Fisher Price: I Can Remember (NES) review "I Can Remember. "

I Can Remember.

Really, I can.

I remember the days when game companies used to release these oddball games for consoles. Called ''children games'', they were released solely for educational value alone, and while they didn't sell tremendous amount of copies, I learned a lot from them as a child. The Sesame Street games for NES, while being crappy in all the cool peoples' eyes, are some of the most fun ''kiddy games'' known to man.

It's just a shame games like this aren't released any more.

The first thing you'll have to realize is that this game is not meant for adults. Adults may find a little bit of joy out of this, but lord knows I can play my Memory game on my cell phone if I ever got bored enough to test my Memory, and it's more accurate, as well. Children will love this game though, I know I did when I was a kid.

And that's the whole point. Fisher Price: I Can Remember is a terrific game for children. It's a memory game, which has you surveying a group of cards, and choosing two cards at a time. The objective is to match all the cards in the shortest amount of time possible. Underneath each card is a symbol, so you have to memorize where the symbols are, and then try to match the symbols using your memory alone. (Of course, some people would just write down what each card held for a quick win).

There's not really much else to this game, it's a simple children's game that will provide a lot of fun for your growing child. A lot of basic skills can be provided simply from this game, the main one being memory skills. While there are several quality ways to teach your child basic skills of memory, they'll love the quality pictures in the background, and will want to work even harder to unlock all the various backgrounds.

Sadly, the graphics and music don't add much to the game, but it doesn't matter. The graphics are as plain as any game you'll ever see, there's a blue background and some orange cards. There is a wide mixture of backgrounds, from a firehouse to an airplane. It adds little to the graphics besides giving the player a reward for having a good memory. The music is just a midi version of ''Old MacDonald'', a classic kids song. Regardless, the game is not about graphics or music, just about childish fun.

Your child will love to play through this game many times just because it's so fun to feel rewarded for doing something. Every time you clear a stage, you'll see a different picture, and there are several different pictures, so the game definitely has an advantage over similar memory games which don't offer the same kind of reward that this game does.

Sadly, there's not much challenge, but there really shouldn't be, because frustrating a 4 year old should not be high on any game developer's mind. There is stage progression, and yes, the symbol matching does get tougher as the game moves on, but it never gets annoyingly frustrating. Like I said, seeing a child throw the controller down in frustration because it's impossible to figure out what the symbols are, or where the symbols are, would not be a good thing. Of course, it would be tougher depending on the memory skills of the child, but that's life.

If you are over the age of 6, don't play this game, unless you have a child under that age. It's a great game for children, as were many of the educational games released for the NES. It doesn't matter that there are alternate ways to play this game, of course there are. The board game Memory is a great game. However, that doesn't take away from the fact that THIS game is good, and therefore it's a solid purchase, and one I hope my son will be playing down the line.

And since when were all games supposed to be the same, anyways? A little variety is nice..

Community review by psychopenguin (September 14, 2005) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.