaces because of the children. The different platforms might seem an obvious reason for the variety, but I think that is secondary to the interests and to the children.
• Similarly, the spaces reflect the parenting approach that my wife and I take, which is to foster as much openness and sharing as possible. None of spend much time in our bedrooms. Instead, we play [and work] in open, public places. Not to be critical of other parents, I know that others have a very different approach where children are more encouraged to be alone or, at least, separate from the parents.

As a result, we have a shared interest in gaming, too, a context in which we create and share stories. For example, my son has recently thrown himself into Assassin’s Creed 2, and he has been telling his experiences, even though we have seen and heard them, even if only piecemeal. My son loathes timed quests in games . . . hates them with a passion. But, rather than give up, he persisted until he completed the task. He told the story about himself, how he kept trying different strategies to complete the task and then telling the game’s story as well. Games are a kind of water-color talk for the family.

Another effect is a kind of self-censorship, particularly on my part. Because I primarily play on consoles, I don’t play games that might inappropriate for my kids. Sometimes. I’m not particularly interested in violent games, but I’m interested in some horror games. But when I played Doom 3 on the 360, my son watched and was really unnerved. Now, I could have asked him to go to another room, but I choose to turn it off, to find something in which I could include rather than exclude him. Now, I play Silent Hill – Shattered Dreams only when the kids are not home. I don’t even play it late at night because I don’t want to turn down the sound.

The boundaries are fuzzy as well because so much of the house is public and open for gaming. The kids have their rooms, which my wife and I respect as their areas. But I don’t see a ‘mother’ room or ‘mancave.’ No one establishes a territory. The house space is not gendered [that I can tell], which is again something of a conscious effort. My daughter doesn’t feel excluded from any of these game spaces because games are not treated as a male hobby.

I know that we’re not unique. We know a couple of parents who have a similar home, where parents and children share. We don’t even call the rooms ‘the den’ or ‘living room.’ Instead, we jokingly call them now the ‘Wii room’ or ‘big tv room,’ even the ’360 room.’ But the truth is that it’s a changing map, and, now that I’m aware of it, I’m watching what we do where and how the space affects us.

And with that, I’m going to end here so that I can play some Rock Band with the family . . . wait for me!

Badly needing a break from work Wednesday night, I asked the kids if they wanted to play another adventure from the Star Wars game that we started. They bolted from the computer, ‘yes!’

I told them the name of the story [Building a Better Dreadnaught], which obviously gave away what was going on in the game. Grace exchanged Ahsoka for a much more powerful Aayla Secura. Overall, this was more of a role-playing adventure session with no combat. I was trying to teach them while in game about what they could do, so I was giving them a few hints, like searching places. They tended to focus on talking to characters as the main means of getting info, as opposed to looking for themselves. They are still trying to gain their confidence and to look at alternatives rather than the first idea that comes to them. Again, I feel that I was trying to get them to talk with each other and agree on a plan, not arbitrarily but for good reasons.

Also, I had a planned story around their undercover attempt, which would fail. But the kids had the dice rolling their way all evening. So, I was scurrying for a plan when Gage provided me a great opportunity.

I thought this session was too talky for them, but, no, they assured me that they really liked the game. They wanted to play more and looked forward to the next one.

Going undercover

The game starts on the Nelvaan snowy plains. Secura and Fisto are wearing the uniforms of the assassins to try to get into the separatists’ base on Nelvaan. I tell that their assignment is to 1] find out what’s happening on Nelvaan and 2] find out where the separatists are building their weapon.

The kids have the Delta Squad clones and Captain Rex with them. I ask them to place their characters and ask them to think what clones, if any, are going with Secura and Fisto and where the others are. At first they wanted to take 3 clones with them into the base, but I mentioned that the Separatists might not want all of them and kill them except for one. The kids talk and decide to take only Sev. The others are in cover further away and track Secura and Fisto. They approach a cave they think is the base and indeed see a T1 loading crates onto a small ship with two commando droids, a chameleon droid, a separatist commando, and a Techno Union Warrior.

Sep commando – ‘Halt! Who approaches? Take another step, and you’re dead where you stand!’

