Today ended up turning into kind of a disappointing day, so instead of writing about that I thought I’d share something a little more fun…
The last couple of nights I’ve been playing Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U with David & Christopher to entertain them while Matthew has his therapy, and they’re not quite there yet, but it’s still surprisingly fun!
I’ve found that I have to take all of the controllers while we’re getting the game setup because otherwise they’ll push random buttons and back us out of whatever I just finished doing, and occasionally both of them will still get caught up with pressing the Home button that interrupts the game when they start getting bored.
But they really enjoy choosing characters because they get to pick whoever they want – even if they both end up wanting the same one, which is super helpful! Christopher has been playing Mario a lot, though he switched to Princess Peach (and knew her by name?!), while David primarily enjoys being “the monster” (Bowser) and thinks it’s hilarious to see such a huge character riding a motorcycle with a parachute that looks like himself!
I think one place where this game has really shined – on both the Wii and the Wii U – is that it looks beautiful with tons of detail in the background, so when I noticed on multiple occasions as we raced one of the beach tracks that they weren’t actually going anywhere and asked if everything was ok, I got the response, “We’re watching the fish swim by!” which was pretty cool to hear how amused they were by something as simple as the background art!
Truth be told, neither of them ends up getting very far around the track, and when Christopher finally complete a few laps the other night it was because he kept getting “rockets” (Bullet Bill items) to move him ahead, but for 15-20 minutes at a time they seem to really enjoy it, and I can get them to get along by choosing which tracks we’re going to do together, and overall they’re relatively quiet which is about the best that I’ve come to expect for a house with three boys and an obnoxious dog. 😉
I need to go back through my collection to see what others we could branch out into next.