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By Edward Sheehan
Hometown Weekly Correspondent
On Monday, July 25, from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m., at the Wakelin Room of the Wellesley Library, a “Make Your Own Video Game” class took place for kids ages eight and up. The class was run by instructors from Rhode Island Computer Museum. Using Scratch, a program designed by MIT that allows users to engage in the functions of Java and other computer languages without having to input code, Wellesley’s youngest programmers were eager to learn strategies for creating video games.
The day began with a brief overview of the history of video games, from simple early games on room-sized computers to Pong on Atari to Nintendo’s golden age in the 80’s and 90’s and finally, today’s games. The kids then got to work in twos and threes, each group making its own distinctive game. Most of the youngsters already had knowledge of Scratch, having worked on it at their elementary schools. With that experience, they were quickly able to branch out and build creative and original games. One group made a Frogger-esqe game in which the player plays as a crab trying to cross a beach while avoiding “thrown” beach balls and cups. Another group created a fantasy game in which the hero, a knight, had to fight a dragon.
When the children left, an hour and a half later, they offered nothing but praise for the program, describing the class as “really really fun,” and “awesome.”