Secura – ‘We are the assassins!’

commando – ‘What assassins? What are you talking about?’

Fisto – ‘We were hired to kill Lem Garon. And we were told to come here.’

commando – ‘Urm. Hold on.’ [summons droid to guard and then leaves for the cave. He returns moments later with General Loathsom.]

Loathsom – ‘What assassins . . .  are you?’ [speaks in a halting gutteral, aggressive voice]

Fisto – ‘We killed Lem Garon as hired. Our comm device was damaged in the fight–’

Loathsom – ‘Fight? What . . . . assassins get in a fire fight . . . on Coruscant?’

Secura – ‘There were two Jedi with him.’

Loathsom – ‘And you . . . escaped from the . . .  Jedi?’ [His tone is very incredulous.]

Fisto – ‘Yes. I mean, no, we killed them?’

Loathsom – ‘You killed . . . Jedi? You two? Impossible!’ [He orders more droids.]

Fisto – ‘Yes, but we snuck up on them and hit them with grenades.’ [I ask Gage to roll for persuasion. I set Loathsom's doubt very high at 19. Gage rolls a 20.]

Loathsom – ‘That is . . . interesting. Who is the clone?’

Secura – ‘A prisoner.’

Loathsom – ‘Kill him. We need . . . no prisoners.’

Fisto – ‘But he’s a member of the famous Delta Squad. We could possibly get valuable information.’ [Again, I ask them to roll, and Gage throws another high, 19. I'm wishing he could throw my d20 at games.]

Loathsom – ‘Well . . . then, you are . . . in time. We have loaded . . . and are leaving. Your next assignment . . . awaits.’

[We switch maps to a ship interior. Sev is put into a detention chamber and the assassins are told to rest for the journey to Concordia. The NPCs go to assigned stations to pilot the ship, check the engine, guard the prisoner, and man the one canon onboard.

Gage then talks aloud, to both me and Grace, proposing two options--1. Try to take over the ship by throwing the droids in the air locks, or 2. explore the ship for clues. Grace wants to fight, but I remind them of their objectives. Secura and Fisto decide to split up and to look for information.]

Secura [approaching the commando at the reactors] – ‘Can you tell me what’s going on here?’

commando – ‘What? We’re going to Concordia? Do you know how to stabilize reactor cores? If not, you need to leave this area.’ [Secura leaves.]

Fisto – ‘T1, I need to know what were you doing on Nelvaan?’

T1 droid – ‘Sir, all procedural routines are accessible in my data logs. Please refer to the T1 version 683 user manual for access to those logs and any other functions. This T1 unit has completed its routine and is shutting down for hibernation until the ship arrives at Concordia.’

Secura [going to the Techno Union Warrior/scientist, who took something from the crates and is working in the small workshop on the ship] – ‘What are you doing? Can you tell me what is going on?’

warrior – ‘What? Why are you asking such questions, assassin? You have your job and I have mine. You do not look smart enough to put a slave bolt on a droid.’

[Secura leaves and heads for the bridge, going directly to Loathsom. Meanwhile, Fisto addresses the commando who is now in the hangar.]

Fisto – ‘So, we are headed to Concordia? Can you tell me what is the crates?’

commando – ‘You assassins ask a lot of questions.’

Fisto – ‘We can’t be too careful. Besides, I do not trust Loathsom?’

commando – ‘What?! What are you saying?’

Fisto – ‘I’m only saying that I do not–’

commando – ‘You had better be careful what you say. Why are you suspicious? You are a hired assassin anyway.’ [He puts his hand on his blaster.]

Fisto – ‘I am only saying that I do not think killing Lem was wise. We should have –’

commando – ‘ah, I see. A separatist general want-to-be. We all question sometimes what we do, but these generals have a bigger picture. They know things you and I do not. Stay in your place and keep a low profile.’ [He walks away, still somewhat suspicious but needing sleep.]

Secura appears on the bridge.

Loathsom – ‘What are  . . . you doing  . . . here?!’

