Another visitor! Stay a while… stay forever!
Video games and social networking sites have been blamed for a shocking rise in cases of rickets in children.
Er, no. Bad parenting which allows kids to sit for hours playing video games and using social networking sites is to blame for a shocking rise in cases of rickets in children.
I only mention this because I know someone somewhere will call for something to be banned to solve the problem.
For nostalgia’s sake, I’ve just installed an Atari 2600 emulator and fired up Pitfall II.
I played through the whole game in less than 15 minutes! This surely cannot be the same game that made my 6-year-old self weep in frustration? The game which made me howl with horror as I neared the end and the much sought after perfect score, only to hit a scorpion at the last second and get sent back to the last restart point, shedding points as I went? This certainly isn’t the game which caused me to throw the mother of all temper tantrums when I reached Quickclaw the cat, only to discover I’d forgotten the Raj diamond and would have to go back through the maze for it.
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
I bought the catchily-titled Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain?. After doing the tests, which involved shouting the names of colours into the DS microphone (this is not a game to play on a crowded train), the titular Japanese chappy, appearing via a slightly scary-looking 3D avatar, breezily informed me that my brain age was… wait for it… 50!
Yes, fifty. Five-oh. Half a century. 2×25. Clearly that hour I spent watching BBC Three the other night has killed my brain beyond all hope of repair. Actually, Brain Training is quite good fun, and it uses the features of the DS well. You write your answers using the stylus and, as mentioned above, it has voice-recognition as well. The good news is, after 2 days of hard graft, I’m now down to 41! Hurrah! Don’t ship me off to the old people’s home just yet.