Hi Tom.
one thing I will also add, is that kids and arcade games go together very
well. At the age of three or four I remember distinctly playing games like
berserk, joust, space invaders and ms packman on our old atari 2600. the
very simplicity of the games made them quite enjoyable, and their mechanics
were more than addictive enough.
later, we got an amstrad cpc computer, when I was about 5-7, and again I
played games like double dragon, golden axe, roland on the ropes (a great
random maze platformer), and in fact ghouls n ghosts.
While for me computer games weren't an overriding interest until we got an
amigar when i was eight with the game turrican 2, which pretty much changed
both my interest in games and indeed in music (since the scores for T2 are
famous), I can say that I found games quite playable, even ones such as
double dragon.
Many of the games we have now wouldn't need to be changed too much for kids
to play. The only thing I would recommend if we were talking about a
specific game, is that there is currently not a complex first person game
that I would give a child, sinse shades of doom and swamp obviously wouldn't
fit the bill for gore and scare factor at least for fairly young children,
ditto with the two best examples of first person games on the iPhone, the
nightjar and papasangre, (I was playing mortal kombat at age 10, but
admittedly i was quite an old child).
First person audio games have a lot to teach. I am pretty sure my own
ability to understand landmarks and navigate wouldn't be where it is now if
it weren't for games like Turrican and metroid. With blind kids, teaching
them to hear sound sources, turn towards them, walk accurately, remember
routes etc would be great skills, therefore a first person game, but one
without the gorey deaths of say swamp or shades would be a really nice
addition.
My suggestion personally would be a game similar to a 2D version of
castlevania or ghouls n ghosts. The player could have a magic weapon, or
indeed a number of them that could remove various monsters and ghosts rather
like the ghost busters and their proton packs, and could wander around
locations like dark forests, caves and spooky castles. By keeping the
enemies to be spectral ghosts, nightmare monsters and the like and giving
the player laser weapons to zap them rather than guns to shoot, the violence
and death level could be kept out of too horrifiying a range.
Equally, if it was established the enemies were ghosts and unreal monsters,
the player could say instead of losing energy have a terror meeter, which,
if it got too high caused them to lose a life in a sequence where they
yelled "aaagh! a ghost!" and ran off terrified, but essentially unhurt.
robot smight also be a good way to go, indeed terraformers might be a good
first person game though I suspect kids would find the gameplay a bit too
slow.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
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