Front to Back #8 — My First Diablo

My First Diablo is the newest episode of my podcast. It’s also the first episode where we have a guest: Steve Lubitz of Isometric fame. We talk video games and how that works when you have a bunch of kids in the house. I’d wanted to discuss this topic because my kids are now old enough to play console games without getting too frustrated over the experience, and I’d been out of the loop for quite some time.

Steve had some solid recommendations and now my wife and I are discussing when would be a good time to re-introduce consoles into the house. That might happen this summer when the kids are done with school, and there will be more time available to figure out limits and such. I’m thinking a Wii U would be the right way to go since there’s a better selection of kid-friendly games there. What I’m not looking forward to is all the controllers/accessories that Nintendo seems to think are required for their games. Most bundles for the Wii U come with the controller with a screen on it. I can’t tell if you can buy more of those or not¹. But you can get Wii-motes, nunchucks, pro controllers, and various third party gizmos. I’m not exactly looking forward to sifting through exactly what kind of those we’ll need, nor storing them. I’m not even going to touch handheld systems.²

Video games were a big part of my childhood (some might say obsessive… I had a subscription to Nintendo Power without owning a Nintendo system). My hope is that rather than just consuming all the video game minutiae like I did, my kids will just have fun playing them with their family and friends.

Written by Scott Williams who lives and works in sunny Phoenix, AZ. Twitter is also a place.