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Was I to hard on my nephew or is he just a wuss (on-topic)

Last night my nephew (who is 6) comes over, I think I might get him interested in videogames, considerinmg he's seen me play game before and showed a little interest in them I give him my Kiwi-coiored GBC. With Zelda: Link's Awakening (original), Battle Arena Toshindon, and Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle.

So he's all like "Cool, that's awesome", so he pops in BBCC and doesn't even get past the "press start" screeen and he asks "What do I do"? I told him to read what it says (and he can read) namely press start, so he does and he doesn't even move, and yet again asks "What do I do??" I told him to get the carrots, then he says "How do I do that??" Just walk over them I said, so after about 5 monotonous questions later, he FINALLY gets the gist of it, and is like, wow that's cool.

So he proceeds to pop in Zelda, and doesn't even get past the name screen when he asks the infamous "What do I do??" question, I told him to READ WHAT IT SAYS namely....put in his name and he's like "How do I do that???" By this time I'm getting REALLY irritated and I tell him to just experiment around. So not even getting past the name screen he proceeds to pop it out saying "I want a different game, this is to hard!" So without asking if he could he just goes over to my GB games, picks up Super Mario Deluxe and long story short, he can't even pick a save file. So when he FINALLY gets going he asks me, yet again "What do I do???" I tell him just to jump on the enemies and get to the other side.

After only about 5 seconds in he proceeds to just run right into a goomba, and he's like "This sucks, it's to hard!"

Then he gets R-Type and keeps asking me what to do, I tell him to just shoot everything and dodge the bullets, not 5 seconds later he is complaining that it's "To hard!"

By this time he had to leave (thankfully), so I tell him he can take it in exchange. Well, he comes back this morning, then he STILL hasn't got past the first level! He shows me some blocks and asks me "What are those??" I tell him to just jump over them, and then he says "How do I do that?" by this time all I have to say is "......" and he's like, "I want to exchange that other game you said was a fighting game, I can't figure out how to get it to start". So I said "Look, you already have some games that I gave you, take 'em or leave 'em" to which he responds "YOU ARE MEAN!!!" (BTW I forgot to mention he also put in numerous other GB games w/o getting past the input your name screen) So if that's not all he sees my purple GBC and says "I want that one!!!" I told him no, and he just starts crying, unfortunately, his mother, just as always, is nowhere to be found and just lets him do whatever he wants.


I go and find her, and she FINALLY tells him to come down as he's crying just because the color he wants (which he never said he wanted the night before) he can't get:/

I realizre he's only six, but I sure don't remember complaining like that. I always loved getting new games and experimenting with them till I found out exactly what to do.

Heh, I also forgot to mention that for some reason he takes out the game, and THEN turns it off, I tryed to correct him but he didn't understand the concept of "Damaging your game, or loosing your save file".
 

ShadowRed

Banned
Dude is he retarded? He might have some sort of learning disability. If he's getting stumped at the "press start screen," something is definitly wrong.
 

Wario64

works for Gamestop (lol)
I dont think the kid is meant to be a gamer at all. I certainly don't remember having any troubles playing video games when I was a kid, and I started playing games when I was like 3 years old. I guess some people are just unfortunate when it comes to gaming. Like sometimes I'd see a kid play a Mario game and they keep falling through a gap because they don't know how to hold the run button and jump at the same time. But getting stuck on the title screen? Haha...
 
Yeah, that's what I thought. What is it with kids these days and at the first sign of a challenge they just "give up"??? And why do parents just let their kids run wild???
 
Oh, I also forgot to mention that I think he has a SEVERE case of ADHD. The kid WILL NOT SHUT UP!!!! He CONSTANTLY asks random questions, ALL THE TIME!!! I wish murder was legal:(
 

LakeEarth

Member
Gotta be patient. Can't expect a kid who's never played a game to catch on very quick. I got a cousin who lives in Turkey, and trying to teach her how to play Mario isn't easy cause we both don't have any patience.
 

