Fun For The Whole Family

By JOSHUA QUITTNER

My wife wasn't exactly surprised when I said I thought "our kids" might need a video-game deck for the holidays. Given my penchant for computer-based shoot-'em-ups, simulators and splatter games of any kind, how long would it be before I graduated to the hard stuff? Did I say "I"? Ha-ha. Slip of the tongue. My kids, I mean. "It'll be educational for the girls," I assured her.

I knew I was in trouble a few nights later when Ella and I were blissfully kung-fuing away in a martial-arts game. My wily six-year-old was trying to pull an unlikely Peking Pile Driver (as if I were born yesterday!), and I was this far from executing a perfect Triple-Death Windmill Kick that would have punted her out of the arena when the phone rang. "It's someone from work for you, Dada," she said, in that adorable, squeaky baby voice. "Hurry up so I can kick your ass!" My wife looked at me. "Educational," she said. Like it was my fault.

Now, my wife is no technophobe and enjoys computer entertainment as much as the next guy. Indeed, there was a time when she was so hooked on a game about piloting paper airplanes around heating vents that we all started to worry. So, naturally, I was a little defensive. "It is educational," I rejoined, nervously surveying the games I had picked out to seed what I hoped might someday grow into an extensive video-game library: SoulBlade, Tekkan 2, Bushido Blade and Crash Bandicoot 2. The Sony PlayStation plays more than 300 games, which is why I bought it. And that's just here. In Japan, PlayStation owners can choose from among 800 games. Which gave me an idea.

Faster than you can say Mortal Kombat 2, I hopped over to this store downtown that feeds a growing underground market for the $65 chip that enables a U.S. PlayStation to run Japanese video games. It's illegal, of course. Totally voids the warranty too. But that's where I saw my opening. I figured the unexported stuff had to be educational, if only from a cultural standpoint. I've lived in Japan and can easily imagine the overly protective Sony-Japan marketers holding back all kinds of cool stuff, wrongly assuming that Americans just wouldn't understand it. Like games about sumo wrestling, which I happen to find charming.

"So, what kinds of educational titles do you have?" I asked the fellow behind the counter. He scratched his chin. "What about Rocky Hopper's Penguin Racing?" he asked, flipping the jewel box my way. "You press the buttons. The penguins waddle." Nah. My kids hate bird racing. What else you got? "Well, Boxer's Road is good," he said. "You manage a boxer hour by hour--his diet, his exercise regimen." How do you understand it? I asked, "Do you speak Japanese?"

"Not a word," he confessed. "That's the educational part. You have to figure out what they're saying." Perfect! A game for the whole family.

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