Can kids master the video games their parents loved?

I've told my child, 7, that when he completes the original Super Mario Bros he can get a switch and play mario-kart. He consistently gets to the end of 8-2, so he's damn close, and he loves the game! Though he has a slight preference for Kirby, also on the original NES.

Most of his friends seem to be obsessed with Minecraft, and Ultimate Chicken Horse, to the extent that when he had a friend over I overheard him saying "Mario is old, but it's still fun!" in Finnish.

So I guess there's hope for me yet :)

The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment specializes in generational knowledge exchange through the medium of video games. There is nothing that warms my heart more than watching that information transfer in real time.

Watching a parent explain to their child how to properly hold an N64 controller.

Watching the child's mind explode as mom/grandma/dad/gramps shows them the warp zone in level 1-2 of Super Mario Bros. Frequent "Mom doesn't know about video games, how'd she do that!?" kind of quotes from the kids.

Watching dad and daughter charge through a Sierra adventure game, looking up the manual in Archive.org and figuring out 40 year old puzzles together.

The family that plays together, stays together.

It would be great if my kid was into the video games I was into as a kid, but I've kind of resigned myself to the fact that she's a different person, grew up in a different environment, has different expectations out of video games. You can't force someone to like something. Same with movies and music. I tried to get her into Harry Potter and Star Wars and the kid/teen movies I grew up with like The Goonies and Flight of the Navigator, but those movies just so old to this generation, and there's nothing in it for them to relate to.

It's like trying to get "11 year old me" into The Howdy Doody Show.

Of course they can't, the majority of them are rendered unplayable by the manufacturer. For the consoles I played as a kid, this is just tongue-in-cheek, but it is quite likely kids today will not be able to even show their children the games they grew up with. Duck FRM.

I grew up in the 90s, and the time period during which something was created seems to have little correlation with whether I like it or not. My grandmother had an original Nintendo with Super Mario Bros 3, and I much preferred that over whatever was recent for the time (GameCube?). I never got into modern multiplayer video games, and old school Tetris remains one of my favorite games to this day (along with the 40 line clear variant).

Some of my favorite music was written hundreds of years ago. Or a few decades ago. Or in the 90s. Or now. There's good stuff and bad stuff across all time periods. I discovered the Miyazaki films way into adulthood, but that didn't affect how much I enjoyed them.

It seems like more of a personality thing whether someone is willing to give old stuff a "chance" or whether they only gravitate to the latest stuff that their friends are interested in.

I can't even play at a level I used to be able to play in the games I loved, I imagine they would fair a bit better given the time.

I think it is time too, I can't dedicate 4 straight hours to a single game problem like I could before, and I can't get the reps in for competitive game training like I used to. Competitive games need a "masters" category for washed up casuals!

> They’ve now independently played through Pokémon Shield, which is vaguely set in Britain, if Britain were comprised entirely of castles, villages and London.

I dunno, sounds about right to me.

I wonder what it is about games that grab some kids but not others. I was hooked from the very first time I saw Mario on my dad's NES at about age 4. Tons of other kids in the same age and same situation shrugged and gave it a pass.

One of my favorite intersections of classic video games and modern emulation is that there are updated versions of Tecmo Bowl that have current players and rosters.

I have an eight year old and he likes playing Tecmo Bowl with his friends b/c:

- it has the current teams he and his friends know and like

- the learning curve is pretty quick so you can get up and running with someone who has never played in only a few minutes

See https://tecmobowl.org/files/file/779-tecmo-super-bowl-2023-p... for more info.

One of the games that it turned out my dad loved, but that I randomly stumbled on here on HN first is Star Control II, or in this case the open source remake of it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37925538

Was absolutely surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I think the late 80s and 90s are a particularly timeless period given how much strength there often was in the artistic direction. To me a lot of stuff from the early 2000s actually holds up less well.

The internet and availability of knowledge has rendered most of these games much easier than the original audience had it

I know it's kind of an exception, since it's such a "pure" game, but still: one of best NES Tetris player right now is currently 14 (he was born 20 years after the game was released) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Gibson

This article is dumb the modern pokemon meta is harder and more complex than when we were kids.

Fps on the other hand, I’m pretty sure I would smoke 99% of kids on halo3 or call of duty 4.

Most old games need serious modding before I’d actually recommend them, because they are haunted by lots of terrible design choices.

Secret of Mana holds a special place in my heart, but really needs the Turbo romhack to really enjoy. The great thing about this romhack, is that it’s multiple hacks gathered into a system that allows easily activating or deactivating the parts you want: https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=27890.0

I hope they never know what it was like playing World of Warcraft in 2006, when quests sometimes asked for 10 of an item with a low drop rate, from mobs with a low spawn rate.

It’s very hard to say. I’m aged in gamer years, and over the last few decades I’ve seen the average age of gamer climb much higher than I expected. When I played Amiga or NES or GameGear, it was strictly in the kids territory. Adults sat around drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and having a chat. Talking business. Nowadays I think the average age is nearing 35? Has it passed it? Teens and young adults met up in PC Cafes but that era is gone, so now it’s all online.

Are kids going to be better than someone with 25-30 years of experience? Can they play FPSs better than the CAL generation of counter-strike players? Kids who spent their teenage years evening after evening meeting up to play Melee games? It’s doubtful.

