Do any of you have kids? How do they react to your game room?

[FxMercenary]

I have been pondering having a kid for about a year now. I have always imagined what my daughter/son would think about an entire room filled with video games from old to new.

So tell me, do your kids play your old games and enjoy them?

Do they have their friends over for game time?

How do their friends parents react when they see their kid playing the same games that they played too as a kid?

Does your kid have to earn game time? or do they get free reign?

I am 30 now, and happily married, and the wife and I would like to have a child. And to me, it would be a blast watching my kid(s) play some Super Mario!

1 more thing... If you are a Sealed Games Collector, how did you come to discover that your child was secretly planning your untimely death? (LoL)

[Genesaturn]

My daughter will be 8 this October and she has free reign over my games. As a big Sega collector, I'm not worried about her hurting my clamshell cases :P

I let her in my room once when she was little....mistake..I was holding her and she reached over to an expensive figure I had and yanked the arm right off...never again...lol but around 6 I let her come in and now she grabs games and plays them and leaves the rest of my stuff alone. She knows my toys ...are just that....MY toys...she learned her lesson when I took on of her toys and played with it on her when she wanted to play with it lol. I'm just a big kid myself !

While my daughter prefers the Wii, she still plays my Genesis on occasion. She isn't at that age yet I guess where she complains about graphical difference or anything...God help her when she does...lol

[Griking]

I can imagine someone's kid opening one of Dad's sealed NES or SNES games and dad having a breakdown. LOL

[old_skoolin_jim]

My wife and I have a 7-month-old now... She's not into much, but on the few instances I've been playing games around her, her eyes are drawn to the screen. I'm secretly hoping she'll be able to appreciate EarthBound and Lunar 1 & 2 once shes a little older, but truth be told playing any fun co-op game with her, or helping her get through Sonics or Ecco would be awesome.
Of course, my wife is convinced she'll be into dance or gymnastics or something non-electronic... time will tell. :D

[markusman64ds]

Of course, my wife is convinced she'll be into dance or gymnastics or something non-electronic... time will tell. :D

How about you get her Just Dance 3?

[cityside75]

I have an 11 year old daughter and an 8 year old son. I've been gaming since I was about my son's age and we have a pretty big collection in the gameroom as well as a MAME cab and pinball machine in the garage. Here are my responses:

So tell me, do your kids play your old games and enjoy them? - Yes, definitely...but it's not exactly as you might think. See, they've been around this stuff their whole lives and to them it's really not a big deal. So they aren't giddy with excitement to be set free in the game room, but they do enjoy and appreciate good games from all eras (Example - Last weekend they finished the Simpsons arcade for about the 10th time playing together...they love that game and love showing it to their friends). Lately, they've been far more involved with our new tablet than my game collection.

Do they have their friends over for game time? - My son definitely enjoys this. We've had videogame themed parties for his last few birthdays and he absolutely loves them. We set up the projector in the garage and let the kids move between big screen multiplayer gaming (warioware mega party games is a perennial favorite), air hockey, pinball and the MAME cab. We do prizes for high scores and the winner of the warioware tournament. Aside from the party, his friends like coming over for the games.

How do their friends parents react when they see their kid playing the same games that they played too as a kid? - Totally varies from parent to parent...most are mildly amused, some want to give it a try and some couldn't care less. A couple of friends' dads are gamers in their own right too.

Does your kid have to earn game time? or do they get free reign? - As I mentioned earlier, at least in our household the kids aren't always begging to play games...sometimes I think our kids actually play LESS videogames than their friends who have relatively few games to play. Maybe its because they are "desensitized" to it, but they don't view games the same way a lot of their friends do. I should also mention that I don't pamper my collection and am not a sealed game collector. Perhaps if it was off-limits to them they'd view it with more reverance. Fortunately they both respect my collection and treat everything with care.

Having said all that, it IS really cool to see your kids enjoy games that you grew up with. I recently introduced my son to MULE on the C64 and he LOVED it. I figured the ultra-primitive graphics and lack of action would be a big turn-off for him but he seemed to get it immediately. He's asked me a few times since to pull the C64 back out so we can play again.

Hope this answers your questions!

[YoshiM]

My daughter just turned 2 and while she doesn't play (yet) she loves to watch and emulate. She's a big Mario fan and will ask for my wife or I to "Play Mario!" or "Play Yoshi!" and she'll grab a spare controller and just watch and cheer. She also enjoys pretending to fish in some Bass arcade game on Wii and calls out the name of whatever fish gets snared (Boogill! Basss! Caw-pee!).

She hasn't quite gotten interested in anything older than the N64. I tried putting in Super Mario Bros and she said she didn't want that. She did show interest when I was testing out a joystick adapter cable on my TI. I was playing Parsec and my skills have greatly diminished over the years. I crashed or blew up....a lot. With every loss of life I'd exclaim "Oh man!" or "Aw jeez!", which my little one picked up on. While she was drawing on some paper, I died yet again in the game. She blurted out "Aw jeez!" and continued drawing.