Trevelyon

Member
Christ man, you were too soft!!! I suggest you punish him with a 15 hour Shinobi & Otogi session, and if he gives you any more of that weaksauce lip, get him cracking on Super Ghouls N'Ghosts & Contra III.
 

Wario64

works for Gamestop (lol)
If my cousin ejected games out of the GBC before turning them off, I wouldn't let them touch any of my gaming stuff again.
 

Brannon

Member
My nephew of 3 knows to press start and other buttons when I tell him, can select and use weapons in R&C2 (but not buy them yet), and can even do complex actions like throw the wrench. Like you, I thought I'd never get him to understand the magical properties of the freakin' 'A' BUTTON in Sonic Adventure 2 DC, but time has made him come far.

It will take time. And for a kid with ADHD, it may take a bit more and some patience on your part. We forget that one time, we were as young, and that jumping over a block or pressing up to move forward the first time wasn't as automatically ingrained as it is now.

Then-

"OMG THEY TURNED THE GOOMBAS INTO BUZZY BEETLES WTF THEY"RE GONNA KILL ME BETWEEN THE PIPES!!"

Now-

"I'll double bounce off the shells, do a backward drift, scrape the invisible block above and land in the exact spot where the 1up Mushroom will fall. Oh and Bowser, I'm gonna prison rape you in T-minus 5...(all without letting go of the 'B' Button, but that's standard operating procedure)."

Give 'em time and you can breed some serious competition for yourself.
 

bishoptl

Banstick Emeritus
kid.2413273.jpg
 
I'm going to sympatihize with somebody here, but I'm not sure who.

I introduced Midtown Madness to my 5 year old twin nephews because I wanted to introduce them to games and they already like to run their toy trucks into stuff. I think an open driving game like that is ideal for early gamers because they can make the car drive around and get excited and they can't die every few seconds. It took those guys several sessions, but last i saw them they were doing pretty good. A bonus is that they are getting used to analog sticks at an early age.

I'm visiting my nieces and don't have all my games with me, just Nintendo stuff (it was the smallest) so I tired to show the four year old Luigi's Mansion. That game has kid friendly concepts but the controls are beyond any early gamer. If I had a racer 'sides F-Zero with me i'd show her that, but it became clear to me that she needed a deeper schooling in video game concepts before attempting to play anything current. Keep in mind that before two weeks ago she'd never really seen a video game.

I'm letting her play the old 8 and 16-bit Mario's on emulators, but she hasn't picked up on it yet, and we don't get to play very often at all. She's going to be a very smart kid, but what gaming with her and my nephews has made me realize is that kids don't want rules, boundries, and challenges when they play a video game. They want a toy they can play for as long as they want. They simply want the fun of pushing buttons and making things happen on screen. We were all like that once. It takes time to see that there is enjoyment beyond the light show; and before they get to that point they have to understand that there are rules in the game. When my niece can finish a level of SMB on her own, I'll know that she is starting to see that.

It takes patience to teach a child anything, and while it gets easier the older they are, everybody has to start out gaming with baby steps.

Gamer4life.jpg
 
No, you're gonna drain the battery on the Wavebird!

Real cute kid there.

I remember when my little cousin played his first video game. It was some Bomberman game for GBC(the lame sidescrolling one where you're constantly bouncing) He was totally fascinated with it for hours. I felt bad that it was the only game I had on me at the time.
 

Brannon

Member
You should let your niece play Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on the Gamecube as Knukles in the Meteor Herd level (make it there yourself first). It's as open as it gets, hard to die, no pits to fall into, and a lot of places to run around. She'll learn slowly how to navigate the level and more importantly, how to use the analog stick to stay a straight course. It's how I got my nephew started. Now, no more wobbly walking or falling off any decently narrow bridges.

Yeah that's right, I just said something good about a Knuckles level in SA2B. BRING IT.
 

Hellraizah

Member
Gamer4life.jpg

I was gonna write something really uncool about this pic, but I've been warned that trolling Nintendo can get me banned....

must............resist...........temptation.........

How long did the batteries in the WaveBird lasted after that moment ?
 

