Do Over: Mortal Kombat 3

For as long as there have been violent video games, there have been hand-wringing numpties complaining about them. From the days of running down pixels pedestrians in Death Race, our moral guardians have been foretelling the end of childhood as we know it, predicting that reverence for one’s elders will be replaced by a lawless dystopia where teenagers roam in vampiric gangs, hacking the heads off clergymen and razing libraries to the ground. There have been a lot of video games that shocked and upset conservative non-gamers, but not many as successful as the Mortal Kombat franchise. I was far too young to play Mortal Kombat and its sequel. I was still too young to play Mortal Kombat 3, which was plastered with warnings about its fantastical gore and vicious objectives , but this time, I was old enough to want it. And once I got my mitts on it, … There’s more

Do Over: Gauntlet.

When I were a lass, there used to be one of those multi-choice consoles in the local Supermacs (yes, Supermacs. I’m a proper culchie Culch.ie), to which you could theoretically feed your pocket-money in return for a cheerful selection of the games of the time. I say theoretically because, as one of the games was Super Mario 3, chances of the player exercising their right to choose were slimmer than a hipster Luigi. You’d slot your 50p in, tease a level of Mario out of it, get cocky, fall down a hole, add another 50p, and before you knew it, puberty had taken hold and you’d missed the entire summer season of Knight Rider. But I was never one for respecting theory. I didn’t even turn up for my Leaving Cert chemistry exam. So, while I played far, far more than my fair share of Super Mario 3, I frequently … There’s more

Do Over: Paperboy

Video games are not just for children. One might expect that every lost nunky knows that, these days, but there’s a surprising amount of supercilious arses that won’t admit it. Firstly, games have become very rapidly more sophisticated – imagine Pong aficionados, back in the ‘70s, getting an eyeful of something like Red Dead Redemption – and grown-ups appreciate the finer things in life. And secondly, of course, the kids who jumped on mutant mushrooms with Mario, and beat competitors off their bikes with cattle prods in Road Rash, are now twenty and thirtysomethings with their own mortgage arrears. There weren’t a huge amount of parents playing video games in the early ‘90s, but there bloody well are now (especially considering that you can have virtual affairs in Fable III and get virtual lapdances in GTA). Fable III. Romantic. I say this because the notion that one plays video games … There’s more