I've become a parent since the last time I posted. I now have a beautiful, healthy, five-month-old baby daughter. I never realized exactly how much of my life was eaten away playing video games until I couldn't play them as much. I still love them, but they actually don't seem as much fun anymore. In a way, it's as if every time I sit down to play a game, I am taking time away from my day that could be spent on much more important things. I know that this has always been the case, but I didn't notice it as much as I do now.

However, my daughter is at the age where she is becoming aware of and responding to the sights and sounds around her. I know that she doesn't fully understand what's going on on the screen, but she loves to watch me play games. I don't know exactly what it is about video games that attracts her attention so much, but they can hold her attention even longer than her own baby toys. Sitting on her on my lap while I play has actually become quite a bonding experience for the two of us. My wife is a gamer too. So, I have a feeling that, as my daughter gets older, family gaming will become somewhat of a tradition in our household.

That raises another question though. At what age should you first introduce video games to a child? Most child psychologists say not to expose your small children to television until they are at least three years old,  but what about video games? I mean, they teach problem solving and  help to develop hand/eye coordination and reading skills. So, can't they be used as an educational tool if done so in moderation? I think that the real questions are how much video games are too much and how young is too young?

Fortunately, my daughter's young still. So, I don't have to worry about it for a while, but it does raise some interesting questions though...

I haven't been online for a while, but I'm finally back and active on GameSpot aginin. I'm transferring all my reviews for Game FAQs to Game Spot. They are mostly of old-school games. So, if you are into classic gaming and are wondering what's good, you should check them out in my Contributions section.

I posted this on a board, but decided to copy it to my journal because parts of it are well worth repeating...

You know what's wrong with kids today?!? It's not TV, video games, or Music...It's Harry Potter!! Now, I'm all for kids reading. In fact, I encourage it, but there's so many better books than Harry Potter out there. My 14 year old brother, who is smart...and I mean scary smart., tried te convince me that the Harry Potter series was the best ever written, I had to do a double take. At his age I was reading Tolkien, Orson Scott Card, Poe, and Asimov, but I don't think that he's read a book without pictures that doesn't have that obnoxious little wizard on the cover. Despite this, I only truly realized what this epidemic has done to our youth culture when my mom, who is a GT High School teacher, asked her students (all Seniors) what their favorite books were, and over half of them named a Harry Potter book. I'm talking about 17 and 18 year old academic honors students. I'm not against the series itself, but the media push has made it out to be this great and mighty literary achievement, when it isn't really all that great. It makes me sad and fills me with dread to think that the seemingly systematic dumbing down of our culture has spread even into the realm of literature. I've read the first three Harry Potter books, and it angered me that this is what is now being passed of as great literature. Don't get me wrong, the stories were okay, and there is a definite amount of creativity on the part of the author. For the most part, the books were void of any truly valid content. I know that they were written as childrens' books, but I look at some of the childrens' series that I grew up with (such as the Narnia books) and then Harry Potter. It seems as if we are selling children short by force feeding them books that are so void of intellectual or otherwise thought provoking content. Kids are surprisingly smart. Children can think on levels that would surprise (and often even surpass) most adults, and by downplaying and thus limiting their intellectual capabilities, such as J.K. Rowling has done in her books, and removing the necessity for any individual thought process, we are severely impairing their ability to learn, which, in both direct and indirect ways, promotes ignorance and laziness in developing minds. I'm not saying that Harry Potter is at all a bad read for a young child. All I'm saying is that it severely harms the intellectual growth of our culture to tell children that this is great literature and setting this as the standard of excellence!

I just received my first badge. I spent a good chunk of my day yesterday filling out my game collection list. I started at my PS2 collection and worked my way back. I barely scratched the surface of my NES collection, and I've already got the Old School badge. That must be telling me something...

This is my first time really exploring GameSpot.com, but so far, I like what I see. I don't really know what to use this journal for, but I wanted to try it out and say hi to anyone who cares...