My Kingdom For a Controller

We all know kids hate learning. Sure, we could make it fun and interesting, but what's the point of that. Kids need to force fed the driest, most mundane minutae about things like history and then we'll test them on their ability to spew forth the smallest and least important facts. At least that's how we did it in the Old School Daze.

But some genius has the idea that we can trick kids into learning Shakespeare with a video game.

The best way to learn anything about Shakespeare is to read the play. Don't ever let it be read allowed in school. Everyone read quietly to themselves. And don't even think about going to see a live performance or even, heaven forbid, a DVD of a performance. Nope, make those kids sit there, read quietly to themselves and then pick up a Cliff's Notes to figure out what the hell just happened.

That's how Shakespeare got rammed down my throat. So while I have some slight appreciation for The Bard fostered by my English teacher, we got stuck reading all the weird stuff: the histories and the tragedies. To this day I still don't understand Romeo and Juliet, but I get West Side Story.

So to help the kids get their leanin' on, I came up with a few video game titles that will help them be a bit more culturally rounded:

• Super MacBeth Brothers
• Falstaff's Funktastic Free For All
• Prospero's Perilous Party
• Puck Parappa the Rappa
• Romeo's Radical Racing
• Juliet's Jazzy Jumping Jamboree
• Shylock's Shifting Shekels
• Hamlet's Harrowing House of Horrors
• Guitar Hero Goneril
• Edgar's Exciting Exposition
• Iago's Imminent Implosion
• Halo Horatio
• Super Sebastian the Hedgehog

More likely these whippersnappers would just rather get all stabby on Caesar while they slowly snuck up on him from behind.