Video Game Fun for the Whole Family

By MARY DeTURRIS POUST

Although I've just hit middle age and have convinced myself that I am still somewhat hip, I can already see the technology gap widening between my children and me in dramatic and disconcerting ways. My son, Noah, who is not quite 11 years old, can pick up any remote control or hand-held game and immediately know what he's supposed to do and which buttons to push to make it happen. He doesn't even need an instruction manual.

I can hold my own on some of the simplest of games, when all I need to do is keep my little car from going off the edge of some bizarre racetrack in the sky, but anything more advanced than that, and I am lost.

Then along came the Nintendo Wii, the game that even I can play. Holding the ingenious remote control in my hand, I swing my arm as if I'm bowling and get a strike on screen. If I swing the remote like a tennis racket, I can return a serve. And, if I hold the remote and another little device called a nunchuk in raised hands, I can knock out my boxing opponent‹my personal favorite of the Wii Sports games.

Within days of getting the Wii, I became the reigning family champ of the boxing ring. I actually pulled out my shoulder with an overly enthusiastic right hook. This is my kind of video game, and clearly I'm not alone. The Wii has had overwhelming success not only with young people but also with old folks like me. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that we can play the games with only the most basic video gaming knowledge, but more than that, I think it has something to do with the fact that the Wii is a kind of social video game. It is not played in isolation, or at least it doesn't have to be.

At my house we have each created our own Wii character, called, appropriately enough, a Mii. My Mii, Curly Top, really does look quite a bit like me. We've even made Miis for various family members and friends who can't resist giving the game a try when they visit. Sometimes when Noah and Olivia are in the family room playing baseball, Grandpa and Uncle Fred and Uncle Bill are out in the field or on the mound, even when they are not physically present in the house. All of the characters hang around and show up on screen now and then, kind of like real-life extended families used to be before we became such a mobile and disconnected society.

When we first purchased the Wii as a combined birthday/family present, I thought it was too extravagant, especially since it was at the height of the Wii frenzy, when my husband was hanging out at Wal-Mart early in the morning hoping to score one if a shipment came in unexpectedly. But it has turned out to be a worthwhile, if not a practical or intellectual, device. It helps adults take that step into a world typically inhabited by people under 20 and gives us a chance to add a new dimension to Family Game Night. It's like Monopoly or Parcheesi for the 21st century.

So I feel as if the Wii has ushered this Pac Man-era mom into the video age. Of course I still can't play the Wii unless Noah is home because I haven't figured out how to turn it on.