As some students tapped keyboard keys in a computer lab yesterday, across the hall Audrey Romano was jamming on the multi-colored fret buttons of a plastic guitar.

"I don't really play guitar for real, and it really makes me feel like I'm playing guitar," Romano, administration information services multimedia specialist, said of Guitar Hero II, one of several games on display at the Nonviolent Video Games Expo in the Information Sciences and Technology building yesterday.

The exhibition of kid-friendly games was sponsored by the Magazine of IST (MIST), the IST Solutions Institute and Best Buy.

A number of games featured non-traditional control methods, from Donkey Konga's bongos to karaoke-simulator SingStar's microphones.

Tracy Ray, a Penn State administrative assistant, watched two people playing Dance Dance Revolution, stomping on dance pads in time with electronic arrows scrolling up a TV screen.

"I had no idea that anything like that was out there. I think I might get it," she said as she watched the dancers. "I had no idea that there were these things available besides the hand controls and the shoot-em-up military games that my husband plays."

Romano said she started playing Dance Dance Revolution as a fun way to get in shape.

"I picked it up because I wanted to exercise," she said.

Ed Ladyka, Best Buy media supervisor, said a lot of customers are concerned about the content of the games they buy for their children.

He also said many nonviolent games, such as Big Brain Academy for Nintendo DS, can appeal to nontraditional video game audiences.

"A lot of nurses from the hospitals have come in and are buying it themselves," he said. "The nurses say it helps fight off Alzheimer's."

Some multiplayer online games were also on display, such as Club Penguin and Disney's ToonTown.

"Toon Town's sort of a World of Warcraft, except you're throwing pies," instructional designer Stevie Rocco said.

Amy Garbrick, an instructional designer, demonstrated a portion of the game in which a group of cartoons fight off an enemy with an arsenal of squirt guns, causing the enemy to blow up. "That's the most violent it gets, in terms of people exploding," she said.

Brad Roth (junior-information sciences and technology) was playing Viva Piñata, a game in which players attempt to raise a virtual society of paper-maché animals, on Xbox 360.

Roth said while he does enjoy violent video games, he liked the idea of the expo as a way to broaden people's perceptions of what kind of games are available. "Not all video games are just trying to shoot people in the head," he said.