It didn't take long for us, a couple of joystick-impaired adults, to appreciate the skill involved in attempting to master these silicone worlds. Enthusiasts for this sport would likely claim patience and determination as positive by-products of this endeavor. Perhaps there is some creativity involved too, although in popular "role playing" games, the player is merely following a trail of clues along a path plotted by a programmer. One thing is for certain, just picking up the joystick has the ability to fast forward time.

I remember how enthralling those 1980's "high resolution" two-dimensional games were. So it's no surprise to me that today's ever-increasing technologies, promising even more enticing photographic three-dimensional experiences in the future, have had such a hypnotizing effect. After all, I spent the equivalent of a nice Hawaiian vacation purchasing my Intellivision.

But what about children who begin immersing their minds in these artificial worlds at an early age? Are there consequences? Gloria DeGaetano, M.Ed. brings together research in her article "Visual Media and Children's Attention Spans," and argues that the fast pace of the action and rapidly changing images of video games and television promote the development of some brain systems, but at the expense of others. This implies permanent developmental modifications especially in regards to the length of a child's attention span for those children who play or watch more than two hours per day.

Speaking of paying attention, another challenge we faced was choosing games from a huge selection, which a trip to any local video rental shop or electronics store will attest to. It didn't take more than a glance to realize they don't build 'em like they used to. For instance Lara Croft, the little woman on the front of the Tomb Raider box was nothing like the damsel in distress on my Intellivison version of Donkey Kong. When they said three-dimensional, they really meant it.

Today's video games look more like Saturday morning cartoons, with the best ones resembling the movies from which they are often based. You can also judge a lot about video games from their covers, especially if you study the packaging to find the industry rating provided for all video games sold in North America (check www.esrb.org for more information).

For our reviewing purposes, it seemed logical to adopt a similar process to the one we use for selecting our movies. Products labeled EC (Early Childhood), E (suitable for Everyone) or T (Suitable for Teens -- 13 years and over) will be our focus. Anything designated M (Mature -- 17 years and over), or AO (adults only) is considered by the industry to be unsuitable for young people, and we can't imagine we would contradict their opinion on this matter.

Despite the diverse assortment, we discovered all games fell into one of three categories: Educational, simulation, or entertainment. There are virtually no educational games available for stand-alone platforms (like the Sony Playstation or the Nintendo), although there are many made for the PC and Mac platforms. Simulation games are available for either system, with sport games being the main genre. But without question the largest variety of games are those classified as entertainment, which dominate the options for stand-alone platforms.

While the boxy graphics on my Intellivision only held my interest for a couple of years before it was stowed in a closet, a whole new generation of children have grown up with these high resolution surround sound entertainment games as their playmates. Typically they are based on scenarios of "find the token, redeem the token, move to the next level." or, "shoot the bad guy, blast the door, shoot the bad guy, blast the door". Unfortunately some titles go far beyond cute dragons and cartoon characters, allowing humans to live their most ugly fantasies.

Milton Chen (Ph.D.) as Director of the Center for Education and Lifelong Learning at KQED in San Francisco made the following comment in 1994. "Most video games have little redeeming social or educational value"². He also quotes Dr. Eugene Provenao of the School of Education at the University of Miami, "We need to eliminate the violence, destruction, xenophobia, racism, and sexism that are so much a part of the world of Nintendo."³ Remember that was six years ago, and the Playstation was just entering the marketplace.