TVG: 2.05 – Fun with The Family

Growing up as children of the 80’s, we spent many a days huddled up in our dark basements with our eyes glued to the delicious glow of a cathode ray tube television.  Eventually, we grew up (ha!) and found ourselves with families! What does this mean for our gaming lives? Have we introduced our offspring to the world of puzzle solving with pixels? Come on in and find out how an elder millennial incorporates gaming into parenthood!Before we get into the games in this episode, we take a moment to discuss our children’s television habits in general. What’s with kids now-a-days? No Transformers? No Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Kids seem to be quite put off by high stakes “scary” stuff.

Slime is all the rage for kids. YouTube, man. It’s…. it’s not what we had when growing up.

But as for the games we mentioned in this episode? We’ve got:

  • * Lumino City – 1 Player – PC
  • Lumino City is an award-winning hand-made Puzzle Adventure game. By exploring the city, and using your ingenuity piece together all sorts of puzzling mechanisms to help the people who live in its unique world. 
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  • * Machinarium – 1 Player – PC
  • Machinarium is the award-winning independent adventure game developed by the makers of Samorost series, Botanicula and CHUCHEL. Help Josef the robot save his girlfriend Berta kidnapped by the Black Cap Brotherhood gang!
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  • * Grow Home – 1 Player – PC
  • Experience the freedom of unbounded climbing as you take control of BUD, a procedurally animated robot on a quest to save his planet. 
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  • * Staxel – 1 Player – PC
  • Grow your farm, meet the villagers, and join your friends online in building your world.
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  • * Banjo Kazooie – 1 Player – Xbox One
  • Banjo-Kazooie was released in 1998 for the Nintendo 64 and was re-released in 2008 for the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade. In a region called Spiral Mountain, Banjo’s sister Tooty is kidnapped by Gruntilda the witch, who wants to steal Tooty’s beauty for herself, and Banjo and Kazooie must save her. 
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  • * Super Mario Odyssey – 2 Player Co-op – Switch
  • Explore incredible places far from the Mushroom Kingdom as you join Mario and his new ally Cappy on a massive, globe-trotting 3D adventure. Use amazing new abilities—like the power to capture and control objects, animals, and enemies—to collect Power Moons so you can power up the Odyssey airship and save Princess Peach from Bowser’s wedding plans!
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  • * Yoshi’s Crafted World – 2 Player Co-op – Switch
  • Jump into a new Yoshi adventure in a world made of everyday objects—like boxes and paper cups! As Yoshi, you’ll leap up high, gulp down enemies, and set out on a treasure hunt to find all the different collectables. On the flip side, stages can be played backwards, providing new perspectives to explore and new ways to locate some of the more craftily hidden items!
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  • * Super Mario Bros – 2 Player – NES
  • Super Mario Bros. is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo. The successor to the 1983 arcade game Mario Bros. and the first in the Super Mario series, it was released in 1985 for the Famicom in Japan.
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  • * Super Mario Party – 1-4 Player Competitive/Co-op – Switch
  • Turn the tables on opponents as you race across the board to collect the most stars in the original four-player* Mario Party series board game mode—now with newly-added online play.** Join the full-on frenzy with friends and family! 
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  • * Untitled Goose Game – 2 Player Co-op – PC, Switch, PS4, XBox One
  • It’s a lovely morning in the village and you are a horrible goose.
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  • * Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 1 Player – Switch
  • Live life at your own pace as you garden, fish, decorate, hunt for bugs and fossils, get to know the animal residents, and more. The time of day and seasons match real life, so something is happening on your island whether you’re there or not.
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  • * Nintendogs – 1 Player – Nintendo DS
  • The player starts out by purchasing their first dog from the Kennel. After it is bought, the puppy needs to be calmed down and taught its name. It should be given food and water to quench its thirst and satiate its hunger.
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  • * New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 1-4 Player Co-op – Switch
  • Join Mario, Luigi, and pals for single-player or multiplayer fun anytime, anywhere! Take on two family-friendly, side-scrolling adventures with up to three friends as you try to save the Mushroom Kingdom. Includes the New Super Mario Bros. U and harder, faster New Super Luigi U games—both of which include Nabbit and Toadette as playable characters!
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  • * Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 1-4 Player Competitive/Co-op – Switch
  • Race for the cup on 48 courses, including ones inspired by Excite Bike and the Legend of Zelda series.
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  • * The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures – 1-4 Player Co-op – GameCube
  • The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures is the eleventh installment in Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda series. It was released for the GameCube home video game console in Japan on March 18, 2004; in North America on June 7, 2004; in Europe on January 7, 2005; and in Australia on April 7, 2005. The Game Boy Advance handheld game console can be used as a controller when using the GameCube – Game Boy Advance link cable bundled with the game in North America and Europe.
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  • * Secret of Mana – 1-3 Player Co-op – Switch
  • Secret of Mana, originally released in Japan as Seiken Densetsu 2, is a 1993 action role-playing game developed and published by Square (now Square Enix) for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is the sequel to the 1991 game Seiken Densetsu, released in North America as Final Fantasy Adventure and in Europe as Mystic Quest, and it was the first Seiken Densetsu title to be marketed as part of the Mana series rather than the Final Fantasy series. 
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  • * The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening – 1 Player – Switch
  • As Link, you awaken in a strange land away from Hyrule, where animals talk and monsters roam. To uncover the truth behind your whereabouts and rouse the legendary Wind Fish, explore Koholint Island and all its trap-ridden dungeons, reimagined in stunning detail for this new release of one of the most beloved The Legend of Zelda games. Along the way, you’ll meet a hilarious assortment of charming characters to which you’ll never want to say goodbye.
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  • * Pokemon Sword / Shield – 1 Player – Switch
  • Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield are 2019 role-playing video games developed by Game Freak and published by The Pokémon Company and Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. They are the first installments in the eighth generation of the Pokémon video game series and the second in the series, following Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee!, released on a home game console. Originally teased at E3 2017 and announced in February 2019, Pokémon Sword and Shield were released in November 2019.
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  • * Pokemon Let’s Go Eevee / Pikachu – 2 Player Co-op – Switch
  • Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee! bring the experience of a classic Pokémon RPG to Nintendo Switch with gameplay that is easily approachable for newcomers to the series, but is also deep enough to keep veteran Trainers on their toes.
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  • * The Last Campfire – 1 Player – PC, Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
  • The Last Campfire is an adventure, a story of a lost ember trapped in a puzzling place, searching for meaning and a way home.
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  • * The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past – 1 Player – SNES
  • A Link to the Past focuses on Link as he journeys to save Hyrule, defeat the dark lord Ganon, and rescue the descendants of the Seven Sages. It returns to a top-down perspective similar to the original The Legend of Zelda, dropping the side-scrolling gameplay of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. It introduced series staples such as parallel worlds and items including the Master Sword.
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  • * Fez – 1 Player – PC – PlayStation 4, Switch, Xbox One
  • Fez is an indie puzzle-platform video game developed by Polytron Corporation and published by Trapdoor. The player-character Gomez receives a fez that reveals his two-dimensional (2D) world to be one of four sides of a three-dimensional (3D) world. The player rotates between these four 2D views to realign platforms and solve the game’s puzzles. The objective of the game is to collect cubes and cube fragments to restore order to the universe.
The Vagabond Gamecast is a podcast by Stephen Tucker and Matthew Langille that covers gaming from the perspective of nomadic parents.
The Vagabond Gamecast
TVG: 2.05 - Fun with The Family
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