Ramble: Retro Gaming Consoles!

This week the PlayStation Classic was announced - a teeny cute PS1 that will set you back £89.99.  This joins a long list of re-issued consoles.  I hadn't realised exactly how many there are now!

Here's the lowdown of a few that are in the shops now (and the little we know about the new PS).  Of these, the Nintendo ones are classy machines, the C64 is fun but a little nerdy, and the Mega Drive is apparently not very good (emulation issues and bad controllers).  But I've heard the Atari machine is fun! 

Of all the consoles, the C64 is the only one that leads you load additional games (via ROMs) - it's not possible to download additional games to the Nintendo or PlayStation consoles...

The Mega Drive and Atari machines are made by Atgames, whose efforts seem a bit hit and miss.  The C64 Mini was made by RetroGames.

We have some old consoles in the house, but there always seem to be issues - with modern TVs, lost cables, or even sadly weird decay in the controller leads.  For many people, these retro consoles are the best way to experience their past gaming experiences.  And introduce their kids to 'what the world used to be like'.  To be honest, I'd probably find it hard to go back to some old games.  The romance is better than the reality.  But hey.  The consoles I'm listing here are (in age order!):

Atari 2600 (1977)
C64 (1982)
NES (1985)
Mega Drive (1988)
SNES (1990)
PS1 (1994)

PlayStation Classic

£89.99 RRP, out 3rd December!
Comes with two wired controllers and an HDMI cable.
It will come with 30 pre-loaded games, including Final Fantasy VII, Jumping Flash, R4 Ridge Racer Type 4, Tekken 3 and Wild Arms.

The Nintendo Classic Mini: Super Nintendo Entertainment System

£79.99 from Nintendo (with USB power adapter).
Comes with two wired controllers and an HDMI cable.

It comes pre-loaded with 21 games:

• Contra III: The Alien Wars
• Donkey Kong Country
• EarthBound
• Final Fantasy III
• F-ZERO
• Kirby Super Star
• Kirbys Dream Course
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• Mega Man X
• Secret of Mana
• Star Fox
• Star Fox 2
• Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting
• Super Castlevania IV
• Super Ghouls ’n Ghosts
• Super Mario Kart
• Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
• Super Mario World
• Super Metroid
• Super Punch-Out!!
• Yoshi's Island

The Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System

£67.99 from Nintendo (with USB power adapter and second controller).
Comes with two wired controllers and an HDMI cable (it is also available with one controller and no power adapter, but this is the box with the extras...).

It comes pre-loaded with 30 games:

• Balloon Fight
• BUBBLE BOBBLE
• Castlevania™
• Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest™
• Donkey Kong
• Donkey Kong Jr.
• DOUBLE DRAGON II: THE REVENGE
• Dr. Mario
• Excitebike
• FINAL FANTASY®
• Galaga™
• GHOSTS‘N GOBLINS™ 
• GRADIUS™
• Ice Climber
• Kid Icarus
• Kirby’s Adventure
• Mario Bros.
• MEGA MAN™ 2
• Metroid
• NINJA GAIDEN®
• PAC-MAN™
• Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream
• StarTropics
• SUPER C™
• Super Mario Bros.
• Super Mario Bros. 2
• Super Mario Bros. 3
• Tecmo Bowl™
• The Legend of Zelda
• Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Sega Mega Drive Flashback

Comes with two wireless controllers.  As well as built in games it has a classic Mega Drive cartridge slot, and it also has controller ports.

It has 45 pre-loaded Mega Drive games, as well as some Master System ones, Game Gear ones and 29 random 'extras' (so the '85 built in games' is a bit misleading; you're not getting 85 Mega Drive games. 
£79.99 at Argos.
(They've also made a "Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Portable Games Player", which is £59.99 at Argos.)

The 45 Mega Drive games are:

• Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
• Alien Storm
• Altered Beast
• Arrow Flash
• Bonanza Bros.
• Chakan: The Forever Man
• Columns
• Columns III
• Comix Zone
• Crack Down
• Decap Attack
• Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
• ESWAT: City Under Siege
• Eternal Champions
• Fatal Labyrinth
• Flicky
• Gain Ground
• Golden Axe
• Golden Axe II
• Golden Axe III
• Jewel Master
• Kid Chameleon
• Mortal Kombat
• Mortal Kombat II
• Mortal Kombat 3
• Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom
• Phantasy Star II
• Phantasy Star IV
• Ristar
• Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi
• Shining Force
• Shining Force II
• Shining in the Darkness
• Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master
• Sonic & Knuckles
• Sonic 3D Blast
• Sonic Spinball
• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2
• Super Thunder Blade
• Sword Of Vermilion
• The Ooze
• Vectorman 2
• Vectorman
• Virtua Fighter 2

C64 Mini

This looks like a C64, but the keyboard is non-functional.  You have to plug in a USB keyboard!  But it does let you program - you can use it as an actual computer, if you want to...  You can also load ROMs that you've put onto a USB stick. 

£69.99 at Argos.

The 64 (appropriately!) pre-loaded games are:

• Alleykat
• Anarchy
• Armalyite – Competition Edition
• Avenger
• Battle Valley
• Boulder Dash
• Bounder
• California Games
• Chip's Challenge
• Confuzion
• Cosmic Causeway
• Creatures
• Cyberdyne Warrior
• Cybernoid II: The Revenge
• Cybernoids: The Fighting Machine
• Deflektor
• Everyone's a Wally
• Firelord
• Gribbly's Day Out
• Hawkeye
• Heartland
• Herobotix
• Highway Encounter
• Hunter's Moon
• Hysteria
• IO
• Impossible Mission
• Impossible Mission II
• Jumpman
• Mega Apocalypse
• Mission AD
• Monty Mole
• Monty on the Run
• Nebulus
• Netherworld
• Nobby the Ardvark
• Nodes of Yesod
• Paradroid
• Pitstop II
• Ranarama
• Robin of the Wood
• Rubicon
• Skate Crazy
• Skool Daze
• Snare
• Speedball
• Speedball 2 – Brutal Deluxe
• Spindizzy
• Star Paws
• Steel
• Street Sports Baseball
• Summer Games II
• Super Cycle
• Temple of Apshai Trilogy
• The Arc of Yesod
• Thing on a Spring
• Thing Bounces Back
• Trailblazer
• Uchi Mata
• Uridium
• Who Dares Wins II
• Winter Games
• World Games
• Zynaps

Atari Flashback 8 Gold

This has two wireless controllers, HDMI output, etc.

£79.99 at Argos.

It has 120 Atari 2600 games pre-loaded:

• 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
• Adventure
• Adventure II
• Air Raiders
• Air-Sea Battle
• Aquaventure
• Armor Ambush
• Asteroids®
• Astroblast
• Atari Climber
• Backgammon
• Basketball
• Beamrider™
• Black Jack
• Bowling
• Breakout®
• Canyon Bomber®
• Centipede®
• Championship Soccer
• Chase It
• Chopper Command™
• Circus Atari®
• Combat®
• Combat® Two
• Cosmic Commuter™
• Crackpots™
• Crystal Castles®
• Dark Cavern
• Decathlon
• Demons to Diamonds™
• Desert Falcon
• Dodge'Em
• Double Dunk™
• Dragster
• Enduro™
• Escape It
• Fatal Run
• Fishing Derby™
• Flag Capture
• Football
• Frog Pond
• Frogger
• Frogs and Flies
• Front Line
• Frostbite™
• Fun with Numbers
• Golf
• Gravitar®
• H.E.R.O.™
• Hangman
• Haunted House®
• Home Run
• Human Cannonball™
• Indy 500
• International Soccer™
• Jungle Hunt
• Kaboom!™
• Keystone Kapers™
• Maze Craze
• Megamania™
• Millipede®
• Miniature Golf
• Miss It
• Missile Command
• MotoRodeo
• Night Driver™
• Off The Wall
• Oink!™
• Outlaw™
• Pitfall!™
• Polaris
• Pong® (Video Olympics)
• Pressure Cooker™
• Radar Lock™
• Realsports® Baseball
• Realsports® Basketball
• Realsports® Soccer
• Realsports® Volleyball
• Return to Haunted House
• River Raid™
• Saboteur®
• Save Mary
• Sea Battle ™
• Seaquest™
• Secret Quest
• Shield Shifter
• Sky Diver
• Slot Machine
• Slot Racers
• Solaris
• Space Attack™
• Space Invaders
• Space War
• Sprintmaster
• Stampede™
• Star Ship
• Star Strike™
• Starmaster™
• Steeplechase
• Stellar Track ™
• Street Racer
• Submarine Commander®
• Super Baseball
• Super Breakout®
• Super Challenge Football
• Super Challenge Baseball
• Super Football
• Surround
• Sword Fight™
• Swordquest: Earthworld™
• Swordquest: Fireworld™
• Swordquest: Waterworld™
• Tempest®
• Video Checkers
• Video Chess
• Video Pinball
• Warlords®
• Wizard
• Yars' Return
• Yars' Revenge®

So that's it!  (Phew, that was a lot of lists.)  I remember fondly time spent playing things like Golden Axe and Speedball 2.  Aaah....  Maybe I'll be more tempted when the Amiga Mini comes out (now that really would be something!!).

Article - Being 18 in 2018

The Office for National Statistics has just published this article, entitled Being 18 in 2018, and it includes some interesting stats for computing (including social media) and games/computer games.

According to their survey data, 18 year olds today (2014-15) spend on average 29.8 minutes 'computing' compared to 12 minutes in 2000-01, and 41.7 minutes playing games compared to 11 minutes per day in 2000-01.



I would like to see what the original questions for this were, though it certainly shows that people are playing more games.  And also watching less TV and socialising less!  Looking at it as someone who was 21 in 2000, back then gaming wasn't as 'normal' a thing as it is now.  And smart phones didn't exist.  (I wonder if people do more 'socialising' via their phones now, and less face to face, thus affecting the stats?)  At any rate, it's not a surprise that the stats came out like this...

Ramble: National Coding Week!

This week is National Coding Week.  Way back in the mists of time, I was lucky enough to have access to a BBC Micro at my primary school.  Since we didn't know enough at the time to fear it, or consider it 'too complicated', we learned how to program.  We played with Logo, and we learned BBC Basic.  Lots of PRINT "Hello, World" going on there, and similar.  Then, sadly, we moved on to secondary school and learnt little more than boring word processing and other things I could do anyway.  (And thus I lost interest in studying IT at school.)

Now, fantastically, Coding is part of the National Curriculum!  Key Stage 1 kids (that's years 1 and 2) are supposed to have learnt all about algorithms!  And creating and debugging programs!  And logic!  By the end of Key Stage 3 (years 7-9) they should be able to use two or more programming languages (one textual).  I really wish I had had this opportunity at school.

So, why is Coding important?  It can involve maths, art, science, design and technology, music... it teaches you logic, problem solving, and gives you a creative outlet.  It helps with literacy and numeracy.  And the great thing about Coding is that it involves computers, and kids love computers.  You're learning without knowing you're learning.  It's fun, but it's teaching you transferable skills - this isn't only useful if you're looking for a career at Microsoft.

The two main languages learnt in schools are Scratch and Python.  Scratch is a really fun, visual, easy to understand (yet challenging to completely master) programming language.  You can create some really complex stuff with it, but it's easy to get started.  There are loads of brilliant Video Tutorials available on the Scratch website.  Python is harder to get to grips with, though vaguely familiar to those of us who remember BBC Basic!  This is your textual language, then, and though it may be more daunting it's supposed to be fun (it's called Python because of Monty Python, apparently).  As well as school, there are lots of other opportunities for kids to learn Coding, such as Code Club - a free coding club for 9-13 years olds that meets across the country.

In Year 1 at school Seb used various things to learn Coding.  Logo (and the accompanying Turtle) seems to have been replaced by Bee-Bot and Blue-Bot.  These guys can be programmed to complete obstacle courses.  Plus they're kind of cute.  Also he's used apps like A.L.E.X. (PEGI-3), which is a puzzle game where you have to program a robot with a sequence of commands to get him through a level.  After a gentle introduction with things like these the kids move on to using Scratch to do "proper" programming.

I should probably mention Minecraft (PEGI-7) here, too.  With redstone you can build complex circuits to achieve all sorts of things.  With command blocks you can execute commands - any command that is run in your chat window.  You place the block, add a redstone device (like a pressure plate, or lever), and program the command block.  There are plenty of redstone and command block tutorials online.

If you're an adult and you'd like to learn Coding, it's certainly not too late. The tutorials aimed at kids are just as fun for grown ups, and if you want something that looks more impressive on your CV you could always try the courses at Future Learn (such as Game Design and Development: A Bit-by-Bit History of Video Game Music, or Begin Programming: Build Your First Mobile Game.  Or you could see what's available at your local college/adult education centre.

At the start of the home computing revolution, people were making games from their bedrooms.  For a while that stopped being possible.  Now things have come full circle, and people are programming from their bedrooms once more!  So, this Coding week, why not try Coding?  I can't wait for the next generation of Indie games developers.  :-)

Happy Video Games Day!

Apparently it's Video Games Day - who knew that was a thing?!  I don't know who decides this stuff.

Let's drink some GROG! GROG! GROG! to celebrate!

And why not watch the clip in this Tomorrow's World tweet from the BBC Archive, first broadcast June 1980 - how far things have come, eh?

I'll go and play some more video games now, then.  Since it's Video Games Day.  ;-)

September 2018 PS Plus Goodies!

And so, this month's PS Plus games are: Destiny 2 (PEGI-16), God of War III remastered (PEGI-18), Another World (PEGI-12), QUBE (PEGI-12), Foul Play (PEGI-12), Sparkle 2 (PEGI-3) as well as Here They Lie (PEGI-18) and Knowledge is Power (PEGI-3) (which were available before).  Another World and Sparkle 2 are also on PS3 and Vita, QUBE's also on PS3 and Foul Play is also on Vita.  If my attempted explanation of format availability hasn't confused things beyond belief!

The big hitters, then, aren't that family friendly.  But there are some other games here that are worth looking at.

Another World (PEGI-12) hardly needs an introduction. I've always admired it for its aesthetic - the animations are so fluid and the cinematics are really atmospheric.  Basically, it looks great, and when it was first released (in 1991!) it looked AMAZING.  The only problem I have with it is it's SOOOOOOO hard.  I have never managed to get very far in it.  Perhaps if I try again I will get further...

QUBE (PEGI-12) is a puzzle game that will remind you of Portal.  It's a First Person Puzzler, like Portal, and it's based around the manipulation of blocks to solve physics-based puzzles.  It has a story, which might keep you interested if you want to find out what's going on...  A decent game that's worth a play, but it's always going to suffer when compared to Portal.

Foul Play (PEGI-12) is a 'brawler action adventure' that takes place on a theatre stage.  The enemies are actors in (awful) costumes.  Instead of a health bar, the bar reflects how much the audience is enjoying your performance.  There's a lot of button mashing, but that's not a bad thing, especially if you're playing with younger kids.  I have to say it's pretty hilarious.  You can play with a friend (or family member!) locally or online.

Sparkle 2 (PEGI-3) is another puzzle game.  Basically, it's Zuma.  Which is not a bad thing.

So, family pick of the month is Foul Play.  Download it and give it a go!

Completed (for now!) - Motorsport Manager Mobile 3

Definitely up there with Frank Williams and Ron Dennis now. World Champions! Woo!

Game Review: Just Shapes & Beats

I thought Seb would like this because it reminded me of Geometry Dash when I saw it, and he does.  The trouble with these games is he starts playing them in the real world, moving objects around and 'singing' the songs.  Ah well, at least he's happy...

Just Shapes & Beats (PEGI-7) is a game about, er, shapes and beats.  We bought it on the Switch, and it's an ideal Switch game.  Good fun if you're playing on the small screen, or step it up and turn up the bass on the big screen.  Plus you can have up to 4 players in local co-op, or play online, if you want to.  Basically, it's one of the fun 'play anywhere with your mates' games that Nintendo likes to talk about when advertising the Switch.

It's a 'bullet hell' game, defined by Wikipedia as:
A relatively recent subgenre that features overwhelming numbers of enemy projectiles, often in visually impressive formations.

It certainly fulfils those criteria!  You are a small shape and you have to dodge all the pink things on the screen.  There are some really intense levels with crazy pink stuff everywhere.  Some are hard!  (Though probably not as hard as Geometry Dash, which is impossible for most people, after all.)  All you can do to dodge the pink shapes is move and dash.  

There is a story mode (with bosses), score attacks, challenges, and also a party mode, which is easier and goes on forever.  It's a way to enjoy the music, which is one of the main draws of the game.  It's chiptune stuff by artists like Danimal Cannon, Nitro Fun, Sabrepulse, Bossfight, Chipzel and Big Giant Circles. Seb loves this stuff.  He memorises the music to games like this....

If you're playing co-op you can 'help' your friends when they've taken too many hits, which helps prolong more difficult levels. (Some of the bosses are insane compared to the difficulty of most of the game.)

The visuals are kinda hypnotic and fit brilliantly with the music. I was going to say it's almost a work of art. But then I felt that was a bit pretentious...

The game is £15.09 on Switch and is also available on PC (£15.49 on Steam).

Game Review: Slime Rancher

Here's a decent game you should play, if you haven't already - Slime Rancher!  (PEGI-3)  Seb has been playing this on the PC with an XBox controller and he's been having a LOT of fun.  It has a metacritic rating of 81, and the award '58th best PC game of 2017'.

You are Beatrix LeBeau, and you've moved to the Far Far Range to farm slimes.  These strange blob-like creatures are all over the place.  They eat then they poo 'plorts', which are used for all sorts of things.  Pink Slime plorts are used for things as varied as household cleaning products and coffee sweetener.  Tabby Slime plorts are taken by athletes to improve their performance, though overuse can result in 'uncontrollable butt wiggles'.  (Hehehe.)

The idea is you vacuum up some slimes, take them to pens you've constructed on your ranch, feed them, vacuum up the plorts, and sell them.  This is more complicated than it sounds.  You have to feed different slimes different things (they have favourite foods too), so you need to grow veggies, chickens etc as well.  To make this easier you can create hybrid (largo) slimes (crossing Pink Slimes with other slimes can make them less fussy about food).  To create a hybrid you feed a slime a plort from another slime.

A large part of the game is exploration.  There are lots of areas to unlock, with slime keys you get from gigantic 'Gordo' slimes.  How you get them is a little mean, since you feed them until they explode.  Still, they don't have to eat the stuff, so I suppose it's their own fault.

The areas have different dangers.  Feral Slimes are particularly nasty, ferociously attacking you if you go near them.  The Tarr is a type of slime created when a hybrid slime eats the plort of different slime.  It's black and rainbow coloured and looks scary.  And it will destroy all slimes (and ranchers) in its way, given the chance.  (The games's Slimepedia informs you that water can stop these guys, though it also says, "Alternatively, many ranchers recommend running away with their arms waving, screaming."  An option I often like to use.)

Some slimes aren't deliberately dangerous but are still problematic, like Rad Slimes (which give off radiation) and Boom Slimes (which explode).  To farm these tricky slimes you need different equipment and care regimes on your ranch.  Other slimes need specialist environments too.  For instance, Phosphor Slimes need darkness, and Puddle Slimes need water.

Those are the basics, then.  It's hard to explain why it's so good, but it's just so, well, charming.  The slimes are super cute.  It's fun to expand your ranch and add new pens and gadgets.  The latest update has introduced further farm automation in the form of drones.  (The most useful automation comes in the form of automatic feeders and plort collectors, which give you a bit more time to go exploring.)

It's fun finding rarer slimes and rearing them.  Failure isn't too harsh, since you just end up back at your house with a bit of time having passed, having lost what you were carrying.  You can decorate your ranch and house, if you want to, and there are little quests where you fulfil orders for people, and 'star mail' that progresses the story, such as it is.

The only down side to this is that it gives me motion sickness really quickly!  (Dad and Seb don't have this issue.)  Googling the problem shows that I'm not the only one.  Adjusting the Field of View did help a bit, but the game still makes me sick.  I think it's just too fast paced for my brain...  Poor old brain...

[You can also play on PS4 and XBox One.]

Ramble - Nintendo - ROMs and other (slightly odd) decisions

Today I'm going to ramble about ROMs, defined by Wikipedia as:
"A ROM image, or ROM file, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only memory chip, often from a video game cartridge, a computer's firmware, or from an arcade game's main board. The term is frequently used in the context of emulation, whereby older games or computer firmware are copied to ROM files on modern computers and can, using a piece of software known as an emulator, be run on a computer."

I'm sure someone at Nintendo thinks these things are a good idea, but sometimes it seems like they're shooting themselves in the foot.  This week in the news we learned that Nintendo was suing two ROM sites, and this has led to other sites preemptively taking ROMs offline.  But why should we care about this?  It IS technically illegal to download the things, after all.

Well, as someone who worries about digital archiving as part of my job, I worry that decisions like this mean games are going to be lost forever.  And even if they're one of the few games 'remastered', these are not the originals.  If, one day, you want to play an old game, perhaps you really want to play the original version, not some shiny HD thing.  And how can you do that?  Emulators.  (Unless you have serious money to buy old consoles and old cartridges etc - and cartridges, tapes etc are decaying, so they won't work forever anyway...)

