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See the new Hallmark Pac-Man ornament in video and photos!
My wife, Christina, was nice enough to pick me up the new Pac-Man arcade machine Christmas tree ornament from a local Hallmark store ("as a surprise" as she likes to point out). You can see the details of it here, but it's presently only available in-store. Below I have some casual photos and a short, unedited video of the ornament in action (actually, I ended up taking it again since the digital camera was in time lapse mode for some reason), of course as my daughters are attacking it. It lights up and plays the Pac-Man theme and a short gameplay sound effects sample when you press either the Player 1 or Player 2 buttons.
Comments
Monster kids
Wanna hear a horror story (too late for Halloween, but oh well)?
Back in the day, I think I was on summer break from college, we had an active Atari 8-bit users group on the Air Force base, and frequently we would go to each others houses and swap software. One day, I went with a friend to another club member's house to swap software. My friend brought his collection of floppies (which really were "floppy" back then) and his disk drive, which he brought to facilitate copying.
Well, the club member (I'll call him "Joe") had a four or five year old monster, er, kid. While we were all chatting, Joe's kid spilled Kool-Aid in my friend's box of disks!!!! Frantically, we all went to Joe's kitchen and started pulling out the disks to try to blot them with paper towels and such.
While we were doing this, Joe's kid picked up my friend's disk drive, walked over to the balcony of the fourth-story apartment, and TOSSED THE DISK DRIVE OFF THE BALCONY!!!! CRASH!!!!! Nobody was hurt below, fortunately, although the drive was of course destroyed.
Joe was of course extremely apologetic, and my friend was surprisingly cool about the whole incident. His disk drive, and probably a good portion of his software collection, was destroyed! I don't know if Joe ever reimbursed my friend for the drive.... I hope so.
qoj hpmoj o+ 6uo73q 3Jv 3svq jnoh 77V
Oh, gawd. I had four little
Oh, gawd. I had four little brothers growing up, so we had a helluva time keeping anything electronic working. They ran around like monsters, tearing up anything in sight, and my parents forbid us to lock our doors or spank them if they destroyed things. We only had VCRs in spurts because they'd inevitably insert a pizza slice, hamburger, sandwich, etc. and ruin them.
Even after I moved into my own place, I had just paid over $100 to fix the disk drive on my Amiga 3000, and while they were visiting me one of them forced a disk in backwards and broke it. Of course, they refused to pay for it, so I just didn't ever let them come over again.
Good fun and responsible
Hehehe, yeah those young kids can cause some major damage to machines. My little sister once fed the video recorder her peanut butter jam sandwich after she had seen my mom take out a vhs tape. She said the video recorder was hungry and shoved her sandwich straight in. Hihihi
Anyways, you guys seem super responsible with those two little ones. It's cool not to grow up being afraid of technology and at the same time enjoying and learning about all the other good - low tech- things in life. Olivia and Amelie are lucky to have you guys as parents!
Editor / Pixelator - Armchair Arcade, Inc.
www.markvergeer.nl
Kids and Games
That was my three year old, Amelie, who will have her fourth birthday on Saturday (this was the second quick video I took, the first had my other daughter in it as well, the one in the Fruit Strip gum pants in the photo). She plays on her Nintendo DS often and tries to sometimes play on console (she liked the Kung Fu Panda demo on the Xbox 360, for instance). Both my daughters (Olivia just turned two) like to push the buttons and what-not on the arcade machine in the basement. They're definitely not afraid of technology for obvious reasons, as there is a lot of it around that both my wife and I use...
It has been a bit tough to get across to Amelie until fairly recently that what she does on the controller affects what's happening on the screen. Obviously touch screen stuff on the DS is very approachable, particularly since we have cartridges more targeted to her age group.
They don't get to play all the time and we do want them to be careful (Olivia already scratched our TV's screen - she's the more destructive of the two), but in general there are few restrictions on their ability to explore things. That's how I learned - by doing - and I think that's the best way for them in addition to all the usual structured stuff.
For the past two night my wife and I have been trying to play board games with the girls. The other night it was a branded Bingo-like game with objects and last night it was a Candy Land variation. Very tough to get them to go along with the fairly rigid structure of the board game concept...
Vintage Games book!
Xbox 360: billlog | Wii: 1345 2773 2048 1586 | PS3: ArmchairArcade
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.
Wouldn't it be funny if Bill
Wouldn't it be funny if Bill was strictly anti-videogame for his kids? I'd love to see how that one would go over. ;)
I definitely believe it's true that kids will imitate their parents. Parents who read for pleasure in front of their kids will end up with smart kids. Parents who play with computers will end up with computer literate kids; why not?
Do know which of your
Don't know which of your daughters said it, but 'What does the stick do?' and trying to see if it works sounds like a game savy kid to me ;-)
Editor / Pixelator - Armchair Arcade, Inc.
www.markvergeer.nl
No, but.....
Do ornaments typically play "Pac Man" sound effects?!!! :-)
All kidding aside, though, the video was, well..... (setting aside the macho side of me....) CUTE. You're actually ENCOURAGING a techno-creative mindset in your kids. Your kids are very blessed to have such wonderful parents as you and your wife. And I'm not just saying that..... what little was said, the video spoke volumes.
qoj hpmoj o+ 6uo73q 3Jv 3svq jnoh 77V
Good point. Though it'd be
Good point. Though it'd be cool, just for sheer heck of it.
Very cute!
Very cute!
Hmmm...
Are you typically able to play with ornaments on a tree? ;-)
Vintage Games book!
Xbox 360: billlog | Wii: 1345 2773 2048 1586 | PS3: ArmchairArcade
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.
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