I got no end of grief from Peter Smith when I started playing Pokémon Diamond a couple of months back. Pete’s no stranger to mindless grinds; the man’s confessed his many replays of the NES Final Fantasy games. No, he was opposed to Pokémon because, “It’s for f$?!ing babies, man.” The argument confused me. After all, Pete, like me and the rest of 61 FPS’ team of outlaw journalists, was raised on the 8-bit era’s simple designs as conceived by Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo. Though Pokémon’s billion-dollar audience is mostly made up of the Trapper-Keeper and Lunchables set, the game itself is in the age-and-gender-neutral mode that’s made Nintendo the corporate success they are today. “Family Friendly” is the accepted term but it’s just a media savvy way of saying that games like Pokémon, Mario, Brain Age, and Animal Crossing can be played and loved by very young players, but they aren’t games explicitly for children. He did get me thinking, though: Have I ever actually played a game designed specifically with very young players in mind? Not the Reader Rabbit-style edutainment so many kids have been subjected to since the early-80s. Just regular, old, played-for-fun videogames.
My first exposure to Viva Piñata was marked by cynicism. Microsoft’s monumentally expensive acquisition of Rare was just under four years old when it was announced and the partnership had yielded dubious results; bad sequels, middling remakes, one atrocious new IP, and another that had been years in development on three separate consoles before it was finally released. Between the animated series and the variety of brightly colored critters to gather in the game, Piñata seemed like a soulless and pointed marketing machine built for no other reason than to make Microsoft some of that proverbial Pokémon money. So it came as a surprise when the game turned out to be both a commercial flop (relatively speaking) and a critical success, praised for its peaceful, eccentric presentation while being ignored by gamers and parents alike. I never got around to playing the first, but its reputation brought me to Viva Piñata’s sequel, Trouble In Paradise, free of cynicism and curious about what I’d find. Turns out it’s a reputation well-earned. Even though Piñata is a brazen fusion of Nintendo’s Animal Crossing and Pokémon – surrounded by strange, brightly colored characters, you are given free reign to alter a seemingly mundane plot of land to your gardener-heart’s content but are tasked with gathering hordes of diverse fantasy creatures in order to level up and expand your domain – it is impeccably made, its charms difficult to resist.
What’s most impressive about Viva Piñata, though, is that it is explicitly designed for children.
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