The HabForum

There is going to be a Space Camp video game come out in June on Wii and DS.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/963/963773p1.html

"We are excited to be partnered with Activision on this project," said Larry Capps, CEO of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. "Thousands dream of going to space and this game gives you that chance to virtually explore and have fun with your friends and family."

so the game looks like it would be cool for little kids, but why does a fantasy space game have to bear the "Space Camp" name, when Space Camp is about simulating as close as possible realistic space flight with existing current, past or immediate future NASA hardware?

Allow me to repeat that last important phrase: Space Camp is about simulating as close as possible realistic space flight with existing current, past or immediate future NASA hardware. At least, when I attended Space Camp back in it's heyday, this was what the curriculum was based around.

So, to me, it seems that a real "Space Camp" game would have something to do with manned spaceflight with real NASA hardware, as realistic as you could be in a game meant for kids who are nowadays alot smarter than we were in the 80s and 90s!

Perhaps by making it more like the real Space Camp experience, the powers-that-be felt that Folks would just buy the game instead of paying for the SC tuition, so they went with the more arcade/cartoony route instead, as if just to plant a seed of interest in general space travel in younger minds.

Is the USSRC just letting the game developers at Activision use the SC name for some kind of marketing reason (to get the SC name out there more in the public eye)? Or are we witnessing a change in the basic core principals and ideas behind Space Camp iteself?

I am worried that things like this could lead to the real Space Camp experience itself going totally fantasy/Disney on us, all but abandoning any realistic/NASA curriculum and turning into nothing more than a futuristic, out-of-this-world Chuck-E-Cheese daycare that parents can drop their kids off at for $800 a week.

Maybe I am just being overly paranoid. What do you guys think? Does anyone else fear that there may be a trend towards a more cartoon/dumbed-down version of Space Camp in a greedy attempt to lure those who would otherwise be turned off by the notion of going to a "geeky" more realistic Space Camp?

Look at the design of the current Space Camp website and tell me it does not look more cartoony compared to the high tech design of previous SC websites. Just speculation!

Hotdog wrote:So, to me, it seems that a real "Space Camp" game would have something to do with manned spaceflight with real NASA hardware, as realistic as you could be in a game meant for kids who are nowadays alot smarter than we were in the 80s and 90s!

Yet kids nowadays won't touch older computer games that we played as kids because they are 'too hard'. (Hugo, KingsQuest, Myst, etc.) Sure, the graphics weren't 3D or interactive like they are now, but I wouldn't argue that kids now are smarter than we were at their age, just different.

That being said, I think I will have to see what the mini-games are before I make any speculation about the game. It sounds like it could be fun with some realistic simulations/experiments tied in. We'll see.

Well I'll have no idea of knowing how the game is. I don't own either system. Between Chris and I, we only own almost every other system out there (minus the PS3). Chris does have one of the handheld systems though, but I can't remember if it's the PSP or the DS.

Has anyone played this game yet? There were no reviews on amazon.com yet, but anyways I would rather have reviews from someone who has actually been to Space Camp. Chris apparently has a Nintendo DS, but we just can't afford to purchase the game yet.

Lisa aka pilotgirl21 bought be the DS version of the game for my birthday since a Best Buy here in Arizona had it for sale for $10. I thought the game was rather silly and had nothing really to do with Space Camp besides the name and multi-axis trainer. And speaking of the multi-axis trainer your character a child runs the MAT which should never happen at Space Camp, it is a fireable offense. Much like the movie your character gets stuck in space but in the game you get stuck on the moon with only a robot to help you and guess what the robot's name is not JINX. Based on what I saw it looks like a company made a space game and thought that Space Camp would be a good name to use. The very few Space Camp pieces seem to be an after thought and just thrown in at the last moment.

We played Space Camp on the Wii last night. I didn't get to try the single player game that Apollo XI mentions. Instead, we had a multi-player session that consisted of several mini games. The games we played aren't related to Space Camp specifically, but they have a space theme. I wonder if playing the single player game will unlock more multi-player mini games. (Most games do.)

The mini games themseles are fairly easy and simple, but I'm sure they have more difficult levels than what we played. We also set the controller sensitivity to high, and sat far from the receiver, so that made the simple games really difficult. The games did require some skill and weren't as cheesy as I thought they would be. Overall, everyone enjoyed the game! We'll definitely bring it out the next time we have a family/friend games night.