“Hey, Dad, what’s your favourite Beatles song?”

“Tomorrow Never Knows,” for sure. Why, buddy?

“I want to play it!”

Never mind that my 9-year-old son and I are both too young to have experienced The Beatles firsthand — with The Beatles: Rock Band in our Xbox 360 for the past week, we’ve bridged that generation gap as well as our own, bonding over the Fab Four as we try to recreate a little Beatlemania in the living room.

Though it’s rated “PG” (specifically for “mild sexual and drug references”), The Beatles: Rock Band is absolutely a family game. For kids, it’s also an easy inroad to the Beatles’ catalog — which, it’s worth noting, also hit stores this past week in newly remastered form. Ironically, even though they may be further removed from the source material, younger listeners will probably master the game faster than you will — by now, kids are practically coming out of the womb with the ability to hit multicoloured buttons in time to music.

Which brings us to the gameplay. As with other Rock Band titles, you earn points by “strumming” or hitting the right colour at the right time. (Your existing Rock Band instruments will work just fine here, too.) But The Beatles: Rock Band introduces a few new elements particular to John, Paul, George and Ringo’s oeuvre.

No longer limited to just one microphone, you can team up across three mics to try hitting those classic three-part harmonies. And harmonise you must; merely getting close to the right vocal patterns doesn’t count in this game. The stakes have also been raised for the drummer’s chair: You’ve got to nail Ringo’s beats just as they were originally played — no improvisations here, bub.

Ringo’s bank of “Beatle Beats” is also open for solo practice sessions, allowing you to adjust the tempo until you’ve mastered those legendary rhythms. (And despite what you’ve heard, Ringo’s way better than he lets on.) Same goes for the game’s vocal-training mode — kids can learn basic harmonies as they work their way up to three-part mastery. Best of all, there’s no booing or hissing when you drop the ball — or the beat. Positive feedback abounds when you’re in training mode, and a simple “Song Failed” tells you it’s time to start over during regular gameplay.

Much has been made of The Beatles: Rock Band’s dreamlike cutscenes — and for good reason. Lush, beautiful, and increasingly psychedelic as the game advances, the scenes and accompanying images enrich your experience as you work your way up from the Cavern Club to Shea Stadium to the Apple Corps rooftop where the Fab Four’s last public concert took place. But don’t just take my word for it — check out the game’s already-famous intro video, which encapsulates the band’s career and spirit into a mind-bending two minutes:

In addition to Xbox 360, The Beatles: Rock Band is also available for Wii and PlayStation 3— and if you have $370.00 to spare, you can even buy a limited-edition Premium Bundle of the game featuring replicas of some of the Fab Four’s original instruments- althought you’ll have to be fast, stocks are limited. Check out your local JB Hi-fi, Gamesmen and EA for the game and check out our sister site Kotaku, for more coverage.

Happy playing, and be sure to get by a little help from your friends.

For the hardcore old school gamer in the house, here is a set of wall decals that will take the video game out of the TV and onto the walls. bilk has created the Re-Stik movable and reusable decals that are based on the graphics from the original super Mario Bros. game (and it’s officially licensed so it’s all on the up and up). You can pick up this set and create your own game space anywhere in your home, well where ever there are walls that is. You can pick them up here for $US75.

If this exclusive skateboard controller isn’t enough to get you amped for the upcoming videogame Tony Hawk: Ride, the video at the game’s teaser site oughta seal the deal. Due later this year for Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360, Ride takes you off the couch and away from the push-button controller, giving you the full-motion freedom to execute grinds, flips, ollies, spins and other tricks using the board’s built-in motion controls and accelerometers. Watch for another big announcement around the game at the annual E3 convention on June 2, and check out the controller in action at Gametrailers TV. [Uncrate]

When our first child was born, we both took some time off to stay at home. For the first few weeks, our infant daughter napped peacefully in the living room cot while the television blasted out the sound of online car races and accidents as her sleep-deprived parents played Burnout 3. As a going-away present from my colleagues, I got a Nintendo DS (handheld gaming platform), which soon became my daughter’s favorite toy, the tactile screen providing a perfect playground for her stylus-thin fingers.