Secura – ‘I wondered if you could tell me–’

Loathsom ‘Tell you nothing!!’ [His anger is intense. Gage then Grace, 'Leave! He's getting mad!' Grace isn't quite picking up on the verbal cues as I thought she might. But at Gage's urging, she leaves and then heads to the cannon manned by a droid. She takes the droid and throws it in the shaft. I stop her and explain that if she really wants to do that, I'll be forced to react. She retracts the action and goes back to the rest area where the Techno Union Warrior is asleep.

She picks up on it and goes to the area where he was working. I ask to roll for all three work areas, and she, too, has the god of dice with her. She finds nothing at the first two stations but at third, the display shows the following message that I give them on a slip of paper:

Even though my son and I have enjoyed playing Star Wars miniatures, I’ve wanted to adapt for it a while, to make it more like an rpg. Now, you might ask, why not play a straight-up rpg?

• We have a lot of star wars minis, not to mention some 10 maps. Many of these characters aren’t very useful in a normal Star Wars mini game, but in an rpg, they become very useful.
• The Clone Wars offers very good, strong female characters that my daughter likes.
• The Star Wars universe, especially the Clone Wars, is really quite rich in existing characters, plots, and intrigues. It provides both ready-made resources as well as room for creative ideas.
• The kids know these characters and can play them while adding their own touches. We don’t have to spend gobs of time  creating characters and stats.
• Though lacking the subtlety of d20 RPGs, adapting minis allows for simple but flavorful checks and rolls. The story and the interaction are the most important  parts of playing while the checks add some element of chance but do not dominate the game.
• My kids love stories and role playing, so giving them the chance to interact in the game in ways other than fighting is a sure success.

I’ll briefly describe what I did to adapt the game and then describe our first session.

Adapting the minis game

I explained to the kids that they could talk to each other, could interact with anything that was logically on the map or on fallen characters, and could take whatever action they wanted as long as it wasn’t impossible or unreasonable. For example, the kids wanted to immediately leave for a planet and started pulling characters to include in their ship, but I reminded them that they couldn’t simply recruit without going through the proper channels, which was the Jedi Council in this case.

Star Wars minis have only basic numerical traits–hit points, attack, defense, and damage. I broke down skills into basic types: physical feats, computer hacks/repairs, stealth/tracking, dialogue/persuasion, demolition/traps. Anyone could roll a d20. To figure bonuses, I used the characters’ attack bonus but only if it made sense for the character to have that bonus. For example, Sev is a sniper and would have stealth or tracking abilities. Fixer, on the other hand, would have computer hacking, repairs, and trap bonuses. Jedi always get dialogue/persuasion bonuses. To make it work, I found that using 1/2 the attack bonus worked well. For example, if Ahsoka was trying to convince a character to talk, she would get a +5 persuasion bonus on her roll–her attack bonus is 9, so half of that is 4.5 which I round up. If a clone trooper tried to persuade, he would get no bonus. [Yeah, there's threaten, but I consider that different and would use it, if the kids called out that specific action.]

Death and dying are a little tricky. Normally in minis, a character who loses all his or her hit points is removed from the game. I adjusted this somewhat but only for major and secondary characters–once they lost all their hit points, they were unconscious. If their surviving party members won or even retreated, the fallen character lived to fight another day. Fallen characters cannot be revived during a battle, however. But I think I need some way to allow the players to render an NPC unconscious, particularly a grunt who might give up information. I think a simple option is to allow them to say they are shooting to maim or stun, not kill, before an attack.

Other than this, I stayed with the standard rules for Star Wars minis. [Unfortunately, Wizards of the Coast no longer has the Star Wars license, and they have removed the minis products and downloads from their site, so I have no active link for the rules. The closest that I have found is this Word doc at the Kansas City Star Wars Minis site. You can still find starter sets and boosters on Amazon for decent prices.]

The result? So far, it’s working wonderfully. It’s fairly easy to get up and running, and the kids really wanted to keep playing it today in our first session. I may tweak it, but I think it’s a great intro to tabletop RPGs without getting bogged down in the details that put off young kids who just want to play. In fact, after we finish our little campaign, I might create something like it to use with my son’s friends. I love the idea of a  house full of kids playing some tabletop games, especially if they played together when they’re older.

