Adventure Racing!

I was able to visit my family this week and as I was watching TV, I noticed some old Nintendo games on the floor around the TV. As I looked through them I remember all the fun my brothers and I had with these games. I picked up a game and put it in the console and began a game. All these memories of Christmas and fun competition came back. The game I started playing was Beetle Adventure Racing. This was such a fun game because we could race the new beetle bug cars and make them honk their horns.


I definitely had nostalgic reasons for play this game. As I played I remembered short cuts and the special boxes I was supposed to get. While I played my family watched as I crashed into everything. My 13-year-old brother was telling me which roads to take and where forgotten shortcuts were. We were all laughing and remembering what we found so interesting about these video games.

As I looked analytically at this game I noticed that you needed to place pretty high in each race and gather the most points you could so you could unlock more features and cars in the game. As I was playing, my brother told me how he used a "cheat card" to he could start with the best cars. I wondered what this game was trying to say? It was definitely fun to play but it brought out a competitive side in it's players. I shows how persistence and shortcuts can help us win races. This can be a positive or negative lesson.

I think this game can be used as a teaching example by asking students how they won the race. What did they need to know before to be successful? Did they need someone to teach them the controls or did they they already know what the buttons did? What is the objective? I think it would be beneficial for students to break down the game and see all the parts. How does the game work? Why is it so entertaining? What elements make the game more enjoyable but have nothing to to with the race (i.e. music, sound effects, etc.)? I think this type of critical thinking is a good exercise to show students collaboration.