Welcome to GamerDad: Gaming with Children. My name is Andrew S. Bub - the GamerDad - and I've been writing about videogames, movies, and children for over 15 years now. After working as a magazine journalist, I switched gears to write about how media violence affects children, educating parents about them, and working closely with magazines, newspapers, major retailers and even politicians. GamerDad is an internationally recognized expert in this field. Games, movies and media are fun, kids and families love them, they aren't going away. So join me in cutting through the hype and lets have a real conversation about the things that matter: Video Games, Violent Media, and their supposed effect on children and families.
Welcome to GamerDad: Gaming with Children. My name is Andrew S. Bub - the GamerDad - and I've been writing about videogames, movies, and children for over 15 years now. After working as a magazine journalist, I switched gears to write about how media violence affects children, educating parents about them, and working closely with magazines, newspapers, major retailers and even politicians. GamerDad is an internationally recognized expert in this field. Games, movies and media are fun, kids and families love them, they aren't going away. So join me in cutting through the hype and lets have a real conversation about the things that matter: Video Games, Violent Media, and their supposed effect on children and families.
Star Fox Space Tour
Add Comment
Posted on May 20th, 2016 by
You know, there are a lot of Nintendo franchises that I really like, such as Kirby, Zelda, Animal Crossing, Metroid, etc. And there are some that I don’t like as much, but I don’t hate either. Star Fox is one of those franchises. But for as indifferent as I am about Star Fox, I’ve ended up playing every game in the series, so I guess I at least like it a little bit. So in honor of the recent release of Star Fox Zero, I thought I’d go through all the Star Fox games and give my quick impressions and personal experiences with each one. I’m not really rating each of these games on this list, although if I had to say, the first three here would be my favorites. So hop into your Arwing and let’s take an intergalactic tour of all the Star Fox games!
Dungenious (iOS, Android)
Posted on May 18th, 2016 by
Back in the early 90s, Capcom made an arcade game that was like a mix of a fantasy RPG and a trivia game called Quiz & Dragons. I never saw it in an arcade, but I did play it on one of their collections and thought it was a neat idea. So I was happy to see something similar in Dungenious, a downloadable game for iOS and Android devices (reviewed on iPad here), that’s a mix of a quiz game and an RPG dungeon crawler. The story goes that owls are the keepers of knowledge, but one greedy owl wanted all the knowledge for himself. So he stole all the words and pictures from books and hid them in monster-filled dungeons. Now it’s up to you to be the hero and venture forth into the dungeons to seek out knowledge.
Mars Mountain (iOS, Google Play)
Posted on May 16th, 2016 by
Your spacecraft has crashed on the peak of an intergalactic mountain made of cubes, and you must hop all the way down while avoiding obstacles in Mars Mountain. It’s a downloadable game for iOS and Google Play (reviewed on iPad here) that resembles arcade classics like Q*bert.
My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (3DS)
Posted on May 13th, 2016 by
Nintendo has a new rewards program to replace their Club Nintendo one, and it’s called My Nintendo. You mostly get rewarded for doing online tasks this time, and the rewards are all download and online things only. One of the exclusive rewards you can get is a new game for the 3DS: My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It’s a Picross puzzle game featuring music, backgrounds, and characters from Twilight Princess, and is laid out a lot like Pokémon Picross, except without all the free-to-play stuff. Since I had enough points to redeem it, I decided I’d review it here as well!
Miitomo (iOS, Google Play)
Posted on May 11th, 2016 by
For as long as most gamers can remember, Nintendo has been a first party developer, only making games for their consoles and nobody else’s. That’s why Miitomo is such a historical event for them because it’s their first stab at mobile software. And it’s also the first time they’ve made a game on something else besides their own consoles since they ported their arcade classics like Donkey Kong and Popeye to everything under the sun back in the Atari and Colecovision days. So since it’s so significant (and free-to-play), I decided to review Miitomo here at GamerDad! (reviewed on iPad here)
Chronicles of Teddy: Harmony of Exidus (Wii U, PS4)
Posted on May 9th, 2016 by
So once upon a time, the king of monsters was lonely so he went to the human world and stole a little girl’s teddy bear. She went after it, and after many adventures, she and the monster king became friends and he wasn’t lonely anymore. The girl and her teddy bear returned home, but later the monster king was defeated by an evil magician, and possesses the girl’s teddy bear and leads her on an adventure in the monster world. So yeah, the story of this game doesn’t make any sense, but nothing about this game does. Chronicles of Teddy: Harmony of Exidus is a 2-D side-scrolling adventure game with exploration elements similar to Metroid or Zelda. It features retro-style pixel graphics and atmospheric music and is downloadable on the PS4 and Wii U (reviewed here on the latter).
Minecraft Story Mode: Episode 5: Order Up! (PS3, PS4, Wii U, 360, Xbox One, iOS, PC, Android)
Posted on May 6th, 2016 by
Minecraft is an incredibly popular open-world building adventure game with stylishly blocky graphics. It’s become a bit of a phenomenon since its release a few years back, especially with kids. And now, point and click experts TellTale Games has crafted an adventure based on the Minecraft universe called Minecraft: Story Mode. It is split up into five episodes, like most other TellTale titles, and this is a review of the fifth episode. It’s available for nearly all current home consoles, PCs, and tablets, but reviewed on PS3 here.
Stranger of Sword City (PS Vita)
Posted on May 4th, 2016 by
After your plane crashes, you find yourself in a lost world full of magic and monsters. People from the outside world like you are called “Strangers” and are generally stronger than the regular inhabitants of Sword City. So it’s up to you to form a party to defeat monsters and gather crystals to gain power and save the day…somehow. Stranger of Sword City is a PS Vita RPG dungeon crawler that’s very similar to classics like Wizardry.
Aegis of Earth: Protonovus Assault (PS3, PS4, Vita)
Posted on May 2nd, 2016 by
In the distant future after the apocalypse, a new energy source emerges and cities are constructed around these spots so people can mine there and eke out a living. But these new energy sources also have attracted giant creatures who attack the cities (think Pacific Rim). In the game Aegis of Earth: Protonovus Assault, you are a commander of a city and must build it up so it can withstand the onslaught of monster attacks. Kind of like a cross between SimCity and a tower defense game. It’s available for Sony’s current game consoles, but reviewed on PS3 here.
PixlCross (Wii U)
Posted on April 29th, 2016 by
Picross is a picture logic puzzle game where you use number clues on rows and columns of a grid to fill in squares to make a picture. And now you can play this brain teaser favorite as a downloadable game on your Wii U with PixlCross.