Afterthoughts first

For those who don’t want to read the following, I really enjoyed when my daughter suggested taking the uniforms of the would-be assassins and pretending to be them to go to the next planet. I wasn’t expecting that at all and it forced me to rethink the next adventure somewhat. It was exactly the sort of thing, though, that I was hoping for, the bit of creative thinking.

As we put up the game, my wife says, ‘You’re making up a story for them? They are really enjoying that.’ Even my 87-year-old mother watched and listened for a while.

Indeed, as we played,  we had a time quite unlike any that we’ve had playing any other game. It’s that experience in which we sort of let go of parent-child-sibling roles and interacted with each other as gamers. We didn’t forget those familial roles, but, for an hour, they were less important than the ones we played. I’ve played a lot of video and other board games with my kids but none of them were like this experience. And I think the reason is that the face-to-face gaming had something to do with it, a lack of a screen. But I think it was as much the fact the kids had only a few rules but lots of room for creativity. When my kids play games like Lego Batman, for example, they enjoy just running around and doing their own thing. I’m reluctant to call this minis RPG adventure a sandbox. It was much closer to an improvisational performance. I don’t want to exaggerate what we did, but it was different than games that I’ve played with my kids in the past, except maybe when they were very small and we’d play with figures in some ad hoc adventure and conversation.

But gone were the typical frustrations of computer gaming, of trying to deal with awkward controls, bad cameras, and poorly implemented cooperative action. I can’t tell the number of times someone gets upset about the other going a different direction. There was none of that frustration. Similarly, my daughter normally hates playing the minis because it’s all about moving and combat. But she likes the characters and will occasionally play with them, acting out some scene on the coffee table. This time, she was into the game. More importantly, she had a couple of really big moments that made her feel good and gave her a reason to brag.

First session

I’m no Wil Wheaton, but here it goes. To set it up, my daughter is 8 years old, and my son turns 11 in a month. My son and I had been talking about playing some miniatures for a while. We were at my mother’s with a subset of the minis when I had the idea for a story, something to get both kids to play. I spent the night before thinking through the details of the intro part and the first adventure, collecting my cast of characters, choosing the maps, and figuring out the locations of key characters and objects on the maps.

Continue reading →

Updated

My brother and his son have been amassing the game consoles. When his daughter moved out, they converted the bedroom into a tacky game room. I don’t have a separate game room, using our tv family area as the gaming center, which I limit to the Wii and 360. So,  I’m showing his instead, which includes these consoles:

• Atari Pong Bentley Compu-Vision [1983, one of the last pong consoles made]
• Intellivision
• Sega Genesis
• Nintendo 64
• Dreamcast
• Gamecube
• PS2
• Xbox
• Xbox 360 [downstairs]
• Wii

The video doesn’t serve the room well because it’s pretty comfortable. Their Xbox 360 is connected to the tv downstairs, but my 17-year-old nephew and his friends spend most of their time either in this upstairs room or in their computer room, where they have 3 computers set up for LAN gaming. Earlier in the year, after completing a tough school project, they played Modern Warfare and Halo for a while and then asked about playing on the computers. His friends had never played Diablo II or Starcraft. For the rest of the year, his friends came over regularly to play those older PC games.  Several times, he had game parties with friends gaming on the PCs and upstairs [often with Starfox]. My brother and sister-in-law got into the game nights, cooking hamburgers or whatever for the kids.

I’ve been trying to get my son’s friends together regularly for gaming, both board and video games. It is a fun time because, not only is it nostalgic, the kids’ excitement is infectious. When we visited my brother’s family a while back, my kids loved playing Starfox, although it was difficult, especially for my daughter. New multiplayer games are fun, but some of those older multiplayer games have a visceral experience that makes them great even among HD games.

The great thing about all those consoles is so many excellent games to play. Tired of StarFox 64? Then play Champions of Norrath or TimeSplitters 2 on the PS2. Or Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles or Toy Commander on the Dreamcast. Or Bomberman Blast and  Mario Kart Wii. Those boys even fire up Pong on occasion.