A useful waste of time: video games

Today is Fun and Freedom Friday, the day that anything goes.

A trip down memory lane
I’m a sucker for video games. I played them a lot, starting with my brother way back in the 80’s on Apple and IBM clones with games like Apple Panic and Lode Runner. Lode Runner was really challenging, since we played that with paddles instead of a joystick or keyboard. We both had one paddle and we really had to cooperate all the time. One of us controlled vertical movement and filling of holes, and the other horizontal movement and digging holes. We had great times working our way through the levels.

Later came newer computers with newer games. We loved the adventures like the King’s Quest series, Leasure Suit Larry-series and the likes. They in fact formed a large part of our early lessons in English. We got very creative when we had to type in commands to get things done. Imagine the look on our parents faces when we were discussing what on earth we should do with a “Spanish fly”

Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe brings back great memories as well, and Wolfenstein 3D was quite a hit too. After that the magic faded in time. Sure there were Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem 3D (deathmatch on university LAN…yeah!) loads of other games, but I grew old I guess and the wonder faded. I played games a lot, but after Quake II the video games disappeared pretty much from my field of view. Got an XBox two years back, loved it for a while, but it’s gathering dust in the mean time.

Last week I stumbled upon something new

When we visited family from my wife’s side, her nieces had a Nintendo DS. On it was the “game” Brain Age. I liked it! You already know I love lateral riddles and other brain training exercises. This was so much fun to do, shout colors in the stupid thing, solve sudoku, do simple math exercises as fast as you can and so on. I have to admit I tested at 38 instead of 31. So I’m more mature than I thought But less is better (so they say). I need to practice! That’s in the game as well, but if you want more there’s also Big Brain Academy for the DS.

The same game (or similar?) is also available for the other Nintendo console: Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree. This version is meant for the Nintendo Wii, a very cool game console that sets people in motion. This is a game console that I might just buy, it would be a great combo to get some exercise and relax playing video games at the same time. And have a game to train your brain.

A very useful waste of time