AniHawk

Member
DJ Brannon said:
You should let your niece play Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on the Gamecube as Knukles in the Meteor Herd level (make it there yourself first). It's as open as it gets, hard to die, no pits to fall into, and a lot of places to run around. She'll learn slowly how to navigate the level and more importantly, how to use the analog stick to stay a straight course.

Or it could drive her absolutely insane.
 
Hellraizah said:
How long did the batteries in the WaveBird lasted after that moment ?

I'm going to ruin the magic on this one: I was posing. She fell asleep while I played Luigi's Mansion.

She was all like. "Vacuum cleaners? You get me up for this noise? Where is Riddick? I'm out."

The batteries are still going.
 

xsarien

daedsiluap
YOU ARE MEAN!!!" (BTW I forgot to mention he also put in numerous other GB games w/o getting past the input your name screen) So if that's not all he sees my purple GBC and says "I want that one!!!" I told him no, and he just starts crying, unfortunately, his mother, just as always, is nowhere to be found and just lets him do whatever he wants.

When a kid's obviously as spoiled as that, you can never be too hard on them. It's never too early to teach the little rugrats that you can't always get what you want.
 
It sounds like your nephew is autistic or something. I wasn't any superstar with videogames when I was six, but I usually only had to watch someone play a game once to understand the concept. Is he potty trained?
 

Pachinko

Member
On the one hand the kid was 6 years old... on the other hand I started playing atari before I'd even gotten to kindergarten.. I think I was probaly 4 years old. Here's the clincher, in hindsight thinking of how I acted through most of school.. and in some ways how I still act I had atleast partial ADD/OCD or something. If something doesn't interest me I tend to just ignore it almost instinctivly, such was the case in school where if we were learning something that I couldnt' almost immediatly figure out I'd get impatient and start humming to myself filling my notes with doodles. I'd did the doodle part right through high school actually. Yet when I'm on a computer or playing a game I have 100% focus/ concentration becuase to me it's interesting.

So in short , the kid obviously doesn't have the patience to learn videogames so I wouldn't force him .
 

IgeL

Member
ArcadeStickMonk said:
kids don't want rules, boundries, and challenges when they play a video game. They want a toy they can play for as long as they want. They simply want the fun of pushing buttons and making things happen on screen.
So true. I just had two kids (girl and her brother) here yesterday and I was kind of surprised that they wanted to play games. The first game they picked was Moto GP 2, and they did ok and somewhat liked the game (not enough to play another 3-lap race but enough not to quit in the middle of the race). The girl wanted to try Grabbed by the Ghoulies but when I showed them how it played, they wanted another game. So, in goes an OXM UK demo disc. Next thing I know they're playing Crazy Taxi 3 demo for like one hour - just having fun, screaming everytime they make a jump, crashing into other cars... even picked up customers and delivered them, but that was always second to the "making things happen on screen" thing. The girl (older) was a bit more into being a taxi-driver, and her record was 5 customers. She also had some "I'm better than you" sentences but the younger boy didn't really react to those.

It seems to me that the older the kids get, the more competitive they become, and learn about the rules of the game and want to "win" the game. I guess it's the same in life in general as well.
 

Mama Smurf

My penis is still intact.
I managed to get my 4 year old goddaughter and her twin (who look scarily like the kid just posted above) to play Timesplitters 2 with dual analogue controls after about half an hour.

I'm a very patient person though.

Not that they ever hit anything, but they were moving around pretty well. I was impressed.
 

Ghost

Chili Con Carnage!
I used to play super smash bros. with my cousins when they came over, the younger one cant have been much older than 6, they dont have ADHD though. It was great until they decided it would be more fun to actually fight with me...
 

Fifty

Member
Hellraizah said:
Gamer4life.jpg

I was gonna write something really uncool about this pic, but I've been warned that trolling Nintendo can get me banned....

must............resist...........temptation.........

How long did the batteries in the WaveBird lasted after that moment ?


Give in to the temptation!!


:(

I can't do it either.....
 

Seth C

Member
Sad, so sad. I was gaming with Breakout, Space Invaders, and Missile Command as early as 3, and figuring them out by myself. By the time Mario came around it all just made sense. Don't know what to do? Experiment. Worst case scenario you have to start over. Oh well, you didn't know how to play before anyway.
 

