I want more local co-op

I recently spent a great couple of weeks playing videogames with my wife. She's not huge into games, but when she finds one she loves, she gets into it. I cannot tell you how many nights she dominated the TV playing Skyrim on my Xbox 360 and then on my Xbox One. Had we a gaming-quality PC at the time, she would probably have been big into downloading and trying new mods. Incidentally, she was a little unhappy that we didn't have a gaming-quality PC when I told her about the custom quests and so forth that people have created! She has since exhausted Skyrim and longs to play a similar game on her own.

But she enjoys other games, and some of those games bear the LEGO brand. Specifically, we played LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean and LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-7. I was reluctant to play the LEGO games again, especially since I was somewhat disappointed with LEGO Star Wars II on Xbox 360 and just stopped playing that series of games altogether. But we wanted to play something together, and she likes Disney movies, so I decided to give it a go, and I'm very glad that I did.

LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean really is what a LEGO game should be. The screen splits as needed, the two players can explore the area independent of one another until a co-op task is necessary to proceed, and it has plenty of things to unlock to ease progression and encourage replay. Having such a good experience playing and replaying this game with my wife next to each other on the couch, I was willing to purchase LEGO Harry Potter Collection enhanced for Xbox One X on sale for $20. I didn't think it could get much better than LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean, but LEGO Harry Potter really knocked it out of the park. And speaking of parks, part of the enjoyment of the game was in reminiscing about when we flew across the country to go to Universal Studios Orlando to visit the Harry Potter parts of the park. Truly magical.

However, finishing these two games has left a void in our collective gaming lives. The genres that my wife is into are limited, and usually center around exploration. I tried to get her to play Perfect Dark, but about two minutes into the game she asked "Is this it? Just shooting?" We even tried one of the older LEGO games, LEGO Indiana Jones, but it's just not as good as the more recent games, and we both found it to be a chore to play (just like I did with LEGO Star Wars II). We downloaded a demo for LEGO Avengers, but it's just a lot of combat. There is potential for LEGO Jurassic World, but we haven't made a purchase just yet.

Outside of the LEGO games, what exactly are we going to play together? I've tried to interest her in games from Rare Replay, especially arcade Battletoads which I have loved ever since I first played it seventeen or more years ago. She didn't care for it. Shenmue is a single-player experience. She's not interested in Halo and even then Halo 5 has no split-screen option (and the campaign is lame compared to say, Halo 3 ODST). No Gears of War for this girl, she's far more into Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed (which is excellent, by the way).

So I need to find something to play with her, because I really enjoyed sitting on the couch and playing a local co-op game for those few weeks. I want something like her beloved Skyrim that I can play with her. I suppose we could do The Elder Scrolls Online, but I would have to either have us play on two PCs or get another Xbox One, because you can't cross-platform play. That would really be nice though, if I could sit here at the computer and have her play on the big screen (without paying for another Xbox Live subscription). And I get why this type of game isn't exactly built for local co-op, so I'm not bothered that it doesn't include it as an option.

Maybe I need to look more to the past to find those games that we could play together. I recently got Gamecube games running on my Wii U, so maybe something from that catalog? What if I dug out my Sega Saturn and tried a game or two on there? Of course, I can't go too far back, lest she complain about the graphics on my Sega Master System. Hey, what about Donkey Kong Country? I know she isn't great at platforming, but maybe the first few worlds would do the trick. If local co-op is becoming less common, then I'll need to look more to the past than I will the future for great memories I can share with her side-by-side playing games together.