Voodoo Vince

We have always had a gaming console. The first one I remember was a Grandstand video game, then Atari, followed by Sega Mega Drive, Nintendo and finally we are now Xbox fans.

Penny wasn’t an iPad baby, but we played games as a family, especially my husband and sister who used them to wind down from work and it was always in moderation, mostly because I’m not a gamer, I’m the party pooper!

Voodoo Vince was released in 2003 and Penny was about five years old when she started playing it. In the game, you play as Vince, a voodoo doll who can perform an assortment of moves to make his way through multiple levels.

The game revolves around Vince’s ability to use voodoo powers, which the player can get by finding special voodoo icons scattered through the game. When Vince’s voodoo power meter is full, the player can use voodoo power to destroy every enemy nearby, like a dinosaur.

Scattered throughout the game’s levels are special items for Vince to collect, which can increase Vince’s health, give extra lives and fill Vince’s voodoo power meter. If the player manages to find, chase, and capture the Skull, it will increase the number of voodoo powers Vince can perform at one time. Many levels also offer a trolley station, which allows the player to travel between different levels of the game.

Many of the game’s levels have some sort of puzzle in which Vince must activate a device in order to use it to destroy a larger enemy. Over the course of the game, the player will control Vince piloting an aeroplane, a swamp boat, a submarine, a bumper car, and other vehicles.

This is even a great game to watch someone play, not violent and filled with things Penny loved at the time. It’s a game of perception and requires memory, attention to detail, the ability to solve problems, quick thinking and speed of hand-eye coordination with dexterity.

This sort of game uses the same motor skills it takes to play a piano.

Still reeling from the thick table comment, I thought how can Penny be thick when she can play Voodoo Vince? My mum, who’s on paper clever and played with the second controller, couldn’t get through the first challenge!

I was reminiscing about Voodoo Vince with mum, she told me that Vince was such an endearing character, the game was happy and she loved playing together with Penny. Then the confession, she used to play it while Penny was at school, for hours, so that she could compete with Penny, hilarious!

My feeling is everything in moderation and not all games provide cognitive benefits, I always checked the age limits and although I didn’t want Penny to be exposed to violence in games, sometimes it was unavoidable as selective action based killing in games could be deemed subjective. For example, Penny would happily kill a dinosaur to protect herself but used to get upset when a Pi?ata died in Viva Pi?ata. These were little creatures she’d bought to life and was sad (empathy) when they expired, for me, it was just confirmation she didn’t have psychopathic tendencies!

On the whole, I really believe that video games helped Penny to learn and shouldn’t be shut down in place of a book. Some of the stories in these games like Viva Pi?ata and even Mind Craft are fantastic and encourage imagination, creativity AND pleasure.

#spelldyslexia