Will she game? Probably. She already knows how to insert cartridges and when Daddy is cleaning his carts, she wants to join in (using a dry swab as I don't want her to possibly suck on alcohol....though she does suck on the dry swabs to get them wet, as she can tell that mine are, and rubs her spit on the contacts of a cartridge).

[FxMercenary]

I have an 11 year old daughter and an 8 year old son. I've been gaming since I was about my son's age and we have a pretty big collection in the gameroom as well as a MAME cab and pinball machine in the garage. Here are my responses:

So tell me, do your kids play your old games and enjoy them? - Yes, definitely...but it's not exactly as you might think. See, they've been around this stuff their whole lives and to them it's really not a big deal. So they aren't giddy with excitement to be set free in the game room, but they do enjoy and appreciate good games from all eras (Example - Last weekend they finished the Simpsons arcade for about the 10th time playing together...they love that game and love showing it to their friends). Lately, they've been far more involved with our new tablet than my game collection.

Do they have their friends over for game time? - My son definitely enjoys this. We've had videogame themed parties for his last few birthdays and he absolutely loves them. We set up the projector in the garage and let the kids move between big screen multiplayer gaming (warioware mega party games is a perennial favorite), air hockey, pinball and the MAME cab. We do prizes for high scores and the winner of the warioware tournament. Aside from the party, his friends like coming over for the games.

How do their friends parents react when they see their kid playing the same games that they played too as a kid? - Totally varies from parent to parent...most are mildly amused, some want to give it a try and some couldn't care less. A couple of friends' dads are gamers in their own right too.

Does your kid have to earn game time? or do they get free reign? - As I mentioned earlier, at least in our household the kids aren't always begging to play games...sometimes I think our kids actually play LESS videogames than their friends who have relatively few games to play. Maybe its because they are "desensitized" to it, but they don't view games the same way a lot of their friends do. I should also mention that I don't pamper my collection and am not a sealed game collector. Perhaps if it was off-limits to them they'd view it with more reverance. Fortunately they both respect my collection and treat everything with care.

Having said all that, it IS really cool to see your kids enjoy games that you grew up with. I recently introduced my son to MULE on the C64 and he LOVED it. I figured the ultra-primitive graphics and lack of action would be a big turn-off for him but he seemed to get it immediately. He's asked me a few times since to pull the C64 back out so we can play again.

Hope this answers your questions!


Very interesting! Especially the desensitized part of it all. It is good to hear that they do respect your collection and treat the games with care.


My daughter just turned 2 and while she doesn't play (yet) she loves to watch and emulate. She's a big Mario fan and will ask for my wife or I to "Play Mario!" or "Play Yoshi!" and she'll grab a spare controller and just watch and cheer. She also enjoys pretending to fish in some Bass arcade game on Wii and calls out the name of whatever fish gets snared (Boogill! Basss! Caw-pee!).

She hasn't quite gotten interested in anything older than the N64. I tried putting in Super Mario Bros and she said she didn't want that. She did show interest when I was testing out a joystick adapter cable on my TI. I was playing Parsec and my skills have greatly diminished over the years. I crashed or blew up....a lot. With every loss of life I'd exclaim "Oh man!" or "Aw jeez!", which my little one picked up on. While she was drawing on some paper, I died yet again in the game. She blurted out "Aw jeez!" and continued drawing.

Will she game? Probably. She already knows how to insert cartridges and when Daddy is cleaning his carts, she wants to join in (using a dry swab as I don't want her to possibly suck on alcohol....though she does suck on the dry swabs to get them wet, as she can tell that mine are, and rubs her spit on the contacts of a cartridge).

LOL that's awesome! Sounds like you have a Daddy's girl in the making!

[NE146]

My kid is 3.. he has shown absolutely zero interest in games, and if one is playing he barely even glances at it. This is in stark contrast to his 2 year old cousin who when seeing a game being played is immediately drawn to it and wants to participate whether it's by holding a unactivated 360 controller, or trying to draw on the 3DS screen. LOL

[Dire 51]

I have three daughters, ages 5, 8 and 9. Not only do they play my games (mostly from my NES, SNES and Genesis collections - I have no game room, but my collection is easily within reach), but they have their own small game collection. They do have games you might expect to find in a classic gaming-oriented little girl's collection, like The Little Mermaid and Crystal's Pony Tale, but they also own (and love) games like Run Saber, Valis III, Mario Paint, Twinbee: Rainbow Bell Adventure (yes, I've bought them imports) and Excitebike. Their current favorite game is Kirby's Dreamland 3.

They don't turn their noses up at anything because it's "too old" or whatever reasons kids are giving for not trying classic games in this day and age. I've watched them switch from playing Atari to PC Engine to Xbox 360 (etc) and back, and thoroughly enjoy themselves. A few months back, we had a household competition in Frogs and Flies, and it took some time to get them to stop playing after it was over.

However, they don't play all that often (two of them are grounded right now, actually), and for the most part their collection is only pulled out on the weekends (or during vacations), as they don't get to play on school nights. They're also not immune to the "everyone else has it so why don't we?" syndrome. I do hear the occasional request for a Wii and 3DS from the oldest. I've told her the 3DS might be a possibility at some point, but I'm not keen on buying yet another console, especially since they don't get to play all that often anyway.