Super Adam : A 2-Year-Old Plays Video Game Near the Level of Many Adults

Adam Knoedler still wears diapers and can barely say Mommy and Daddy. But when the blond toddler--born just two years and three months ago--takes the Nintendo controls, he dodges Venus fly traps, slays fireball-spewing dragons and smashes Mario-eating mushrooms.

Adam’s quick little thumbs have guided him through the complicated, computerized video game called Super Mario Bros. 3, although he sometimes stumbles at the more difficult levels.

“There are probably whole bunches of kids better than him. But for a 2-year-old he is outstanding,” Adam’s mother, Trudi Knoedler, said Thursday at the family’s home near San Gabriel in an unincorporated part of Los Angeles County.

In November Knoedler wrote to Nintendo Power magazine, hoping to help her son--who occasionally plays up to eight hours a day--lay claim to the title of “Mozart of the Nintendo.”

She was prompted to write by recent news reports of another Nintendo prodigy, 2-year-old Lance Smith of the Northern California town of Pittsburg, who holds the unofficial title.

Now comes Adam the challenger.

“It’s pretty amazing,” said Nintendo spokesman Thomas G. Sarris, confirming that Adam and Lance are by far the youngest known Nintendo whiz kids in the nation. He said the starting age of children competing in championship play last year was 7.

The company estimates that 50 million Americans have at one time played the game, and Sarris said it’s not surprising that a few precocious 2-year-olds are coming to public attention.

“We certainly don’t see anything wrong with it . . . as long as there is a healthy balance,” he said. “At that age especially, it would help them develop hand-eye coordination.”

Knoedler takes part of the credit for her boy’s success: She breast-fed him while playing Super Mario.

Now Adam plays night and day, occasionally besting his 8-year-old brother, Erik. He also beats his parents.

“I’ll watch him and pick up strategies,” said his father, a 46-year-old General Mills account executive.

Adam, who can barely speak, lets out an Arsenio Hall-style “hoo-hoo-hoo” and pumps his fist in the air when he works his way through progressively difficult levels of Super Mario 3.

To change his diapers or get him to eat, his parents sometimes must wrest the controls from him. At times, his mother resorts to feeding him while he plays.

“To get him to stop playing, I have to take him out of the house,” said Knoedler, a free-lance writer who said she is merely seeking recognition for her son, not proposing a toddlers’ championship face-off. “I’d much rather that he play this than sit in front of the television all day. I don’t know what he will do with his fabulous hand-eye coordination. I wish he’d become a concert pianist. That’d be great.”

Development of fighter pilot skills is likelier, said Robert Kubey, an assistant professor of communications at Rutgers University. A psychologist, Kubey co-authored “Television and the Quality of Life: How Viewing Shapes Everyday Experience.”

He has been quoted widely on his theories about how video games can elicit a beneficial “flow-state” of mind. But Kubey said he was concerned to hear that Adam plays as much as eight hours a day.

Brian Sullivan, director of television research at the National Coalition on Television Violence in Champaign, Ill., a privately funded research group, raised another concern. He said that many, though not all, Nintendo games expose children to excessive violence.

“These are games which allow children to practice making war and violence on the television screen,” he said. “It has long-lasting effects.”

The Knoedlers express no fear about the violent aspect of the game, but they do acknowledge that Adam’s behavior seems addictive.

“He throws a temper tantrum when he can’t play,” Richard Knoedler said of his son.

“I just don’t want him to become obsessed and neglect a normal child’s development,” he said. As he watched his boy trounce Nintendo characters called “koopas,” the father’s facial expressions ranged from pride to perplexity.

“Is he exceptional?” he said. “I don’t know. But he is as good or better than most adults.”