Choose Your Theme
Warren Shea

Archive for the ‘Games’ Category

Narutimate Hero 1 + Friends

Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 10:01 pm

Note: Narutimate Hero is a VS type game, like Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat. You pick your char and fight all the other characters to beat the game.

I was talking about Naruto today and it got me thinking about this one weekend where Mark, Vince, Zena and I stayed up all night playing Narutimate Hero 1 (PS2). My parents were out of town and Mark came to Toronto to chill for the weekend. We called up Vince and just hung out at my place. I don’t remember when we started playing. There are only 13 or so characters to unlock and you have to beat the game 9+ times or so to get them all. As we unlocked 1 or 2 characters, we kept wanting to play more and get more characters unlocked. So that’s what we did….we played all night, the 4 of us, switching turns and playing through all the characters…defeating enemies over and over. Soon it became midnight…then 2…then 5…and 8…and then 10am. All 4 of us stayed up playing the same game for over 10 hours…after which we ended the night (or morning) just before noon with our trademark McDonald’s runs, just like how we used to do it in Waterloo. I popped in Narutimate Hero 3 (PS2) and Narutimate Hero Accel 2 (PS2) just now…sadly, the visuals don’t carry over to an HDTV very well, everything was very…non anti-alias (jagged).

Anyways, these Narutimate Hero games always make me remember this night and the fun I had. I know the night doesn’t sound too special…but those were good times, good friends, good memories.

I will train my kids to play videogames

Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 6:31 pm

I brought this up before but I wanted to clarify that I’m completely serious. I hated Chinese school and piano lessons as a child partly because I was forced into it and partly because it was boring. I eventually traded piano for math school (Kumon), something I had to convince my parents to do. I guess they figured either would be good but I believe that because I CHOSE math school, I enjoyed it much more.

For my kids, I’d probably give them the option of playing video game x, y or z. Let them decide what they want to do, so they don’t hate it for being forced.

I figure that on night A, they should get the option to play Tetris, Kirby’s Avalanche, Tetris Attack, or Super Puzzle Fighter. All 4 are basically the same premise: get specific arrangements with color/shaped blocks to survive.
I think these types of games help with quick thinking, quick decision making, short term planning, short term memory, and finally reaction time – all of which are good skills to develop.

Night B would be some other games. Super Mario Kart to teach them how to drive. Super Street Fighter to teach them how to fight. Contra III: Alien Wars to teach them how to survive alien wars. Okay, THIS whole paragraph was a joke…(but the rest of the post thus far had been serious).

I would play my kids and destroy them until they eventually surpassed me. Much like Samurai Nanjirou trained Echizen Ryoma (Prince of Tennis) or Fujiwara Bunta trained Takumi (Initial D) or Sai trained Hikaru (Hikaru no Go).

I think we’re all thinking 1 of 2 things here:
1. Warren, this is the most ridiculous post ever. I can’t believe you’re serious. I have lost all respect for you.
or
2. Warren, your kids are going to hate you.

I’m prepared for both.

See below for my game analysis: