Q. Does playing violent computer games make you violent?
A. Yes but due to the sedentary nature of games playing you will be unable to act on it as your limbs have withered away. (The exception being the Nintendo Wii which is creating a generation of ultra violent super humans with a penchant for mini-games.)
Of course that’s only partly true. All games immediately make you commit impossible acts of violence and in ten years time anyone that has done their daily Wii fit exercises will find that their joints have turned to dust. However there are far more insidious risks to the well being of a grown man ignoring his wife in order to pretend he is a Chinese woman that can kick very quickly. I may well be the strongest woman in the world but I am also highly suggestible please take heed of these cautionary tales.
1. Jet Set Radio/Jet Set Radio Future
Don’t worry children; this isn’t an admission of wanton graffiti. I would never take a pen to another man’s property especially when I have so many bits of paper to doodle on! As the warning at the title screen says “Graffiti is art BUT graffiti is also a crime!’. It did however encourage me to spend an afternoon trying to learn how to rollerblade using a siblings pair of rollerblades. Were they too small for my freakish size eleven feet? Almost certainly and I’m sure I looked quite the fooligan. Luckily I have always been self aware enough to hide my shameful activities and so restricted my Rollerblading career to the downstairs hallway until my skills improved. After three hours I realised that my chronic lack of basic motor skills had not miraculously dissipated and threw the rollerblades up some stairs in a huff. Heed my words; playing Jet Set Radio will invariably result in an attempt to ‘grind’ something.
2. Rock Band/Singstar/Dance Dance Revolution/Space Channel 5/Every other rhythm game
Not only am I tone deaf I am actually deaf. (I am not actually deaf) so whenever I try to interpret music through instruments such as Ukelele, Recorder or voice the results are always the same i.e. cacophony. However whenever I play music games on the easy levels (and I always play them on the easy levels) I am constantly told that I have the qualities of a superstar. Singstar tricks me into believing I can sing the hits of Tears for Fears pitch perfectly, Dance Dance Revolution tells me that my penguin like movements are hot urban dance moves that could land me a part in the footloose remake, Space Channel 5 tells me that following around women in mini skirts and copying their actions will have no negative consequences and Rock Band: The Beatles has convinced me that not only could I be in the Beatles I actually WAS in the Beatles. A little positive reinforcement is always a good thing but American women constantly saying “That was a great song, you rock” can only lead to the kind of madness where you end up on the X-Factor insisting that you can sing.
Simon SCOWL! (Because he does a lot of scowling): “I’m sorry but you’ve had your chance and it was literally worse than listening to a man being pushed into a road cone against his will.”
Irish Man 33:“You seem like a nice guy but your performance has turned everyone in the room epileptic”
Cheryl Cole: “No one escapes from Cheryl Tweedy’s farm!”
This is what Harmonix and Konami are trying to do to me with their plastic guitars and master recordings. It wasn’t so bad when all the songs were made up. No one ever went on X-Factor doing a rap about selling things at a flea market. (Although if they did they would immediately win)
3. Jet Set Radio/Jet Set Radio Future
How many crimes can one game commit? More importantly how many games can one crime commit? The answer to both is at least two. Not counting the time the cock of Meadowhall upper floors forced me to draw a Z for Zorro on a school desk I still haven’t committed any acts of public drawing. However Jet Set Radio did make me think that I was pretty damm cool with my newly found obscure Japanese musical tastes. What a dashing figure I might strike up and down the discothèques of the land. “Belle and Sebastian more like Follow the Caspian. Why don’t you try some Hideki Nagamuna it’s so obscure that no one has ever heard of it. How do I know about it? Oh I just know things about music, I once thought about being in a band. What albums do I recommend…oh well..hmm.”
That kind of conversation never happened because I didn’t speak to anyone at all between 1993 and 2006. However just imagine if that conversation had happened, I would have found myself feeling like a bulldozer trying to catch a butterfly. A pox on both your houses Jet Set Radio, a pox on both your houses.
4. Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver
Is it perfectly acceptable to wander around with a Pokeball shaped pedometer attached to your trouser? The good people at Nintendo seem to think so, but they think that waving your arms around like a lunatic is a good way to play computer games. On both counts they are wrong, your arms will get tired and the pokewalker will fall off and roll under someone’s gate. Maybe instead of counting my steps the people behind Pokemon need to worry about counting the amount of time they have released exactly the same game. How is the man that does the pokerap supposed to cope with over 500 Pokemon? I don’t know, I’m too busy being laughed at by children as I reach under gates.
5. Persona 3
I spent last summer playing Persona 3 and it had a strange and profound effect on my poor branium. I have played a lot of RPG’s and they do tend to tangle themselves into your subconscious due to the sheer amount of time you have to invest in finishing them. I thought that having played through both Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifers Call and Digital Devil Saga part one would prepare me for another nihilist demon summoning experience. I thought I was ready for Persona 3. I was wrong.
You see the problem is that Persona 3 includes elements akin to the dating sims that the Japanese are apparently so fond of. The effects of a simulated teenage social life cannot be underestimated when applied to the fragile emotions of a man who spent those years playing Street Fighter Alpha 3 with a bin bag sellotaped over the window. About halfway through the game I realised that I did not care whether or not the final boss turned up and destroyed the earth but I would literally have thrown myself down a mine shaft (open cast) had I not been able to virtually get it together with the painfully shy student council treasurer Chichiro. I told myself it was just because I wanted to max the social link and unlock Melchizedek the most powerful Justice arcane persona but really it was because I enjoyed chatting to her in the noodle bar. Electronic romance aside, Persona also did a good job of simulating having many friends. How were these friends made? Why they simply keep coming up to you and starting conversations, you don’t even have to say anything back; you need only look vaguely interested. Maybe that’s true in real life, I don’t know as I find it hard to remain interested in what people say to me. All I know is that when I had finished persona I smashed my head against a rock until I forgot my schooldays and then replaced them with memories of playing persona. How did I find a Ramen shop in Barnsley? Mysteries of life my friend. I can only imagine what would have happened if I had access to Persona 3 during my actual school life, more than likely I would have been discovered trying to force myself through the screen of the television in an attempt to visit Polowina Mall. Imagine the cuts I might have received from the cathode ray tube! Even worse I might have attempted to converse with someone, the result would surely have been a glass bottle to the optics. Either way I’m picking glass out of my face and wondering whether I should dump Chichiro for robot girl Aeigis.
6. Final Fantasy X / Shenmue
Imagine having a conversation where everything the person was about to say appeared as subtitles at the bottom of your eye line. Now imagine how frustrating it would be to be able to read what someone was going to say before they had finished speaking but still have to listen to them speak. Now imagine that you could press the b button to skip what they are saying once you have read the dialogue so you only ever hear the first word of a sentence. Now imagine this ability to speed through conversations was mysteriously taken away from you and at the same time people starting saying really boring things instead of telling you where sailors hang out or offering you rides on the shoopuff. The only rational course of action would be to listen to the first syllable, guess the rest and then jab the person speaking in the eye in order to move them on to the next point. Now imagine having to explain this behaviour to the authorities. They would probably have let you off if you didn’t poke them in the eye with a biro when they were telling you off.
7. Jet Set Radio/ Jet Set Radio Future
Dear Sega if you put a keyboard of Japanese characters and a keyboard of English characters as options and let me switch between them willy nilly I will assume that the key on the Japanese keyboard has a corresponding meaning to that on the English one. Therefore in attempting to spell the simple name of Bob I will render the nonsense phrase “KinKi” all over many pictures of the octopus from FFVI. Fair enough leaving pictures of Ultros on aeroplanes was a stupid idea in the first place but I might least have done a bit more research. It was even more shameful than the time I told a coach full of people that Parodius meant ‘Nonesense Fantasy’ in Japanese. When will the evil of futuristic graffiti/rollerblading games be ended?
With this anecdotal evidence I have proved completely that playing video games is probably worse for you than smoking crack with a pipe that is also made of drugs. I would recommend that if you do want to play games you stick to only the ludicrously violent titles such as Modern Duties: Medal Battler Recon where you have no chance of imitating the things you witness unless you are particularly adept at manufacturing semi automatic weapons from household objects. I did once try to build a proximity mine but you could say the whole thing blew up in my face! (Because it did)
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