It was the day after I hooked up an Atari 2600 and taught him to play Combat. It was short-lived. He likes games, but not as much as he likes trains. No matter how much I try to encourage him, he really doesn’t get into them.

 

My daughter, however, jumps at the chance to play games with her old man. She’s only 3, but she’s always exhibited a keen interest in games. Recently, she took a fancy to Ron Gilbert’s new puzzle adventure game The Cave. While she prefers not to play, she insists that I do and then she bosses me around in the game. She’s confident enough, however, to play some of the older arcade games. She’s not too shabby with Pac-Man; her favorite version is Pac-Man Arrangement.

 

But out of all of the older games, she most enjoys playing Donkey Kong. Maybe it was because it was the first game we really played together, or the fact that she watched the King of Kong documentary with me one afternoon from start to finish. Maybe it’s because Mario looks just like her Grandpa. Whatever the case, we’ve been playing Donkey Kong together for a while. She’s not very good at it, but insists on playing it over and over again until she finally hands me the joystick in total frustration.