Gameboy games for a 4 year old?

3vil0n3

My niece has been recently really watching me play some older Gameboy games. She has gotten really interested in it and wants one of her own.

So, are there any educational games for gameboy/ds that a 4 year old could play?

She has been watching me play Zelda:Links Awakening and she can play Megaman: Battle Chip Challenge if I tell her what buttons to push.

Also does anyone have any experience with those leapfrog hand held game things? I just saw it on TV and the internet but I don't know what kind of games there are for it.

//edit. I forgot to mention that she can recognize most of the letters and numbers, but she can't read words or sentences or anything like that yet. But she does recognize her name spelled out.

Kuribo's Shoe

the game boy advance has a lot of games like that, Dora The Explorer, Blue's Clues, things like that.

here's a link that should help you out

http://www.edutainingkids.com/buyersguidegameboyforkids.html

edit: that wasn't as helpful as I thought.

but you can go to www.esrb.org and search for every game rated EC - Early Childhood on Gameboy Advance. That should give you a bunch of games to work with

further edit: okay, so only 3 games are Rated EC. Search E for everyone with the content "edutainment"

that will get you some listings, and you should be able to determine what your niece can or can't handle.

there we go. all this being helpful makes me tired.

ONE MORE EDIT: BLARGH THEY HAVE EDUTAINMENT AS A CONTENT DESCRIPTION BUT IT'S NOT A SEARCHABLE ONE RRRRGH

Lindsay Lohan

My niece had a GBA at about that age IIRC. She really liked the Sonic Advance games (because alot of them are just running right and jumping, it's pretty simple). Unfortunately alot of the kids games are Shovelware in the truest sense of the word, they are pretty bad. I had to review 3 of them once, Koala Brothers, Carebears and Franklin, and they went from decent to bad to terrible in that order.

If you have a screen protector, the new Crayola DS game is absolutely phenominal. My son is only 3 and he loves it. The games are simple and allow you to unlock new pictures to color easily. I highly recommend it. And it's expensive, but he loves playing with Electroplankton.

Velmeran

Mario games teach you all you need to know in life, think about it.

I would also suggest NOT to get only edutainment stuff, get some real games that are fun, not saying get gore fest or any thing, but something thats easy and fun like more platformers.

Wren

word and shape recognition games, possibly with books and blocks. personally I think thats too early to get a kid to be a drooling retard

Lindsay Lohan

Wren wrote: »

word and shape recognition games, possibly with books and blocks. personally I think thats too early to get a kid to be a drooling retard

My son plays games and does very well. He does play word and shape recognition games too, but kids don't want to play learning games all the time, they want to do what their moms and dads do - which in our case is games. His favorite toys are things like Legos and playfoods and dinosaurs, but he loves playing video games like we do.