Envious of new graphics? Not really. As a kid the games captivated me for what they were. Games strived to be unique, original. I think they’ve succeeded. My point of comparison for TailSpin was the tank (or ape) aiming game where you both sight the other and press fire, and TailSpin looked miles better with rain and thunder effects. No envy on my part, I got my “wow” many, many times over. Defeating Joker in Batman after 100+ playthroughs is triumph enough.

There are always more stupid questions that we can imagine. If you just look an average kid playing something like FIFA you would have an answer immediately. In FPSs you can confuse kids with real military personnel.

Regarding interest, I think less sophisticate games such as Minecraft has an appeal because they have a social aspect and this depends of the specific kid.

In general, their parents games are super easy comparing with today's games. Mainly arcade.

i wonder much less if they can versus how much exposure to high fidelity AAA games and movies is enough to not be able to enjoy or connect to the classic games i loved. i hope i will find out one day.

Something has absolutely been lost in the transition to 3d and voice acting, and all of that crap.

When I was a kid, I was playing games made for adults, or at least teenagers. Mega Man X, Super Mario World, Turtles in Time, Metal Slug... those games were tough!

I learned to read from Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger. We would go to our mom as 4 and 5 year olds and beg her to teach us so we could play these mysterious games with amazing graphics and music.

We all went into kindergarten learning to read, and I tested at a 12 grade level in 3rd grade.

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Modern game design in some ways is better than it ever has been. Games like Dead Cells have taken the arcade "keep starting over" mechanic and fine-tuned it into an amazing mechanic. Elden Ring has such rich, amazing lore, coupled with a challenging adventure game with awesome combat, and the ability to build a character to fit your personality. Baldur's Gate 3 feels like a real tabletop RPG, it really is the zenith of modern RPG storytelling.

However, something has been lost in translation. Beat-em-ups, SHMUPs, and character action games like:

- Devil May Cry 3

- Godhand

- E.S.P. Ra.De

- Ninja Gaiden Sigma

- Resident Evil 4

- Streets of Rage 3

- Contra

- Metal Slug

- Alien vs. Predator ( the beat-em-up )

are not simple games, as they first appear. They are challenging masterpieces that emerged from arcade genres, and were developed by former arcade developers.

They have intricate scoring systems that let you push-your-luck and be rewarded with a higher score. Your competition was the other kids in the arcade, and climbing that leader-board. The ultimate achievement was a 1cc, clearing the entire game on one credit. Bonus points if you get a high score!

They came from a culture where scoring systems mattered. Modern games are great, but I miss the old days.

There is a youtuber called "The Electric Underground" who has some great content on arcade game and character action game design. Highly recommend his review of Resident Evil 4 Remake.

I got my sister a NES Classic to play with with her kids. Her boyfriend hacked it and put every single NES ROM on it.

The kids' conclusion? The graphics suck, and they much prefer Xbox.

My son, 10, is way better than I ever was at the games of my childhood. Although he has gamed since he was 4, I only get a computer (C64) when I was 11. It was old at this (this was 1991).

For people who didn’t watch British TV in the 90s, Dominik Diamond (the last parent in the article) compèred GamesMaster, which was the video games show. Although I guess we all read Digitiser as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GamesMaster

The article reminded me of Andy Baio introducing his son to video games in chronological order – https://waxy.org/2014/12/playing-with-my-son/

When I try to get my 12 year old interested in the games I played as a kid I get laughed out of the room with side-eye "boomer" comments (I'm Gen-X, but "boomer" seems to be slang for "anyone over 40" these days). It's all in good humor, but there's no competing with what's out today.

That being said, he is playing Skyrim V which was released 13 years ago ...

I sometimes read alarming articles in the media about literacy rates and attention spans. I played Planescape Torment and other text heavy games in my teens.

This article is dumb the modern pokemon meta is harder and more complex than when we were kids.

Fps on the other hand, I’m pretty sure I would smoke 99% of kids on halo3 or call of duty 4.

I clicked link expecting the likes of Defender and Joust. Nope.

Would love to see my kids master games like Ultima Online or Everquest ... too bad nothing like that exists today.

Why would I torture them. When I look at old games, I'm always shocked about why I endured some of the terrible design choices. I'm so glad for modern game design and don't torture my children with old stuff.

Doesn't mean they get life easy, I let them play at stuff that's harder than their current age and they get plenty of frustration: put a 3 years old on new super mario bros u and see what happens.

One day I told my son, "You should check out this video game I loved when I was your age. You adventure through a huge underground empire, collecting magical treasures and weapons." He got excited, and then I loaded up Zork.

"Here you go!"

West of House

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

There is a small mailbox here.

...he looked at me expectantly, waiting for something to happen. "Aren't you going to load the game up, Dad?"

i've been looking for these two ROM packs for NES forever

First mystery ROM: It was called 101-in-1 or one of those bootleg multiple games in one cartridge and there is a menu list of all the games you can play and at the bottom there is two crab like characters walking towards the center from the left and right and when they meet they pull away from each other but different color. The games in this cartridge were insanely tough.

Second mystery ROM: side scroller but there is this weird dune like worm monsters, definitely not kid friendly as the game had creepy images but it was the hardest game I ever played on the NES

FromSoft would like a word.