My Grandma loves to ask questions. When I saw her over spring break, she asked me all about games. I happily told her all about the industry, the many different consoles, and how I hope to produce games. She was a very good listener, but she also loves it when I can show her what I’m doing. So it only seemed natural that I should show her my DS.

I first showed my grandparents Elite Beat Agents because I had been telling them how much I enjoyed it. I felt that this game would be a good way to demonstrate the touch screen capabilities of the DS. Also, my grandparents hadn’t seen many rhythm games. They thought Elite Beat Agents was really neat. They were impressed by how far the technology has come and the tiny size of the cartridges. However, they didn’t show any interest in playing.

Fortunately, my grandma is a huge fan of Sudoku. She’s been doing those puzzles for over a year – she’ll get books of them or print them off the internet. I brought Brain Age with me and have really enjoyed playing the virtual Sudoku. I thought my grandma might like to see it since it has a lot of neat features, such as writing in possible numbers and being able to erase them just as if you had a pencil.

My grandma got very engrossed in Sudoku on my DS. She was a little confused at first since it would sometimes misread her numbers. Once she understood how to make her numbers easily readable by the touch screen, she was totally focused. The woman who had once been leading the conversation dropped out entirely, only making comments like “Oh no! I lost!” She is a good Sudoku player, but she made more mistakes than usual due to the DS misreading her handwritten numbers.

It was pretty amusing to watch my grandma play the DS. She looked incredibly distraught when she lost. Although the game would play happy music, she was upset because “It says I failed in those big black letters!” However, this did not stop her from trying again and she quickly beat a level.

One puzzle was enough for my grandma, but I was really glad that she took the time to sit down with a new piece of technology. She wants to be a part of my life, and I really appreciate how she put a real effort into learning about new types of games. She is pretty tech-savvy for a grandma and I hope she will continue playing games to stay sharp.