On her second birthday, she switched from handheld to console gaming, watching us play kid-friendly games on the Nintendo Wii. To our concerned friends, I joked that I would always be able to limit my children’s gaming time with the final argument that “It’s Mummy’s turn with the Playstation!”

I added that, as a gamer, I would be more qualified than most parents to supervise my kid’s choices. With my knowledge of the medium, I would be able to guide my daughter down the virtuous path of interactive entertainment without falling into the quicksand of car stealing and zombie killing. I’d be both the most responsible parent in the world, and the coolest mom on the block!

I also thought proficiencies my daughter was acquiring at such a tender age would be a great foundation for her teen years: while other girls become bored wall-flowers whenever their boyfriends organize a LAN party, my daughter would be able to “frag” with the best of them. I wasn’t giving her a bad habit. I was preparing her for a technology-driven world!

We spent hours running around in virtual worlds.When she also started playing by herself, we’d let her play half an hour of videogames per day. We’d let her choose between television and games, but the former seldom won out.

When I became pregnant with our second child, my energy level dwindled, and I found myself giving in more often to her videogame demands. After an hour spent dressing and undressing Polly Pocket dolls, I was more than up for catching a few stars in Super Mario Galaxy.

Our daily half-hour soon bloomed into a full one. And as the months passed and my belly swelled, my will faltered some more and that single hour multiplied. My balloon-like feet high on a pile of cushions, we spent hours running around in virtual worlds, kissing weird Japanese characters or gathering honey for Winnie the Pooh.

Then came Lego Indiana Jones.

That one we played as a family: my husband controlled the main character and our daughter and I shared “Player 2″ duties. At that point, she was approaching her third birthday and becoming quite good at pushing buttons. I moved the character around with the joystick while she pressed the “jump” button. As the levels progressed, she got the hang of the “use” button, which inevitably became the “fight” button. “Cartoon violence,” said the packaging, to describe Lego men dissolving into smaller Lego pieces whenever they got hurt.

“Who are we fighting?” my daughter asked one day as she repeatedly pressed the “A” button. I launched into a “Good versus Evil” explanation that would have made George Lucas proud. She nodded gravely, and then dropped the bomb on my mothering pride: “Mummy,” she pleaded, “I want more bad guys to beat up!” She wasn’t yet three, and had just tasted the joy of virtual attacks. What had I done?

In my defense, I’d mostly turned to video games for a sense of security. Since my daughter’s birth, I had always been the kind of mom that sits on the floor to tell stories with stuffed toys, or run around at the park playing Hide and Seek. From a self-centered young adult, I had grown into a nursery-rhyme singing, Play-Doh molding, selfless mother, always going the extra mile to make my little one happy. I spent my days finding happiness through her eyes. Like a play slave, I invented games until my mind grew blank, and forced enthusiasm for occupations that sometimes bored me to tears.

I could have kept on going. The problem was that, soon, my duties would double… and that scared me to no end. I already felt at the limit of what I could give. Would I keep on going on sheer will, gradually transforming into the motherhood version of a Stepford Wife: perfect in appearances, yet internally screaming every time I saw a plastic doctor kit?

After two years of adapting playtime to my daughter’s preferences, pregnancy made me start having her adapt to mine. Some parents take their kids to see art house movies like Harold and Maude, others take theirs to bars. I had taught mine to play videogames.

I proposed a quest to find a save point before dinner. Back on the couch, my husband answered my daughter’s plea with a roaring “I’m a bad guy!” and they were now fake-wrestling, tickling, and giggling away toward a bad case of hiccups. I could have put an end to the whole thing right there and go back to supposedly “wholesome” games that encourage imagination and physical activity. But did I really want to? I finally let go of the perfect mother I had planned to be, picked up the controller, and proposed a quest to find a save point before dinner.

There would be time later for a return of the “half-hour” rule and for games labeled “early childhood.” Right now, there were Lego Nazis to be dealt with, and the fact that we all could enjoy it naturally and effortlessly felt like salvation.

As we resumed our button mashing, I looked at the blinking light on my controller. It stated that I was the second player out of a possibility of four. Four? I stroked my bulging belly, all fears gone for the first time in months. Our second child could come: there was place in my heart, in my life… and on my X-box.

61.4% of women say they don’t have time to exercise, according to a recent survey, so anything that brings exercise opportunities into the home has to be a good thing, right?

