Long Hill Library's first Teen Game Night I was very happy with how our first Teen Game Night went. We had about 13 kids show up, and they all took turns playing with the PlayStation 2 (Guitar Hero and Burnout: Revenge were popular) and Nintendo Wii (I have Wii Sports and Raving Rabbids for that one).

Not all the kids could play at the same time, obviously, so we had sign-up sheets. You put your name down to play, and when your turn was up, you could put your name down to play again. All the video games we played were ones that people could play against each other, meaning 2 people were playing the game at the same time. Meanwhile, we supplied games like Jenga (a stacking game), Hangman and Trans Europa (a fun railroad-building game) and some of the kids who were waiting sat in the corner and played those.

"That's all well and good," you may be thinking, "but unlike Mary, I don't actually own a PS2 or a Wii." Hey -- I think I have a way around that. Ask around -- you may find that some teens who volunteer or work at the library (or are members of your Teen Advisory Group, if you have one) may be willing to lend their game system for a night. I needed an extra Guitar Hero controller for last night, so the president of our Friends of the Library got on the horn to her contacts and located one for me in about 3 seconds.

As an aside: When you play Wii Sports, you use an avatar that's supposed to look like you (it's called a Mii). But the kids didn't want to take time to create Miis, so they were just playing with the ones I already had on my system... which is how I looked over at one point, saw some kids boxing each other on the Wii, looked at the screen and saw my dad and my friend Trisha repeatedly socking each other in the face! That was a bit disconcerting... Also, I think I pulled a muscle from too-rigorous Wii bowling... but that's another story.  ¶ posted by Mary Martin @ 11:40 AM