What can Kirby do? Kirby's powers in RtD

 

This is an illustrated list of all the powers Kirby can get in Return to Dreamland, drawn by the girl.

Skylanders

From the horse's mouth:

This is a picture of [my brother's] favourite Skylander character. His name is Wrecking Ball. I think he likes him because he's small and round and destructive. I drew this for him because I knew he liked it and that's basically it.

Kirby's Return to Dreamland

This video consists of my son and daughter commenting on the opening sequence of the latest Kirby game, Kirby's Return to Dreamland.

Today I brought home my school's Wiimotes so that all four of us could play together. I can tell why my son adores this game - Kirby is grossly overpowered so defeating enemies can be a bit of a cakewalk for an experienced game player like my boy. As the helpers (Waddle-do = his sister / King DeeDeeDee = his father / MetaKnight = his mother), our job was simply to follow Kirby around and help him out when we could. Non-Kirby characters can't grab the extra special powers (like the huge swords that destroy almost everything on-screen when used). My boy feels like a god when he's roaming Dreamland. I guess that's not a bad thing sometimes.

Defining the rules of battle

War is a terrible thing, there is no question. It can be argued that the ancient Greeks had two deities associated with warfare. Ares was a brute, the wild and cruel side of battle, and he was usually portrayed pretty negatively. Athena was the personnification of strategy in armed conflicts and had much better "PR". It's a little ironic that I'm choosing to talk about my son's battle plans on Remembrance Day but I'm trying to focus on the Athena side of the equation.

The girl and the boy have been involved in a project associated with Ryerson University about creating a game on online privacy. At the end of one of the sessions, the boy had some homework: "beta test" the game he had invented in class. His description, scribed by one of the adult leaders of the workshop, is below in blue.

AIR RAIDERS RULES
1) Each person must have a hula hoop.
2) On each team's turn - they walk around for 5 seconds - after 5 seconds are up, you put the hula hoops down and stop.
3) Each team is trying to outnumber the other team.
4) The team with the smaller amount of planes (within 3 steps) dies.
5) If it's the same amount on each team someone has to decide on a number. Both teams have to guess - the closest wins and the other team dies.
6) Teams can group up to make a large battle plane that shoots missiles. Everything within 2 steps dies.

The boy was a bit reluctant to polish his game plan but we did some game-testing. It reminded me of another rule-honing moment to perfect a fighting game.

When my son and husband bought Nerf swords, my boy really enjoyed fighting with us. However, I found his "rules" for combat were inconsistent and heavily slanted so that he would win. That was fine the first couple of times we played, but I soon tired of having my shots declared null and void because he was using the healing powerup but his blows always counted. Finally I told him that if he wanted to play this game with me, we had to come up with some fair rules. These were the rules of our "Nerf Sword Battle Game", in my words.

1) Each player has a sword and starts on the opposite side of the room.
2) To begin the battle, each person must utter some heroic or action-movie cliche line (such as "Taste my steel" or "Bring it on").
3) If your enemy hits you in a limb, you are no longer allowed to use the limb (e.g. hit in your sword-bearing arm means you must fight with your opposite arm - hit in your leg means you must hop and can't walk)
4) If you are hit in your torso, you die and fall to the floor dramatically.
5) The winner is allowed to cleave you in twain, behead you, and/or taunt you over your fallen form.

This took several "play-throughs" for us to agree to the rules. However, once we ironed it out, the battle was a lot of fun. It reminded me of the "green army guys and golf ball bomb" game that my siblings and I played when we were kids - what constituted "dead" was mutually agreed on, there was set-up, and it was clear how to play.

Since the boy's game involved lots of people, it was hard to play-test. However, here are the changes we made (in red).

AIR RAIDERS RULES
1) Each person must have a hula hoop.
2) On each team's turn - they walk around for 5 seconds trying to get close to the enemies- after 5 seconds are up, you put the hula hoops down and stop.
3) Each team is trying to outnumber the other team and the team decides to attack
4) The team with the smaller amount of planes (within 3 steps) dies.
5) If it's the same amount on each team someone has to decide on a number or a letter because numbers will be too easy. Both teams have to guess - the closest wins and the other team dies.
6) Teams can group up to make a large battle plane that shoots missiles. Everything within 2 steps dies.
7) There has to be a captain. The captain decides to attack or flee.
8) There has to be a sky master that decides the letter in a tie.

Why My 9 Year Old Became a Fan of The Illiad

Yes, the Illiad - the epic Roman poem by Suotonius about the founding of the great city-state. I read it in university but my son discovered it thanks to a video game he found on Mini-Clips called the Snailiad. My boy's daddy explained a bit of the back story to him but I think he was more impressed that the snail could travel upside-down. Here's a tribute drawing he made.

Mario Galaxy Powerups Pt2

Just in case you didn't get enough of the list of power-ups from yesterday, here's more.

Mario Galaxy Power Ups Pt1

Kids may not read game instruction manuals but they were certainly interested in creating material that could potentially appear in them! Here's a page listing all the power-ups you can get in the game Super Mario Galaxy.