EA Sports Active – Personal Trainer is a Wii game which allows mums to to design a tailor-made fitness program, set and achieve fitness goals, and track their progress in real time – without having to find a gym with a crèche.

Take that, parents-with-pram parking stealer!

It’s not being released until later in the month (for an RRP of $99.95), but if you want to try out your kickboxing skills in the privacy of a shopping mall, EA sports are running an Active Challenge at Westfield Stores across NSW in June:

• Liverpool: 3rd- 7th June
• Hornsby: 10th- 14th June
• Mt Druitt: 17th- 21st June
• Hurstville: 24th- 28th June

Prizes up for grabs include exclusive fitness packs incorporating EA Sports Active – Personal Trainer software, resistance bands, fitness leg straps and Nintendo Wii consoles.

Someone was apparently watching Hotel For Dogs before they made their Wal-Mart return. There’s a scene in the kiddie flick that features kids packaging up a box full of rocks and trying to sell it as high tech gear.

Wal-Mart said “don’t look at us,” and was reportedly refusing to give Mum her money back until a Florida TV station got involved. The store tracked the box . . . only to realise it had been returned to the store by another customer. Perhaps the one who grabbed the DS and ran?

The story comes with yet another reminder to always check boxes (this mum says she did – and nothing looked awry) and warns that if you’re unsure you should always ask a store employee to open it in front of you to verify the contents. I understand caveat emptor, but how far do we have go to? Most kids products these days are so hard to get out of the box that having the store open ‘em up and unpack them will mean never getting them back INTO the box… and all that protective packaging that’s supposed to keep the item from breaking on the ride home is now gone. Plus the open box now makes it harder to keep all the pieces inside.

Of course, I’d hate to disappoint my kid by opening up her birthday present this June to find a box full of rocks. What about you readers, do you make the store open things before you check out?

Image: PBase

Over at the Hasbro stand, we had the chance to try the new N-Strike game for Wii. It uses a convertible Nerf dart gun as wii controller to play a tween-friendly shoot-em-up-game.

The game itself hasn’t broken any new ground (and incedentally I was hopeless at it), but the Wii controller is very cool. As far as shoot-em up games go, this one isn’t gory or particularly violent and would be suitable for kids around 9-11 years of age.

Check out some screen shots over the jump.

A bundle including the game, Nerf gun/controller and darts is currently on sale at Big W for $68.84.

Can’t find (or afford) a Wii for the family room? Show your kids the fine art of old-school gaming with this Retro Duo Video Game System ($US44.99 at Amazon), which plays all those dusty Nintendo and Super Nintendo titles you’ve had in storage since highschool. You may not get the bells, whistles and wireless action of the Wii, but you’ll at least be able to beat the kids at a Mario game for once. [Uncrate]

Evan’s wanting to play C of D was something of a challenge for us. It’s rated T and he’s only just a teenager and point and shoot first person games worry me some… I looked at the game. I’ve done a lot of research for military museums so I could tell that the content was accurate — but there was lots of shooting and blowing things up. But there was a fair bit of that during World War II.

How to encourage an interest in history and an appreciation of  teamwork, while minimising potential violent tendancies? They came to a compromise.

I asked Evan to google the Geneva Convention. Then he had to read it and then we had to discuss it. This we did. So the deal is that Evan has to fight according to the rules of the Geneva Convention. If his team-mates violate the Convention then play stops and Call of Duty goes away for a while.

Clever dad. How do you control computer game use in your home?

Now that that’s done. How would you like it if your kid spent his hard-earned (from Gran) Christmas money at the store, and all he ended up with was redneck you-know-what?

That’s what happened to a Consumerist reader, whose son went to Wal-Mart and bought what he thought was the new Electronic Arts game, Madden 09.

Only instead of a disc he could slip into his shiny white XBox, inside there was a CDR with the words “Redneck S–t” (see, the disclaimer stands). The letter writer says he called the store, and they’re supposed to make good on the screw-up.

My question – what would you do? Grab the thing and run horrified away from your kid? Do you use this as a teaching moment (stealing’s wrong m’kay) or simply get indignant and let ‘em see you really pissed?

Source/Image: Consumerist