Well, my son is 6 years old (5 years, 10 months). I have the cabinet up and running and he loves it. The problem is, kids have a short attention span. So my son has to like a game immediately or he just does not like it and will not retry it no matter what I say to him. Some games he does like though. So, what advice can you provide and what games do your young ones (6 years old or so) like?
ADVICE 01:
Some issues are .... too many games available. So, if you haven't set things up yet, only give your kids 5 games at most to choose from. Otherwise impatience can cause big problems with a child trying to find a game that he really really likes. But with 5 games, he or she will try to play one game and get better at it in theory.
ADVICE 02:
I keep telling him to play pac-man but he doesn't understand the idea of beating a high score. Kinda commonsensical I suppose but when scores like 100,000 can be made in various games, the scores are high enough that he has no concept of what the numbers mean. So, while getting a high score is important to slightly older children, it is not important to the very young.
ADVICE 03:
Games with 2 or fewer buttons are best. This is a generality but with small hands, young kids can't be 6 button button smashers yet.
GAMES THAT WORK:
So far, two games are very enjoyable to my son:
Super Mario 64 (For N64) ... he just likes running around. An analog stick is needed though.
The Simpsons (Arcade) ... he hasn't played it on his own but he and I did play it all the way through! With just punch and jump for buttons,
GAMES THAT KINDA WORK:
Bump and jump .... He likes it but refer to impatience comment above. He will not play it for more than 1 minute before getting upset.
CONCLUSION:
Please add observations and game suggetions.