People say that computer and video games don't cause violent behaviour. I'm inclined to agree. However, they do cause frustration, as evidenced by the corner of this Game Boy Advance.
Yes, they are teeth marks. The perpetrator has a maximum of four hours access to the Game Boy at weekends, with no more than one and a half hours at any one session. And yet Pokemon Emerald drove him to this. Some might say four hours of Pokemon would drive anyone to a biting frenzy, which is a shame, because it all looks so fluffy when you see the cartoons (if a bit sick making, the Pokemon vs Pokemon clone fight at the end of The First Movie is nauseating beyond belief. If you don't want to steamroller the TV whilst watching, you're either a: a bit young, b: soppy beyond belief or, c: don't know what a steamroller is. Given that the UKTV history channel shows Fred Dibnah documentaries on constant rotation, I find this unlikely).
It does drive the obsession, though, and little kids love collecting, especially boys. The other big obsession in our house is Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. (I think the exclamation mark is obligatory.)
My friend Lee from Tokyo Times very kindly sent my son a pack of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards from Japan. Even though he can't read the kanji script, junior already knew the western names for about 80% of the cards. Now that's devotion, but understandable to someone who still remembers most of the room names from Jet Set Willy. You can see how stuff like this gets labelled as 'evil' or 'wrong' when it's all they talk about at school. But it's just kids. If they weren't collecting Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, it would be football cards (somehow seen as more healthy, as opposed to actually playing the game, which they could be doing instead of hunched in a corner of the playground haggling over a foil Wayne Rooney*), or, pogs, Top Trumps, or whatever comes along next.
Speaking of which, Autumn is here, so they've all ditched their card collections and are hoovering up all the conkers in the local wood. So all the talk is of sixers, twentyers and soaking in vinegar versus leaving on the windowsill pre-string as the best hardness technique.
Some things never change.
*At one stage I have it on good authority the foil Wayne Rooney was worth an 1-Pod Shuffle (about 45 dinner tickets in old money).
1 comment:
Some impressive gnashers your boy has there, Paul.
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I used to regularly abuse my old PlayStation 1 controller during bouts of the original Tomb Raider, especially when Lara Croft went all spasticated and refused to crouch, jump, grab and instead walked into a wall and went "no" repeatedly.
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Nowadays I'm reduced to shouting at anonymous German teenagers whilst playing Battlefield Vietnam.
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