Backyard Adaptations Of Video Game Classics

@Fernando Jorge: I'm guessing you never played Calvinball then.

@CFStang: lol
thank you for that.

Very cool. I love games, but I hate that it keeps kids indoors. When games inspire imaginations that's great. When they replace imagination and give a false sense of freedom then kids are losing something.

I've got an idea:

Gears of Hide and Seek.

Plays 3 people (2 boys and 1 girl)

Girl hides. Boys have to find her but one of them has to refer to her as his wife and complain about having to find her every 30 seconds.

CFStang

@rockgut: How about this for a FF game: two players, one holds the treasure and comes up with an arbitrary set of tasks that once completed rewards the other player with the treasure. He must not give his friend any clue of what they are.

The other player has to get lucky and figure out what the player with the treasure wants you to do without having an idea of what it is, or he can go to gamefaqs and read the walkthrough telling you how to get the treasure.

Fernando Jorge

These are pretty great! Thanks Brian! Just another reason why Kotaku is so awesome.

My little brother in-laws did something similar to this after hanging out and playing Mario Kart Wii one afternoon at my house. They always get so upset when they have to leave, to the point of major tears and tantrums. I told them it makes me think they didn't have fun when they act like that and if they want to come over again and play they needed to act a little more grown up and show us they had fun by acting like it.

Well, that evening they ended up getting their chalk out and drawing a Mario Kart track on their side walk, complete with banana peals, question blocks, turtle shells, and lanes. It was pretty cool.

They didn't really have any rules, but they had fun riding up and down the side walk pretending to be Mario, Diddy Kong, and Toad.

ankhenaten

@Brian Crecente: "Crecente's Revelations"

story at eleven

D-K, owhoo... how unfortunate..

The metal gear one is horrible. How are a bunch of people going to coordinate when they all share a bank of steps. They would have ot yell to each other and "trade steps". Plus, no one is going to want to be the guard.

Some of the other ones look kind of fun though.

mook8515

Some of these games seem like lots of fun. Any ideas for a final fantasy-like game? :p

Meh, when I was young, me and my best friend played what we called "Our Game" (lamest name ever, I know) but yeah, we could be any character from any game/show/whatever and we basically just imagined killing imaginary evil dudes :-P

@Phydeaux:
i sad, they mint conditions nao

Once, I got to spend time on an airforce base with a group of kids. I all found our mutual love for Splinter Cell, and proceeded to make up a game based around it, with some of use being mindless guards, the others being spies.

As a guard, I thought I heard someone sneaking up on me. So I made the required "Did I just hear something?" As I turned around, only to see a real guard there. Awkward. I'm surprised we didn't get shot, seeing as how we made regular practice to pulling people into bushes and pretending to shoot them.

RalphCalchas

@Fernando Jorge: You should read the rules to real hopscotch sometimes. ;)

@AndrosZ: i sowwy

i had c00ki33s fj0r a11 of j00

but i eated it

hewes j00 hawt wheeh back

{hands you all back your hot wheels


...after I just spent the last hour spinning them upside down on their roofs}

When I was young I was always trying to come up with new games to play, and one thing I learned is that nobody likes too many rules.


These games are too complicated. Simple rules create the most fun games. The rules must be intuitive and straightfoward. Imagine children trying to explain mario or space invaders to someone that doesn't know the rules.

And some of the rules beg to be broken, like in the metal gear one, and stuff like that always ends up in arguments.

Fernando Jorge

Very awesome....so any ideas for a Doki Doki Majo Shinpan version?

Those are great ideas for kid games. I especially like Katamari, since it's the easiest IMO.

@yeah write: Okay... I demand SotC paper mache!

@URLyAdopter: 'Images remixed by Kotaku. Originals by Eleanor Campbell, Keith Ward and Robert Childress.'

And if you click the link it takes you to a Wikipedia page on Dick and Jane. =p

I have some optional modifications to your Metal Gear game.

Each player must memorize a lengthy passage from their game of choice, and every ten minutes, all the action stops and players take turns reciting their passage.

If one of Snake's friends shows up late, this player takes the role of the ninja. The ninja can slaughter two guard players, but if he does, he and the Snake player must engage in a fist fight.

Any guard who catches Snake 2 times gets promoted to Revolver Ocelot and may steal the secret document before Snake gets to it. In the event that this occurs, Snake must sneak up behind the Ocelot player and choke him out. (If the ninja is in play, Ocelot may only use one hand.)

If some a-hole player shows up in roller blades, he is promoted to Fat Man. This player cannot catch Snake, but instead places bricks on the ground that indicate C4. In order to cross their path, Snake must crawl over them.

UlricaDunnuck

No rapelay?

omgwtflolbbqbye

The illustrations look like they're from the Dick and Jane readers popular in the 60's elementary schools.

URLyAdopter

@Phydeaux:
But I can has vroom vroom?

@spiderweb1986: yes, by Tristan. He play tested all of the games for me. Well, most of them.

@Piccoroz: yeah it looks the easiest to set up and explain to kids and have fun with.

Robotic Bilbo Bagins has no use for fleshy ones

Awesome list of games Brian. I remember converting TV tag to video game tag. You had to shout out the name of a game within a time limit to unfreeze. Mine was always, "BATTLE TOADS!" It was just fun to shout.

Next on the summer fun list, how about some arts and crafts?

Some Shadow of the Colossus paper mache? Or how about World of Goo with pipe cleaners? Or maybe some Dig Dug balloon animals?

@Phydeaux: wat do kidz want, liek hot wheels adn french friez and stuff?

I believe you left out the Pac-Tag rule that if the Pac-Man corsses one of the edges of the playground he must teleport to the other side.

