Masked Mom's Media Monday: Cool Spot

Sometimes having computer geeks (the kind of computer geeks that girls swoon over--it's a whole new world for computer geeks out there these days) for sons really pays off. When they were much younger we had a Sega Genesis game console and on it we had several games that kids and grownups alike loved to play. Of course, the Genesis and all its games has long since been sold off in a yard sale and replaced with bigger, better, badder gaming systems.

Around that time, Mom gave up entirely on video games. The 3-D, first-person games give me vertigo and motion sickness and crippling bouts of frustration. And have you SEEN the paddles/controllers for these games? There's like 87 buttons! And it doesn't help that everyone else in the house (Hubby included) mastered all of it on the first try and sits beside me helpfully shouting out, "No push the Y button and then the Z!" or "If you want to do that kick you have to push Z, B, B, C while holding down the D-pad!" Yeah, okay, if I want things that complicated, I'll just stick to my real life, thanks.

But I'm a nostalgia geek when it comes to video games--I love the old arcade classics like Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man and Rootbeer Tapper (which I don't recall BEING "Rootbeer" Tapper when I played it back in the day, but okay...) and have collected quite a few of them for the Playstation, etc. I still have to use those multi-buttoned controllers, but I only have to use one or two buttons. Very old school.

Anyway, there have been two games conspicuously missing from my geek collection: Cool Spot and Ecco, the Dolphin. Over the weekend, Sons-One and -Two, completely without my prompting, found them both on-line--free downloads that are identical in every way to the original games. We've all been in Way Back When Video Game heaven since then--except for the louder than usual fighting over the computer.

Cool Spot, for those non-geeks among you, is a game in which the red spot from the 7-Up bottle goes on many adventures trying to save his friends who are being held hostage. Along the way, he collects "cool points" for the chance at a truly awesome bonus level INSIDE a bottle of 7-Up. Granted, it's technically a long and not-so-subtle advertisement for a particular brand of soda--in fact, the way to regain health is by drinking big, bubbly glasses full of 7-Up you find along the way--but it's also cute and tons of fun and, especially when played on "difficult", challenging enough to keep even a hard-core gaming geek (Son-Two) interested. There's also an "easy" level, which is how my boys originally learned to play. (Is anyone besides me sick of hearing me talk about how fast time passes? But, jeez, it passes so fast!!! And now not only can they out-play me on just about any game, they can go out in the wilds of the Internet and find games they feel nostalgic about. How the hell do I have kids old enough to be nostalgic?)

Anyway, this was originally produced back before video game "ratings," but I'm sure it would be rated "E for Everyone" and not only because it's not full of gore and bloodshed but because it has a little something for everyone and with the multiple difficultly levels, just about anyone can have a good time with it.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Fun!