New Games for Kids

Uncle Dicko's blog to teach his grand kids to balance the timing for the Nintendo Wii games at home. The experimental project for Gaming at Libraries.

More on Infocomm123 to "Ask. Learn. Expore":

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“Game” enough for everyone

Playing video games used to be a form of recreation that appealed mostly to the younger male population but this stereotype no longer holds true with the games of today.

Besides the usual assortment of first person shooters and role-playing titles, a new genre of video games has emerged, one which is designed to appeal across age groups from the young to the old.

While console makers like Sony and Microsoft are sticking to their guns by vying for attention from traditional gaming buffs with the Playstation 3 and Xbox360 consoles, Japan’s Nintendo has chosen to appeal to the casual gamer by breaking down the age barrier.

For example, Nintendo’s DS portable gaming console is extremely popular with young children. While there are the usual cartoon-inspired titles such as the Pokemon series and Super Mario Bros, the Nintendo DS is also accompanied by a number of educational offerings. These include Brain Age and Big Brain Academy, games designed to challenge the intellect of both adults and children through a series of engaging puzzles. There are even games for learning foreign languages like Italian or Japanese on the portable gaming unit.

The company has also taken this concept to a bigger screen through its newer Wii console. This gaming platform makes use of a unique controller called the Wii-mote to allows the system to detect the user’s motion. In a tennis game for example, you can swing the Wii-mote to hit the ball in the direction of your choice, much like how you would swing a racket on a real court.

Using this technology, Nintendo has recently released an exercise game for its Wii console to allow players to shape up even as their eyes stay glued to the TV set. Called Wii-Fit, the game is made up of over 40 activities ranging from yoga to push-ups, which combine to spell hours of fun for the entire family.

Wii-Fit makes use on an additional peripheral called the balance board which serves to measure a user’s weight and centre of gravity. By keying in the player’s height, the game can even determine his body mass index and track his fitness level over the course of gameplay.

Frivolous as some of Wii-Fit activities may seem, they are actually designed to work out specific muscle groups and players and easily work out a sweat with an hour of gameplay.

Playing video games used to be a form of recreation that appealed mostly to the younger male population but this stereotype no longer holds true with the games of today. Besides the usual assortment of first person shooters and role-playing titles, a new genre of video games has emerged, one which is designed to appeal across age groups from the young to the old.

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On 11 January, 2009 morning, I captured a video clip of a young boy, about 6 years old, engrossed in the video game machine in the shopfront beside the wet market at Bedok South Road, Singapore. It was a chance encounter to watch the kid.

The grandma was marketing, and left her grandson for about 45 minutes waiting. He spent about 1 or 2 dollars for each game. The shopkeeper knows grandma in the neighborhood and takes good care of the kid for a while.



The Question:
Who invented Nintendo?

The Answer:
Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, dreamed up and built the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1983.

The company was started in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, great-grandfather of the present president. He manufactured "Hanafuda," which are Japanese playing cards. The company started producing games in the 1960s and starting dabbling in electronics in the 1970s. It began selling handheld "Game and Watch" LCD games in the U.S. in 1980, and had an arcade hit with "Donkey Kong" in 1981.

The NES first appeared in America in 1985. Since then the company has added the Game Boy, Nintendo 64, Nintendo DS, Nintendo GameCube, and so on. Its Super Mario Brothers video game became a worldwide favorite.

In the Plaza Singapura at the open tent event for "Wii Sports Plus Road Show" on Sunday, 29 November, 2009. The young girl was about 4 years old. The father sat beside her daughter to guide her. While mother was with her elder brother, cheer and support the daughter new video game with the Nintendo game.