I haven't played many things via emulators, but I have dallied with SCUMMVM.  Using this brilliant piece of work I've played a game that I never finished on my Amiga - Flight of the Amazon Queen.  And I played it on my phone using the original point and click interface.

Most old games end up as 'Abandonware', defined by Wikipedia as:
"Definitions of "abandoned" vary, but in general it is like any item that is abandoned – it is ignored by the owner, and as such product support and possibly copyright enforcement are also "abandoned". It can refer to a product that is no longer available for legal purchase, over the age where the product creator feels an obligation to continue to support it, or where operating systems or hardware platforms have evolved to such a degree that the creator feels continued support cannot be financially justified. In such cases, copyright and support issues are often ignored."

Often the only way to play old games is to download ROMs and use emulators.  If ROM sites weren't collating these games, who would do it?  Maybe what is needed here is better rules. Clearly games that are currently available for sale shouldn't be available for download - that's piracy.  There's a line there somewhere.

I'm guessing that Nintendo's latest action has something to do with their launch of Nintendo Switch Online, coming in September.  Maybe they want people to pay to get their 'classic Nintendo library', so they don't want to risk them getting the games for free elsewhere.  I wonder whether it really would lose them money, though.  If you can conveniently play games on your Switch then you'll probably do it.  You're unlikely to go to the effort of emulating the things if there's an easy option.

Using me as a case in point, I've bought Broken Sword on more platforms than I can remember, just because it was more convenient.  And Monkey Island.  I'm sure people will still give Nintendo money to play their games. If anything, playing a few games via emulators may be more likely to get you interested in classic titles and more likely to pay for the privilege of convenient Switch-based playtime.  Hence shooting themselves in the foot.  Retro is in right now - people want to play games they played when they were young.  They want to show their kids games they remember fondly.  So yeah, I know it's technically illegal, but it's sad it has come to this.

This isn't the first time Nintendo has gone a little over the top - they are notoriously harsh on YouTube copyright issues; they introduced the Nintendo Creators Program so they could make money from YouTubers' videos.  Ok, the games are theirs, but surely it's better that YouTubers are playing the games.  You don't want to put them off.  It's basically free advertising.  Making YouTubers pay for the privilege of advertising for Nintendo seems a little extreme!

If you want to have a go at some old games, go to the Internet Archive - they have a massive archive of old PC games playable in your browser via the emulator DOSBox.  Awesome.  :-D

Article - Why can't I beat my 12 year old at computer games?

Hehe this article about playing with your kids makes some good points. I do feel I'm not that good at some kinds of games these days. Us old folks could never make it professional gamers, after all... but I do like to stress the importance of playing with your kids. Even if you are a n00b.

August 2018 PS Plus Goodies!

So, it's that time again, and I have to admit that once more I'm not super excited by this month's offerings...

On the PS4 there's Mafia III (PEGI-18), which has a metacritic score of 68, and Dead by Daylight (PEGI-18), which has a metacritic score of 64.  The PS VR title is Here They Lie (PEGI-18), which has a metacritic rating of 62.  Obviously, none of those are good family games.

On the PS3 there's Bound by Flame (PEGI-16), metacritic rating 53, Serious Sam 3:BFE (PEGI-18), metacritic rating 63 and on the Vita Draw Slasher (PEGI-16), metacritic rating 69 and Space Hulk (PEGI-12), metacritic rating 51.  Still not a lot of family fun here, though some Warhammer 40K fans might enjoy Space Hulk!

Then we have Knowledge is Power (PEGI-3), metacritic rating 71, which is a Playlink title, so you play it on your PS4 but everyone answers with their own smartphone/tablet (with the Knowledge is Power app downloaded).  You can have up to 6 players on the same wi-fi network.  (It's more fun with more people.)  There are 12 stages of trivia questions to work through.  Players choose from one of four categories in each round.  Questions are scored on your answering speed.  You can throw in Power Plays to try and slow your opponents down.  There are also three mini games - a matchmaking game, a name association game, and a pyramid climb game (this is the final part of the quiz; you start climbing the pyramid based on your score to far).  So yeah, this is a fun family game!  (If you all have Android/iOS devices that support the app...)

Not a brilliant family friendly haul, then, quite PEGI-16/PEGI-18 heavy, and not highly scored on metacritic either.  At least Knowledge is Power is a decent game.  And it gets the family together in one room to actually interact!  Shock horror...