Sonic 2! Let the 5yo be tails! He'll never die. He can collect rings and kill enemies. It's the best 2 player platformer ever created
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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On the SNES, all of the games below have coop:
- Tiny Toons Wild and Wacky Sports - a collection of several silly minigames as some sort of tournament, with minimum scores that need to be reached. No direct violence between players, only cartoon shenanigans like falling down a cliff, snowballing after tripping while skiing, etc. (Maybe show the kid some of the old cartoons as well, if s/he enjoys, I'm sure the game will be more interesting to him/her)
- Super Bomberman - Might count as "violent", since you're bombing weird looking enemies, but it's a formula that rarely gets old and plays great as co-op. Your kid might enjoy 3 and 4 the most, with the variety of mounts to be had (if your rpi can run NeoGeo games, Neo Bomberman is also a great choice)
- Top Gear - Racing game with one of the best soundtracks in the console. Top Gear 3000 goes to space and has plenty of options for upgrading your car.
- Secret of Mana - Might count as "violent", especially as you start off with a sword and kill cute bunny-thing enemies. An action RPG that, once you get the 2nd character, it can be played with the 2nd controller. Drop-in/drop-out, so you can easily join and leave while your kid plays or vice versa. The same applies for Secret of Mana 2 (Seiken Densetsu 3)
- Magical Quest 2 and 3 - Disney games that are best when played cooperatively (the first lacks coop). Starts off easy enough and you get new costumes that give special powers, which help you out in the stages going forward. It's "Disney violence" how you beat most enemies (jumping on their heads, spinning them against one another)
- Kirby Super Star and Dreamland 3 - Both allow for a second player to join in and help. Dreamland 3 has a very unique and cute looking style.
- International Super Star Soccer - If you're into normal football (soccer), this is easily the best of its kind for the 16-bit era
- NBA Jam - Also available on the Mega Drive, dunno which version is better. BOOM SHAKA LAKA!!
Goofy Troop
Snake Rattle and roll! For the NES.
Alley Cat Remeow Edition is a fan remake of Alley Cat, an arcade game, with up to 4 players, but it's PC (should still run on that hardware, i hope!)
Lode Runner (NES) might be okay. Not multiplayer, but it's got nice low-stakes puzzling gameplay.
Edutainment games are a bit few and far between on consoles - Donkey Kong Jr. Math springs to mind, but it's remarkably dry for a Nintendo game.
Troddlers - SNES
The music in Troddlers slaps.
Its a puzzle platformer game similar to Lemmings. Little dudes walk in a straight line and you play as a wizard that can place blocks. You have to get the little dudes to the exit.
The only violence is when the little guys or the other player gets smooshed by a block I think, its been a long time since I played the game.
Pacman! I am not entirely sure, but I think it was an Atari 2600 where I really enjoyed this on at a similar age
The 2600 version is considered extremely bad. (It's not that bad but it's also not arcade-accurate)
There's a SNES version of Ms. Pac-Man which is extremely good, though.
I have not played it since the beginning oft the 90s, so... perhaps it was Mord enjoyable if you had no alternatives 😉
This is true! If you don't have a frame of reference for what is "good" (or what everyone else considers "good") then who the heck cares, play what you want
R.C. Pro Am
The NES sesame Street games are pretty good.
My youngest loved sesame Street countdown. it was really forgiving and taught her basic platformer mechanics.
Lemmings for Amiga had a 2player split screen mode. Goal is to guide the most lemmings (yours and the other players) into your exit.
Joust. Easily understood game for little ones, and you can discourage player killing.
Ooh. Good one! Joust even gives nice bonus points for managing not to kill each-other.
A bunch of arcade games become much more friendly to kids with infinite continues, shmups, fighters, brawlers, etc but for those you'll need to filter on violence. I'd probably also avoid anything RPG or story heavy.
My picks would be Bubble bobble, Kirby on SNES, ice hockey on NES, Mario 1-3, super Mario kart, Tetris, monkey ball, Dr Mario. For Sega Sonic 1-3 & knuckles, ecco, robotnik's mean bean machine, Alex kidd, outrun
Bubble Bobble is one of my favourite retro multiplayer games since it has both players playing simultaneously (not each take a turn/hand off the controller) but might still be a bit difficult for a 5 year old 🤔
Edit: Tetris & Dr. Mario for the SNES might also work
Dr Mario? My 3 yo wanted me to play Dr Mario while looking around in the n64 thing on switch. The game totally crushed me. Maybe 5 year olds are better at it than 40 year olds 😂
Nah. I played the crap outta Bubble Bobble around that age. Some of my best early memories involve playing Bubble Bobble on NES with my parents after dinner every night. Had all the level codes jotted down on a sheet of notebook paper, including all the lettered levels.
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Sonic 2. Make him be tails. As is tradition.
Honestly? This is a great, low stakes way of letting him get the feel for the game without feeling like he's not "helping".
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Hard to beat Super Mario Brothers. I tried other classics, bunch of arcade games, but my son never liked them. Ms. Pac-Man might work. The big hit with us was Wii sports.
TMNT Turtles in Time on SNES. Its a fun game and kids can button mash, and turtles are still relevant today. Puzzle games like tetris can be good for using the brain. There were a ton of puzzle games in the snes era, like bust a move (puzzle bobble), yoshi's cookie, puyo puyo (kirby's avalanche), and many more.
I would mostly avoid NES because it looks really dated, aside from a handful of the real classics like Super Mario Bros 1 & 3.
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Sonic 2.
Controlling Tails can be good fun if you’re very young and don’t fully know what you’re doing!
Can be hard keeping both characters on screen at times though.
Actually Sonic 3 is a slight improvement in this regard once you get the hang of things - Tails can be more helpful, and carry Sonic to higher ledges
Kirby Superstar (SNES) is great for this, I play it with my 5-year-old. The second player plays as the "helper" character, and when they die, Kirby can create them again. It effectively plays like a "buddy mode." That game is also one of my all-time favorites just for what it is, so I'm a bit biased.
You both can play Goof Troop. It's a Co-op game with Goofy and Max as protagonists, it's very funny.
Lots of other great suggestions. But I do think the consensus is multiplayer games with coop.
Konami beat ‘em ups like TMNT, The Simpson, Xmen would be great.
I’m also going to throw in Party games or kart racers, CTR and Mario Kart of Mario Party or Crash Bash would also be great
That said Pokémon might be a nice option too though not sure how you’d play that together.
Or edutainment like Gizmos and Gadgets or Jumpstart
A c64 emulator? Then basically anything, LOCO maybe?
Super Mario World, Battletoads
That's easy. Daggerfall.
"Toejam and Earl: Panic on Funkotron" (Genesis) has a very well designed "little kid mode" in the options, and it's still really fun.
Edit: Example regarding violence - you get to throw jars at humans to trap them for transport back to earth. And you need to watch out for bowling balls falling out of trees.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Little one can be Tails and play coop.
Goof Troop, for SNES.
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