I picked up the DS XL recently for my 3 year old. Bought a few educational games like Brain Academy. Unfortunately the games requiring reading which my kids don’t quite do yet (not for another year or two).
Can’t find games for their age – recommendations please?
WarioWare: Twisted is a great game that is fun for kids (at least the first few sections). It may be crazy expensive/unfindable and it needs the GameBoy slot.
I’ve been thinking of getting one of those for a four year old, who has started some reading. So maybe DSXL might be better, but I was also wondering about the games
I think it is doable. You can always play along with them and help them read. Over time they tend to understand the repetitiveness of games and figure out the buttons even if they can’t read. I would pull the trigger on the DSXL if you find a good Xmpas deal.
Scribblenauts (or more recently Super Scribblenauts) is awesome for tandem parent/kid play, with the parents driving and the kids suggesting objects to type in.
WarioWare: Twisted was mentioned (but won’t work on the DSi XL), but WarioWare Touched would work. Some of the core game might be too hard, but it has a lot of unlockable ‘toys’ that the young’un might like.
Get them a game that will help them learn to speak Spanish and the one that will help them quit smoking, then by 6 they can get work as an anti-addiction specialist in LA.
The Leapster isn’t great, although I’m frankly not buying “too easy”. There’s lot of mediocre platformers with Diego or whatever that are if anything too hard. But they also aren’t very good.
Having had first hand experience with a bunch of DS games with a 2-3 year old, there really aren’t many great games for that age group. You get to 4 and 5 there are a lot of options, but 2-3 the stylus and d-pad are too tricky for the little ones to master.
iOS is really far and away the best handheld platform for young preschoolers. The touch screen is intuitive and there’s a genuinely good selection of games. The iPad is the best given the size, but the iPod touch works pretty well too.
(Full disclosure: I’m a developer of kid’s games, and have a pretty successful iOS game for preschool kids.)
They ended up making World of Zoo for DS? I had no idea THQ even continued with the DS version after they closed down the studio I was at (Helixe) where I was the lead programmer on it.