The US army’s foray into violent PC games has been hailed a success. But it didn’t allow for one thing - cheaters

Christopher has been killed in action many times: 305 to be exact. But his most recent death was the last straw. Defending an Alaskan pipeline from terrorist attack, he and his nine-man squad came under fire from a sniper who picked them off, one by one, in just under a minute.

“We were lying on the ground, prone, in thick fog,” he says. “There’s no way he should have been able to shoot us, let alone see us. He must’ve been cheating.”

Published in The Guardian May 03

I produced this back in 2003 for Seethru.co.uk. It’s since become one of the biggest timewasting games on the Net. There’s even a version of it on Facebook called Jetman. Over quarter of a million people play it everyday. I don’t get a penny :(

My hi-score is 2987. See if you can beat it.

Robbings, blackmail, epilepsy, melodrama and chipshops - it’s all here.

In 1978 a small Japanese company called Taito & Midway released a stand up cabinet full of electronics and sporting a bright 14in screen. It was the latest experiment in electronic entertainment. For years, other companies had been toying with the concept of the “video game”, most successfully Atari with its electronic tennis game Pong in 1972. No one, however, had achieved true mainstream success.

So nobody paid Taito’s new gimmick much attention. It was called Invasion Space or Space Invaders or Space Raiders, or something. It was a silly black and white game where you shot aliens in spaceships. It cost an exorbitant 10p to play and had irritating sound effects.

But the world has never been quite the same since.

Published in The Daily Telegraph Dec 98