MetatronM

Unconfirmed Member
If he can't understand Mario at that age then he may be a lost cause. I was playing that game at age 3. Not necessarily well, mind you, but I figured out how to play more or less. And back then there was no older generation schooled in gaming to teach me.
 

andthebeatgoeson

Junior Member
Hellraizah said:
Gamer4life.jpg

I was gonna write something really uncool about this pic, but I've been warned that trolling Nintendo can get me banned....

must............resist...........temptation.........

How long did the batteries in the WaveBird lasted after that moment ?

Kiddie! There, said it, now get over it.

The kids friggin 6, what do you expect, he got the up up down down left right left right B A Start code in the womb or in a vision? First thing out of his mouth is "Justin Bailey" and Samus is a girl? Jesus, let him fuck around with it or show him what to do. I was probably a good player when I was six or seven but I had an older brother and sister who knew what they were doing. Videogames only caught your interest when you saw them being played. You have to show him that Mario jumps and can squash the goombas. Pop in a game, play for awhile when he's watching, die, then hand him a controller. If that doesn't, he might not care for videogames.
 

User 406

Banned
My wife's parents adopted two foster boys, and when they were around that age, we'd sometimes have to keep them over at our place for a few days when the in-laws went out of town for various church revivals and reunions. For some reason, they always thought our house was this magical land of delights and wonders, even though their visits invariably ended with them being in trouble for begging for too much stuff. :p

Early on, when I let them play on the PSX, I'd give them something simple they could move around a bit in like Pandemonium. The thing was, no matter what game they played, after about five to ten minutes or so they'd say they were bored and demanded to try another one. The outcome of course was very similar to the one in the original post, where I let them switch through a couple games, then forbade them from playing altogether. They whined about me being unfair and mean and so on, and I cackled with diabolical laughter in their faces and mocked them for their short attention spans, and so eventually they got the idea. When they came to visit, they would carefully consider what games they wanted to play first, and they would stick to the game they were playing until they truly were tired of it, then they would politely ask for a different one or decide to do something else altogether.

Now they've grown up a good bit, and have less trouble with their attention spans. The elder brother even played a complete game of go against me last week. They keep begging us to buy them stuff though, so I still get to entertain myself by torturing them with creatively phrased answers in the negative. ;)
 
No offense, but if you're giving a 6 year-old R-Type and Zelda, WTF do you expect. A six year old who's never played games before isn't gonna be Pinball Wizard after 5 minutes. (5 nieces and nephews. And while they can all sit at the computer and play like zombies forever once they know how to play a game, it's still a lot more fun to go outside with them and get some kind of ballgame going.)
 

Cherubae

Member
Perhaps he needs to read the instruction manuals too ;) Some of them have pictures of the obsticles he would have to avoid in order to reach the goal. If he could see what he needs to look out for, he might not become frustrated.
 

Ranger X

Member
Mother's a coward -- son's a coward.

Very sad. It's not your fault dude. Keep on with and pratice with him by baby steps and you may actually SAVE him... poor child`:)
 

DarienA

The black man everyone at Activision can agree on
Too hard? Hell I would have caned his ass... but that's just me... As soon as my child is born this Nov. I'm sticking and controller in his/her hand... and there had better not be any crying!
 
My kids are definitely not ready for Zelda or even Mario. Anything that requires a necessary sequence of button presses just isn't for them. Of course, they are only 4 and 2 and a half so I can't expect too much of them.

The one game they love to play against each other is NHL Hitz Pro. I set it up for the pond hockey game, set it to 2 or 3 goals wins and let them go to town. Once they figured out that the little red button was 'shoot' things got a lot more interesting.

Sometimes during a particularly heated game, my son will laugh and exclaim "They're goin' too fast!"
Going too fast? Maybe you're just thinking too slow, boy! Pass it around to set up a one-timer once in a while! Maybe telling your goalie to stop carrying the damn puck across the opposing blueline would save you some grief too!!

Heh, kids.
 
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