While I was tipping over wheelchairs and shoving old ladies out of the way to get to the NES games at the garage sale I mentioned the other day, Helen was on the other side of the driveway scoring a Sony PlayStation. I had actually won a lot of Lightspan games on eBay earlier in the week and we were planning to buy a PS2 to play them on. It never occurred to me to seek out a PS1 for which the Lightspan games were designed. Duh. It was perfect timing stumbling across this one. For thirty bucks we got the PlayStation with one controller, five PS1 games, and 6 NES games. Pretty sweet deal, especially considering all this stuff was in mint condition. Helen also found a second controller for a buck at another garage sale too.

One of the games we bought was WWF Smackdown. I'm not a wrestling fan but there were four of us thirty something dudes at the in-laws and we were looking forward to some ridiculous fighting action. I set everything up and then discovered the case was empty. Bummer. Not-quite-Uncle Dan brought his Gamecube though so we had a Tiger Woods golf smackdown instead. The PS1 games that were in their cases, plus one we found at Goodwill the other day, include:

• Crash Bandicoot: Warped- a fun 3-D platformer
• N2O Nitrous Oxide- like a 3-D version of the arcade classic Tempest
• Lego Racers- racing game, Lego style
• A Bug's Life- lame movie tie in game
• Pandemonium!- we haven't checked this out yet

I mentioned that we won a Lightspan auction, which consisted of 32 PlayStation educational games. The boys haven't really looked too closely at them yet. I had to track down a memory card first, again via eBay, so they could save their progress.

I must say I'm a little disappointed by what I've seen so far. I guess I expected them to be a lot better than the computer games my school uses. I was led to believe by what I read that they were more like "real" games than digital worksheets. They seem to be on par with the current Math/Reading Blaster series. Perhaps they were superior to the educational software available at the time of their original release. Then again we've only explored a couple of titles so maybe some of the other ones are better. Not that they're bad or anything. They're just not what I had hoped for. I will say that Dashiell and Ray were engaged and enjoyed playing them. That's really the whole point of our Lightspan experiment.

And now we've added a PlayStation to our growing video games collection. I've never owned or even really played any Sony consoles before. I found this awesome source for clas_sic game recommendations and will be looking out for more PS1 goodness on future Goodwill runs. Maybe Helen will run across some at garage sales too. I'd better stay away though or I might hurt someone.

We've stumbled across some amazing deals at garage sales and Goodwill over the past month. As a result our classic video game collection has increased significantly. I'll break it down into three parts instead of one super long post. First up, our NES acquisitions.

While in Michigan Helen and I ventured out alone to scope out the local garage sales. Crazy, huh? It's extremely rare that we do anything without the kids so naturally we spent such an occasion combing through other people's junk. As we walked up the driveway at our first stop, I complained about how uncomfortable I felt gawking at stuff while the owners looked on. I had hardly finished my thought when I saw an NES motherload- a box with about twenty games inside!

The problem was that another guy was looking at them. Now Helen will tell you that I elbowed him out of the way to get to those games. It wasn't quite that extreme but I was pretty aggressive. I got in his personal space and asked if he was going to buy them. He mumbled something about not being sure which system his kids had and slinked away so I could pounce. Clearly I meant business. Turns out a lot of it was garbage like Home Alone but for two bucks each I grabbed:

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Mario Is Missing- a geography adventure game w/ Mario
• Dr. Mario- Tetris like puzzle game that I used to have
• Bases Loaded II
• Skate Or Die- pre Tony Hawk skateboard game
• The Simpsons: Bart Vs. World

Each was in pristine condition and came with directions. These people really took care of their stuff. Looking back I'm kicking myself for not buying their NES system they were asking ten bucks for. I figured I already had a working system but I should have grabbed it anyway. It even had a case for it! Helen went back the next day but it was gone. The one that got away or something.

