Inheriting a gene from his father, Noah really enjoys playing video games. While we do somewhat of the "right thing" by limiting his play time and making sure he is playing appropriate games (no violence, etc), we certainly don't discourage his interest.
One day recently he ask to play the "Hot Wheels: World Race" game that I bought for him for his birthday. It is a simplified racing game, but still requires a reasonable amount of skill. I figured that I would be the one doing most of the playing with him "helping". Well, I plugged in game pad for him and started up the game. After a few minutes of helping him with the controls he had the basic ideas down and started trying to control the game better. Amazingly, after one session, he has pretty much got to the point where he can do a reasonable job getting around the track and even can steer to pick up objects. He can pretty much play the game by himself (navigating the menus, selecting cars & tracks to race, etc). He isn't really "competitive" yet in the game, but I'm sure the next time I turn around, he will not be in last place any more.
Ask you can imagine, the skills developed using the game pad have translated the ability to use a Gameboy. Thanks to his cousin Rob, he is now the proud owner of a GameboySP, where is plays carebears and hamtaro on occasion. Unfortunately he spied Dad's Nintendo DS the other day and really enjoys the touch screen on it. I never really considered how "neat" a touchscreen would be for a preschooler. When you think about it, though, it is a very straightforward input device (WYSIWYG) and he was able to do some interesting things by just touching the screen. Surprisingly enough, Tiger Woods PGA 2005 is pretty straight forward to play if you just hit the button for automatic club selection and use the touch screen to swing the club (there is even arrows you can follow with the stylus).
I'm always wondering what he will pick up next.
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