Need for Speed: Most Wanted
From: EA
For: GameCube, PlayStation2, Xbox
Price: $50 USD or $60 CDN
ESRB Rating: Everyone

When you think about it, racing games at are pretty much the videogame archetype. They exemplify all that is fun and exciting about the interactive medium, plus they're gender neutral and trans-generational. We live in a car culture, after all, and who doesn't appreciate the look of a fine automobile? Who hasn't fantasized at least once about putting the pedal to polycarbonate, treating traffic like a personal series of chicanes and rewriting the car chase scenes from the Blues Brothers? Man, woman, adult, kid; racing games are the grandest of equalizers, and Need for Speed Most Wanted is (currently) the grandest of them all, allowing you to rethink the "family outing" be offering 4 player racing as competitive or as leisurely as you please while also, or at least, letting everyone collectively ogle some fine and exceedingly glossy cars.

Dance Dance Revolution Games
From: Konami
For: GameCube, PlayStation2, Xbox
Price: $40 -$60 USD or $50 - $70 CDN
ESRB Rating: Everyone (6+) (No Descriptors) - Everyone (10+) (Mild Lyrics, Suggestive Themes)

Everyone in the house can do competitive cardio with Konami's celebrated DDR games. These games are best played standing up and pounding down on a floor mat controller (bundled or sold separately for $15 - $35 each) while following visual step cues on screen and in sync with a wealth of popular tunes. The latest in the series includes DDR Ultramix 3 for Xbox, DDR Extreme 2 for PlayStation2, and the custom branded Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix for GameCube (published by Nintendo), which is easily the most wholesome of the bunch with all those cheesy Nintendo tunes disco-fied while you and the chortling-fatheads bust moves and stomp Goombas in a musical adventure setting.

Karaoke Revolution Party
From: Konami
For: GameCube, PlayStation2, Xbox
Price: $40 - $55 USD or $45 - $60 CDN
ESRB Rating: Everyone (10+) (Mild Lyrics, Suggestive Themes)

Though some will deny it to no end, everyone is a Karaoke singer at heart. Getting scored on you vocal prowess - tone, pitch, cadence - in Konami's phenomenal Karaoke Revolution games makes it all embarrassingly competitive and hard to put down once you've got the show on the road - or in the house, as it were - with up to eight players in a virtual Household Idol-type contest. Though available in numerous volumes, the latest version, Karaoke Revolution Party, boasts a whopping 50 karaokable tunes and incorporates a dance mat peripheral, optionally, which adds footwork scoring to the mix.

Eye Toy Kinetic
From: Sony
For: PlayStation 2
Price: $50 USD or $50 CDN
ESRB Rating: Everyone (6+) (Mild Lyrics)

Similarly, get the whole house off the couch and do the interactive fitness thing with Eye Toy Kinetic for PlayStation2. An impressive blend of motion sensor technology and genuine exercise routines covering cardio, combat, calisthenics, and yoga. It's a lot cheaper than a personal trainer but with about as much potential - and less embarrassing when it asks you your age, height and weight. Think workout tapes in the VCR of yore, but now it's you on the screen (sometimes), following trace patterns or kicking at virtual icons that shatter on contact. Through the Eye Toy device (bundled), Kinetics actually monitors your one off workouts, custom routines or full 12 week programs and tracks and graphs your progress.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
From: Buena Vista Games
For: GameCube, PlayStation2; Windows PC, Xbox
Price: $44 USD or $54 CDN
ESRB Rating: Teen (13+) (Fantasy Violence)

Based on the amazing new film of the same name, obviously, complete with eye-popping visuals and a ton of artistic merit, Chronicles of Narnia is a stock but solid representation of the action-adventure genre. Rated Teen for Fantasy violence, the game is plainly too intense for really young gamers, but mostly innocuous for everyone else in the house. What's more, the game allows a second player to jump in a join the action already in progress at any time, jump out again when the toast pops up or the laundry beckons while the original player carries on with the ogre trashing and Minoboar bashing.

Mario Party 7
From: Nintendo
For: GameCube
Price: $50 USD or $50 CDN
ESRB Rating: Everyone (6+) (Comic Mischief)

Parents lacking the time along with kids lacking an attention span will nevertheless find unending entertainment in Mario Party 7. It's mainly played like a virtual board game, where most squares activate some sort of event, usually a half-minute, button-mashing "mini game" that plays fast and whimsical (and can also be played in bunches separately, without the board). Various settings let you play as a duo or threesome against others or the computer, or in a one, two, three, or four-person free-for-all. Loads of harmless, hectic fun and a testament to Nintendo's unique take on what videogame are - or should be - all about.

From Russia with Love
From: EA
For: GameCube, PlayStation2, Xbox
Price: $40 USD or $50 CDN
ESRB Rating: Teen (13+) (Suggestive Themes, Violence)

Though rated Teen for suggestive themes and violence, parents old enough to remember the James Bond franchise at its best, when Sean Connery starred, can now kick it with their older kids who might not even know there's more than one double-oh in From Russia with Love. Game play is standard 3rd-person action-adventure stuff - gadget assisted sneaky spy action, intrigue and berserker shooting - but graciously easy and retro flavored, complete with Sean Connery's smokey cool voicework and trademarked quips, "sonic cufflinks" and that pimped out Aston Martin. All told, a great generation-gap filler.

bEqual DVD Trivia Games
From: b-Equal
For: DVD Player
Price: $30 USD or $36 CDN
ESRB Rating: Everyone (6+)

You might be surprised to learn that you already own a game system; it's cleverly disguised as your DVD movie player. It and an interactive trivia game from b-Equal - played with your remote control - let's the entire family compete on equal terms thanks for some fairly solid "leveling" technology that monitors skill or knowledge levels and adjust subsequent questions accordingly. Look for Madagascar Animal Trivia, Shrek's Totally Tangled Tales, The History Channel Presents The Bible and Santa's Trivia DVD Game, each with an obvious theme and all offering rock solid family fun.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire
From: Senario
For: TV Sets
Price: $40 USD or $50 CDN
ESRB Rating: Not Rated

A completely self contained game system, Who Wants to be a Millionaire lets you do the interactive trivia thing game show style, complete with second guesses and "lifelines" (except with up to 4 people chiming in on individuals controllers, instead of just one player and a bunch of anxious bystanders). Though there are thousands of questions housed on board, it's not something you're going to play religiously every day, but for socials occasions and family gatherings, it's the bomb. Sure beats charades, at least.

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