Then a week and a half ago a sizable lot of games turned up at one of our two local Goodwills. Helen saw it while I was at work down the street. At the time my computer/email was out of commission and I stupidly had my cell phone turned off. Ended up making a special trip back later that evening instead of waiting until after work the next day. I bought a handful, wrote down the names of the ones I wasn't familiar with, and have gone back twice to buy more after doing research. Some absolute classics in this batch, all at three dollars apiece:

• Ice Hockey- so much fun! I played tons of this back in the day
• Contra- up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start
• Ninja Gaiden- only familiar with it by reputation
• NES Open- golf with Mario and his pals
• Tecmo Bowl- football
• Rush'n Attack- killing Russians, cold war sty_le
• Excitebike- motocross racing
• Adventures of Lolo- puzzle adventure
• Zoda's Revenge
• Superspike V'ball / Nintendo World Cup- volleyball and soccer twofer
• Low G Man
• Renegade- beat 'em up

I just picked up those last six and haven't played them yet. They need to be cleaned before they will work. I should be getting the Nintendo 3.8mm Gamebit Security Tool I ordered in the mail tomorrow, which will make that process much, much easier.

Also, at Goodwill yesterday I snagged a Game Genie. I was pretty excited, even more so later when I got it to work. It's a cheating device that allows you to enter codes to alter games, giving you unlimited lives for example. Some of those old games gave you a code after you finished a level so you could pick up where you left off. A few even had a battery. But most of them you had to start over after you turned the console off. Unless you had a lot of time and mad gaming skills, you might never get through to the end. It will definitely come in handy.

To top it all off, Helen's friend gave me two NES consoles along with copies of Dr. Mario and Super Mario Bros. that were stored away somewhere at her extended family's home. Both power up but neither will play games. I'm sure it's only a matter of restoring or replacing the pin connectors. They don't have controllers or A/V cords either so I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with them. I might try my hand at some mods or fix them up and give them away.

My wife Helen and I are reading this great book called Don't Bother Me Mom- I'm Learning by Marc Prensky. The basic premise is that contemporary children's brains are wired differently due to a lifetime's exposure to technology, especially with video games. Prensky calls kids "Digital Natives" for this reason and the rest of us are "Digital Immigrants," having assimilated to the technological changes of the past twenty or so years. He argues with research based evidence that not only are (most) video games entirely appropriate for children, they are immensely beneficial to their personal development and future success. From the blurb on the back:

"Prensky believes that kids are so attracted to these games because they are learning about important "future" things, from collaboration, to prudent risk taking, to strategy formulation and execution, to complex moral and ethical decisions."

It's a fascinating book and a great justification for me and the boys to play more games, heh heh. Joking aside, he mentions a company called The Lightspan Partnership that spent over $100 million in the 1990s to develop video games to reinforce schools' curriculum. These weren't the digitalized drill and kill worksheets that describe most "educational" software. They were real games to be played on the Sony PlayStation. Studies showed that the Lightspan games were effective and kids really did learn from them.

I tried to find more information about the project online but there's barely any information out there. It's like a big secret or something. Wikipedia doesn't even have an entry for Lightspan! This page had a little summary and a list of the games. I suspect No Child Left Behind, with its emphasis on federal money tied to students' test scores, played a significant role in school districts losing interest in what amounts to a radical approach to learning. Let's face it, most adults' perceive video games as a waste of time at best. This person's enlightened view sums it up nicely. Imagine if a district spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on video games and test scores didn't improve. The backlash would be tremendous.

The Lightspan games never sold retail. The only way to get them was if your child's school district purchased the program. You can however find them on eBay for relatively little money. We're intrigued by the idea of these educational games and are very seriously considering picking some up. I want a PlayStation 2 anyway because they're inexpensive and have a whole back catalog of great games for cheap. Our twin boys Dashiell and Ray are wild about video games but not exactly enthusiastic about sitting down to learn skills the old fashioned way. Why not see if the Lightspan approach works as a supplement to their homeschool education? And if the guinea pigs show positive results, I could possibly work these games into my cla_ssroom too.

(What's up with the word "c l a s s" being forbidden?)