I've corrupted a child.

[Azure79]

I'm over at a close family friends house for Thanksgiving for a couple of days. They have a 8 year old son and he has a computer. Not a very good computer. 128 ram, an old pentium 4 CPU and an internal graphics card.

 

Now, there's no one really my age at this home so I'm mostly bored out of my mind surfing the web since I don't have any games with me, when I remember the great world of emulation.

 

So I look around and DL a SNES emulator with a few classic games. Super Mario World, Super Metroid, Link to the Past, Contra the Alien Wars, The Ninja Gaiden Trilogy, Donkey Kong...among others.

 

I'm amusing myself, having a grand old time stomping turtles, blasting aliens and carving a path with Ryu's dragon sword, when the lil 8 year old kid sneaks up behind me and nearly deafens me with his enthusiastic shriek of, "COOL!!! CAN I PLAY NEXT? CAN I? CAN I? CAN I? CAN I? WHEN CAN I PLAY?"

 

Not being one to deny the joys of gaming to anyone(plus his yelling was really annoying) I let him have a turn at Contra. He quickly died within 3 seconds. I showed him the basic controls and gave him a few tips like, 'keep pressing the shoot button' and 'jump'. He kept dying but I could already tell by the shine in his eye and the determination on his face that he would not be denied victory.

 

I chuckled to myself, feeling pretty good about things and went downstairs to watch some TV. About an hour later I came up and checked on his progress. The little bugger had gotten the first of the top-down stages, but he couldn't seem to adjust to the new camera angles and was growing frustrated. I switched him over to Super Mario World and immediately he was hooked on that.

 

All day long he played running around as Mario, Ryu, Kong and Link. I was there with him reliving some good memories and felt proud of myself for introducing him to the world of games. I wanted to give him my old SNES, controllers and games so he could play properly, but alas my mom had given them away long ago.

 

I got to talking with while he was jumping, blasting and slicing away and he told me that he loved to read, especially those Choose You Own Adventure Books because as he told me, "You can choose what you want to happen!"

 

I answered with, "You know, there are games where you can choose where you want to go and what you want to happen too."

 

"Sweet!" he answered. "I wanna play that!"

 

So now he's playing Chrono Trigger. In addition I've DLed Final Fantasy 6, The Secret of Mana and other 16bit RPGs. I'm actually having a good time playing with him.

 

Yes, I've corrupted a child but in a good way.

[Atreides]

Good one

[Judge Hades]

Now you need to give him the DnD core rule books and a bag of dice.

[Atreides]

Nah, I think PC rpgs would be an easier intro. Players can get immediately into the game, immersion and the story rather than be bothered with all the rules before things start.

[Commissar]

I got kicked out of the house this Thanksgiving.

[Judge Hades]

Sorry to here that Commish. Personallly I tend to stay away from family events or when I am forced to go I just sit in the back and keep to myself, often looking at the clock.

 

As for gaming, I was gaming 1st edition since I was 7 years old and was running my own campaigns at 11. An eight year old should be able to grasp the d20 rules quickly if I could master the more convoluted 1st rules at the same age.

[Tigranes]

I was in US for thanksgiving, and I was invited to a family of Georgian rednecks.

 

The kid appears promising. Continue your corruption and we may look favourably on your recent dishonourable activities.

Edited November 26, 2005 by Tigranes

[Azure79]

I was in US for thanksgiving, and I was invited to a family of Georgian rednecks.

 

The kid appears promising. Continue your corruption and we may look favourably on your recent dishonourable activities.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Look, I was only kidding about looking at the lesbian pron! Besides pron isn't dishonourable is it?

 

Anyways I might be getting kicked out too. The kid's parents seem to disappove of their son sitting in front of a computer all day for some strange reason I cannot fathom. I convinced them to let him have some fun during the holidays since its too cold to play outside and there's no snow yet.

Edited November 26, 2005 by Azure79

[Darque]

Awesome story

 

Way to go Azure :D

[Musopticon?]

If you unitedstatians have some kind of hurray-shout, this would be high time to use it.

[kirottu]

Next thing you got to do is to introduce him to online message boards.

[Musopticon?]

When he's 10+ years. Please.

[Tigranes]

10?!

 

Mus is mad. Mad!

[Sarjahurmaaja.]

So, in essence, you taught a kid the wonders of piracy. Bravo!

[Surreptishus]

he'll be stealing ferraris next.

[Janmanden]

I know the feeling, but I have also realized the depths of my impatience.

 

My sisters kid, she was 8 years old at the time caught me playing Grim Van Dango and begged to play instantly... I didn't quite realize my mistake, until she started asking what they were saying... English, right, ZOING! (Not being native to english that's... a problem). So I made another mistake: I started translating and acting out their dialogue... after a couple of hours I'm really fed up with children for some reason.

 

I repeated the mistake with Balddurs Gate and IWD as well and she really enjoyed the character creation more than anything else...and collecting all kinds of crap along the journey...with 5 grayed icons...and totally encumbered... *Phew!* Content-heavy games are really to complex for kids escpecially if they are in a foreign language...

[Atreides]

MOAR!

[Azure79]

So, in essence, you taught a kid the wonders of piracy. Bravo!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

oops?

 

What is the status of old console games anyway?

 

I'll leave all the honesty lecture to his parents. I want to remembered as the 'cool' guy. 'Cool' being a pretty subjective word there.

[Darkside]

Congrats Azure. You have done well.

 

I've tried converting a few people, but I always get frustrated with them. However, I have been rather successful in converting my mom. She still won't play the Xbox or PS2, but she'll talk about them with me (which is a huge step, believe me). And she's addicted to free online games.

[Sarjahurmaaja.]

"What is the status of old console games anyway?"

 

Piracy, unless it's been released to public domain.

 

"he'll be stealing ferraris next."

 

No doubt.

[Judge Hades]

I started doi ng software piracy back when I was 8 when I got my first Commodore 64. By the time I was 10 I had over $250,000 adjusted dollars in stolen software and hardware upgrades. I was heavy in it and probably had the most pirated software in the midwest. If I didn't have it it didn't exist. I also had quite a number of legit pieces of software too which I shared liberally.

 

Man, I was so glad I didn't caught.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

My parents only really started taking an interest when they saw me playing Nintendogs.

[Judge Hades]

Nitendogs is so freaking wrong. When are they going to make a cat version. I am more of a cat person, you know.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

No idea but I imagine they will at some point. That and Nintengirls

Edited November 26, 2005 by ShadowPaladin V1.0

[Tigranes]

That's when Microsoft and Sony catch on.