SyntheticX

There are no video games for a 3 year old. They have their shapes in the holes and the identifying patters and exploring storybook games, but there are no real 3 year old games. Fun games that send you somewhere else, driving a big truck, piloting a giant mech, or simply driving around a basic city in a car. They make them to entertain adults and they go above and beyond what a 3 year old needs to see, and should see. Outside of the fact that 3 year olds should have plenty of time to play and minimal screen time, I wanted to find him a good game.

My mind did not develop staring at a screen, it developed jumping and smashing sticks in the woods. So I’m finding a compromise here, he keeps being able to be a kid, with some games here and there, maybe even showing him potentially awe inspiring possibilities. I’d start him slow. I’d feed him the basic, the 4 bit, the 8 bit so he can take that with him as he gradually learns the newer technologies that made it possible to deliver the true artistry we can see today. I was looking for something older and less violent so the first place I looked was my own boxes since I still have many of my old games. The only requirement would be a machine to run them. I was going to build a Win98 machine, but if I went too far back I’d lose support for newer hardware, the whole point of being able to play these games at their best. So I dug up the XP I had lying in my office that hadn’t been used in some time, it was burred under boxes of cords whose usefulness have long since expired, but I recognize them, so I keep them. Digression! Back to XP machine, GO!

I set up an old XP machine I had laying around. 2.8ghz SINGLE CORE. I forgot how excruciating doing anything on a single core is. It takes for flippin ever! The good news is that many Win98 apps WILL run on XP.
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