Since I haven’t been able to blog much lately, I haven’t talked much about the kids and their flavors of the moment. Instant messaging is becoming more and more integral to their daily lives (remember that Kailee is eleven and Brent is ten). I knew Kailee would take to it like a librarian to books, and she has not let me down (not that I even mentioned IM to her – I let her discover it on her own). She’s already gone through quite a few of the IM stages - addiction, fighting with friends, changing her icon every day, and using it as a primary method of communication with the one friend of hers that is still on dial-up. She has also asked me to get her web site up and running (she means a blog, although we don’t use that word).

Brent, on the other hand, has taken to IM in a way I hadn’t expected. He wasn’t much interested in it until school started back up, but I think the fact that most of his peers have IM accounts prompted him to start playing with it. He went to school one day in September determined to get some screen names so he’d have some friends to talk to online and even though I had an inkling, I was still stunned when he came home with 30 AIM names. Now he specifically asks to go on the computer to “check his IM,” usually while playing music on Rhapsody. He especially enjoys chatting with Aaron, who made the interesting observation that at first, Brent tried to get him to log in to Runescape so they could chat there. I’ve seen this to, where Brent’s preferred communication medium is chat within a “massive multiplayer online role playing game” (MMORPG) where he can talk with friends and go on quests together at the same time.

Anyway, what I really wanted to note is that even though Brent has gone back to near total immersion in Runescape at the expense of other games, he chose to spend a good chunk of his birthday money on Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix. I’ve been so busy lately that I’ve only gotten to watch him play for a few minutes, but it’s really fascinating to watch. As long-time Nintendo fans would guess, the company has extended the DDR concept like only Nintendo can.

Unlike regular DDR, Mario DDR has a “story mode” in which you have to conquer levels to advance to new levels and unlock songs. Instead of just arrows scrolling on the screen, various icons also scroll and stepping on them when they hit the top arrows triggers an action (Koopa Troopas that kick shells, Ice Spinies that decrease your dance meter, Boos that cover up the screen, and the like). You do all of this to get “keys” which unlock something, although we weren’t sure what because Brent doesn’t read documentation. (As Kate always says, “documentation is wasted on the young.”)

At one point, Bowser started crying because Mario took his keys in a dance-off, which is when we learned that you want those keys because they unlock music for your soul. Seriously. I didn’t catch the exact language, but like Katamari Damacy, it’s very touch-feely, this time about music and how important it is for your well-being. Overall, though, I have to say that Mario DDR is far more complicated than I want DDR to be, although I haven’t tried workout mode yet because I hurt my knee a couple of months ago and it’s still not quite ready for that kind of strain yet. Brent, however, loves the addition of a story to the dancing, and it’s perfect for him.

I bring this up in part because I haven’t had a chance to evaluate it for use in libraries (hey Eli, have you??), but I have to think that if it’s viable, it’s even more harmless than Mario Kart. When you hear Eli talk about it, he has a great quote that about the worst thing you can say about Mario Kart is that it encourages kids to throw bananas out the window when they’re driving. Well, Mario DDR is actually more harmless than that and has a whole kumbaya theme about harmony and music. Really interesting and perfectly Nintendo.