Just over 10 years ago now, I read Andy Baio’s brilliant think piece, Playing With My Son. To give you a general overview, the article is about the author exposing his young son to the world of video games, chronologically.

By introducing his young son to games in chronological order, he finds his son develops a unique perspective of appreciation along with some hardcore skills. All this while the author amusingly questions the morality of his own parenting experiment. It’s still very much worth a read for anyone who may soon be stepping into parenthood.

The inspiration for my action

Start with the arcade classics and Atari 2600, from Asteroids to Zaxxon. After a year, move on to the 8-bit era with the NES and Sega classics. The next year, the SNES, Game Boy, and classic PC adventure games. Then the PlayStation and N64, Xbox and GBA, and so on until we’re caught up with the modern era of gaming.

This experiment in child-rearing caught my eye at a time when I was still childless. “If I ever have a kid,” I thought, “this is going to be the way”. Well, fast-forward to 2025, and I do have an 8-year-old son. My attempts to start him only with the classics from a young age were never going to work the way they did in my head. Not with me playing more modern titles right in front of him. I tried to start things off at NES and go from there, but it wasn’t until he got his hands on Super Mario Odyssey around the age of 5 that games all of a sudden clicked with him.

I had failed. Those mornings playing Sesame Street 123 from my lap on the NES were gone. The experiences of my own gaming childhood could never stoke the fires in today’s kid the way a modern Mario did, or so I thought.

An Xmas break accomplishment

As the years have passed, my son’s gaming tastes have vastly expanded. He just “platinum’d” the copy of Astro Bot he gave me for Xmas (I’m still patiently waiting for my turn). Throughout this modern platforming tribute to PlayStation’s legacy, he kept asking about the robotic versions of classic PS characters he was rescuing. “Oh, that’s Jak. That’s Ratchet,” and so on.

That’s when it hit me. It was time to bring back Andy’s plan. I now have the power to give my son a totally curated “classic’s” experience, entirely from a single handheld, in a way that was never available back in 2014. Even if I can’t start him off chronologically and go from there, I can still offer a robust history lesson in an accessible way.

Figuring Out A Plan

Hoping he’ll love it with the Disney assist

The whole thing with kids is finding a way to get them into stuff without them realizing it was your idea. If I try to force old episodes of Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers from my own childhood on my son, he’ll roundly reject the idea; convinced this is some archaic form of cartoon that wouldn’t be worth his time. BUT, if I plant the seed with something modern that his peers are familiar with, like say the 2022 Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers reboot movie –  he’s suddenly into the characters and willing to explore their previous adventures! Funny how that works, isn’t it?

The same is absolutely true for games. If I shove something in his face and tell him it’s good, he’s not going to want anything to do with it. Now that he’s played Astro Bot on PS5, which teaches him about all of these characters, he’s suddenly ready to explore the Sony vaults. It may not be the way I pictured it after remembering the article for a decade, but hey, he’s open to the experience, so let’s deliver it.

Would that child better appreciate modern independent games that don’t have the budgets of AAA monstrosities like Destiny and Call of Duty? Would they appreciate the retro aesthetic, or just think it looks crappy?

What was true from Andy’s own conclusions remains true today in my own parenting. Kids don’t care about graphics the way I did. The playground arguments about whose 16-bit system was actually the king under the hood are meaningless to him. He’s from an era where mega-budgeted AAA titles release and fail next to games developed by a single indie developer. He is smarter than I was at his age. As such, he knows that the only thing that really matters at the end of the day is if the game is fun. That’s it.

I could get grumbly about this and insist that my generation was growing up alongside the hobby, so of course we couldn’t always look back as we were racing forward, but it’s just the opposite. I’m glad that he and his peers don’t really seem to share that perspective at all. Now, I certainly wouldn’t say that they’re immune to marketing, but he’s not interested in planting his flag as a staunch defender of one ecosystem or era. If it’s good, he’s in.