@AndrosZ: No you can't has hawt wheehs back NOT YOURS

These are awesome. They bring me back to my elementary school days. The art style reminds me of the "Highlight" magazine articles I used to get (like Gufus & Gallant). lol

@hot_heart: I can has hawt wheels back?

Was that "regulation court" for the Mario game drawn with markers?

If so, I love this story even more.

spiderweb1986

Wow, these are pretty brilliant- they seem fun, they're family-friendly, and each draws on its inspiration well. I'm not too sure about the Metal Gear game, but the rest are top-notch. Bravo, sirs.

I can't play these, they aren't rated by the ESRB!

@n00b_pwner: Star commenter FTW: If we were meant to play games outside, we'd have solar-powered consoles, yes?

frank0127

there are bears outside.....

babel116

Hey this is actually kind of interesting. There are these kids that the parents want me to watch at church but all they do is play video games and the parents don't like it. Maybe I'll have them try these out.

hanulbada

You forgot the mandatory sound effects for some of them.

"NA...NANANANANANANANANANA"

"wakawakawakawakawakawaka"

"Todays tom sawyer, He gets high on you..."

Sounds like a blast

TheTheTheTheWhat

step 3 on the metal gear hide and sneak game is inspired 'designate the path each of the guards wil walk to protect the document and tell snake.' puts the whole genere in perspective, really.

I love the katamari one, simple rules and no extra stuff required, could be a blast at marriages and birthdays, should add humming the tune while you are the prince. I see a lot of cheating from ghosts in packman.

@AndrosZ: In effect, they just lost the game.

I'm glad to see there isn't a Grand Theft Hot Wheels where one player, designated the bully, goes around stealing other children's hot wheels. The fun part about that game is that the other children have no idea they're playing!

@Strom Thurmond: Actually, there IS a game like that.

First you must be hihg on 'shrooms.

@Strider_Kaijin:
Heh, yeah. I'm sure a lot of people are having the same idea. Like Hey Blinkon, for instance. I was also wondering where snapping the kids' necks worked into the metal gear game.

One of my friends in a particular clique I was in had a pool complete with diving board. With this group of friends, we used to be crazy about the fatal fury, samurai showdown & King of Fighter series. One night we attempted to imitate a lot of the fighting moves off of the diving board, and video tape it. It was alot of fun and very tiring. The character we did the most, was Terry Bogard, and we even yelled the move. "TRAP SHOOT!" "BARE KNUCKLE" or better yet in engrish "BARE KNUCKOO!"

This was around '98.

Isn't gaming in general SUPPOSED to keep us from being in the backyard?

Besides, being in my dark room playing Call of Duty WaW on Live beats outside any day.

i think it's time to gather up all my friends and play some Katamary Stickwithme... my 25 year old friends...

i'm seriously going to try to convince them!

Deathimself

"...until the sun fell and my parents called us for dinner."

I assume that means they stuck their head out the door and yelled, rather than called you on your mobile like parents do now.

Oh man do I remember playing outside. We'd go on long treks through the woods, one time even getting lost until midnight. Don't know how our parents didn't have heart attacks just thinking of us running into the woods with coyotes, foxes, and who knows what else around. But at the same time we often fought over whose turn it was to play Metroid, Battletoads, or Captain Skyhawk, which prompted the egg-timer. We played outside all the time, yet we constantly had a controller in our hands. I don't know how we pulled it off :)

I was certain "Leap Frogger" would slip in the suggestion that children take turns jumping over each other on busy streets and in gator infested rivers.

Maybe next year.

Strider_Kaijin

@Hey_Blinkon:

Damn, got there first!

These are some awesome games. I have an idea for a Mario themed one where you eat mushrooms and jump around aimlessly.

Hahaha. The Metal Gear Solid game sounds fun, but there's no way that any kid would be able to play it without cheating.

What, you don't have 6 people to play frogger with? You only need 1! Why look over there, a nice busy street!

Hey_Blinkon

Those illustrations are pure gold, especially Pac-Tag! I'd love to see a bunch of 50s kids wearing that crap!

High Speed Indeed

Hey, I know what I'm printing next time I get drunk with nerdy friends.

vwllss.

Still doesn't beat playing Frogger in the street, but still look like a lot of fun.

Mykalwane

@Fernando Jorge: You must not remember playing games as a kid. In our neighborhood, any game we played often - by the end of the summer - had a string of rules long enough to fill one of those pen-and-paper RPG strategy guides.

It took several days for a new kid to understand the complexities of our version of hide and seek.

I remember playing pretend versions of all my video games...

My friends and I didn't play real games, rather we imagined ourselves as characters in the game and made up a story to run through.

Sad thing is, I did this up until 8th grade... I still remember playing pretend Phantasy Star Online outside. Don't judge me...

While not a backyard game, hide and seek in the dark can be a lot of fun. We move things around a basement and somebody waits upstairs. The hiders hit the lights and call them down. If it's a very dark basement, it's great. You can hide in plain sight, etc.
And, to point, hiding under a box for 20 minutes feels like Metal Gear Solid, and it's awesome.

Kalgaroo

We used to call that Katamari game "Blob Tag" and it was tons of fun. I also remember playing games similar to your Metal Gear one at summer camp. The others seem overly complicated or not all that much fun...a bit impractical. But honestly that's beside the point....I love what you're doing here...this whole article is a joy and well-made.

Such a shame that so few kids play outside i the summers anymore. I didn't even own a Nintendo until I was eight.

jcb231

@CFStang:

What if they find her, does he then have to punch her till she is knocked out "for her own good"?

BatmanPrime

Pacman seems rather complicated and with the friends i had at that age I think it will come down to horrific arguing and possibly a big fight.

Although a fight with 5 kids who are dressed as Pacman and ghosts would be a great sight to see.

BatmanPrime