Selecting a Handheld

Solid options to get you into the PS2/GC era

Given the regular arrival of new packages on the doorstep, and the profusion of devices scattered across various parts of the house, my son is more than familiar with the concept of emulation. He knows that I’m into these handhelds, but I think in his head they didn’t amount to much more than what he already had access to via Nintendo Online classics on the Switch.

Most of the time when we’re discussing the topic of how to pick an emu-handheld for kids, you’re going to be talking about a budget device that you can live with getting dropped on the kitchen floor and breaking. I get it. And if your child is still a little younger, this is still a great option. Something like the MM+ or the R36S can make for an easy way to test the waters without breaking the bank.

If we were going to be exploring the history of Sony characters in this round, I was going to need something with enough Oomph to get us comfortably into the GameCube and PS2 era. Now, when I talk about old games holding up, it’s not universal. The PS1/N64 era was a time of growing pains. The path from 2D to 3D was bound to have some rough stepping stones along the way.

The apes have escaped

It’s not the idea of playing Mario 64 that he has taken issue with, it’s not being able to control the camera like he’s accustomed to in modern variations. The PS2 era bridges this gap between old and new and offers a bridging experience of something he’s a little more familiar with. My hope is that in time he’ll have more of a stomach for the limitations of the 32-bit 3D era. My concerns seem unfounded, though, as he’s willing to overlook the dated controls of Ape Escape in favor of chasing down the next sneaky simian.

So where to go? Something from the Anbernic Unisoc T820 line seemed like the perfect mix of power to price. The RG406H offers the horizontal form factor he’s more familiar with, and it’s still a comfortable size for him to use as an 8-year-old kid. The chipset offers a great play experience for the 2000s-era generation I seek, without having to step into the next pricing tier of higher-end handhelds like the Odin 2. If a vertical form factor is something they might be more comfortable with, you could always try the RG406V. None of these things were even an option just a few short years ago. What a time to be a kid!

Curating the Experience

Jak 2 on the RG406H

So we’re still in the early days here to see if this is something that’s going to take hold, but I have faith. I’ve even borrowed a page from our own GoTX series. Rather than just handing him a handheld full of games and telling him to find cool experiences, I’ve created a list of games and challenges to conquer. This approach offers him choices without overloading him into the abyss of choice paralysis, along with a set of achievable completion goals for each game.

I think most parents would agree that if you just hand over a “fully loaded” handheld, the flood of options will find the device sitting off in the corner a lot faster than anything else. By trimming down the choices, we can focus on a handful of games at a time. When those are done, THEN we load more.

ES-DE and the “less is more” approach to a library

Being that the RG406H is an Android handheld, there is a potential minefield of sticky wickets for kids to get into. To avoid this the best we can, I’ve set up the RG406H to default to ES-DE as the home launcher, but you can set things up however you prefer. There’s even a Kid’s mode within ES-DE that stops any undesirable menu changes from being made without supervision. A handy feature when curious minds get to wandering around the settings menu.

The last step in the experience was getting Boy-o set up with an account on Retro Achievements. The familiarity of trophies and achievements really helps him feel at home with older titles. It provides that all-important dopamine drip that encourages him to keep exploring. Whether you’re considering a similar option for your own kids, or something a lot more basic at first, RA is a great way to bridge the generational gap.

Closing Thoughts

What this experiment really opened my eyes to is how kids can see games without necessarily looking through generational lenses. Graphical fidelity is entirely secondary to the fun. Seen through the eyes of my son, a good game is just a good game. This is the way that it should be, and something that was often lost in the sad console wars of my generation. Always chasing the next benchmark or hype often leaves you unable to appreciate the things right in front of you — like the gems of the past in emulation.

So if you’ve been toying with the idea of how to get your own offspring into the delights of gaming’s yesteryear, and maybe you’ve got an extra handheld lying around (if you’re here the chances are it’s more than one), you can always try experimenting on your kids too. Thanks for the idea, Andy.

Purchase the Anbernic RG406H from AliExpress, or sold directly by Anbernic.

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