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I remember visiting Japan for the first time in 1999. Of course I wandered in to a video game arcade to check out the scene. I laughed at the poor Japanese and their imitative video games - look, that guy is just touching the controls in the exact way that the machine tells him to! What a retarded game! It's no game at all, he's just mindlessly copying what the machine tells him to do in exact sequence...no more "fun" than working on an assembly line. A children's game, really...we had the same thing called Simple Simon when I was a kid...these Japanese video games even have the same four colors. I mean, there could at least be a dozen colors or something, make it difficult. And the controller shaped like a guitar? Oh man, how pathetic: if you're going to be cool and play the guitar, be cool and learn the goddamn instrument, it ain't that hard. Only Japanese people, with their tolerance of tedium and their relentless drive to copy, could possibly "enjoy" such a "game".

This Christmas, I'm passed out from wine, and when I vaguely become aware, I hear these overplayed classic rock tunes accompanied by clicking. I go out, and sure enough, three family members are staring at the TV, imitating the colors on the screen, each lost in his own world with no communication. Just this eerie clicking, accompanied by this sound that I identified from when I was in marching band and the drummers had practice pads. There is no talking, no rocking out, no jumping around the room flailing at an ax like Eddie Van Halen on coke. Their faces are stone masks of concentration. The song finishes, and my family grins at each other, "Wow, we sure had a fun time interacting. What a great game that brings us together!"

Shows you how much I know. I also thought "Magic: the Gathering" was a stupid game because it was so wildly unbalanced. Who would want to play that, a game where you can win not by superior skill or even dumb luck, but simply by spending more money than your opponent?

Remember Simon? Just take out the yellow key, and map it onto the three keys of this thing, and you have a little game. On the full keyboard, you could orient the keyboard so there's a person at each side, and map backtick/left shift and backspace/right shift to paddle controls, and have a game of pong between the two sides. Or you could have a whack-a-mole-like game, where keys light up and you have to hit them as quickly as possible. Does anyone else see the great potential here for game developers? I can even imagine games being integrated across the main monitor and the Optimus, sort of like the DS. The only hindrance for these ideas is that the Optimus' keys aren't arranged in a grid, but that can be worked around. This would be a non-issue for, say, Hearn sliding-coin puzzles, which are arranged in arbitrary graph configurations.

I thought my Timex Sinclair was pretty portable.

Carrying around a TV was harsh though.

Timex Sinclair Emulator

Timex Sinclair Picture

I have to agree with you there. If it's gonna include toys, then this and this should have made the list far afront of Elmo.

By the same criteria, even this qualifies.

So I'm fixing the damn link an hit the submit button. Yes, I posted it screwed up. Here it is - really.
click me

I remember this stuff from when I was a kid. It was in a toy called Stretch Armstrong (obligatory link) Soft and pliable when you pull and push him slowly but hit him fast and it hurt like hell. Of course we all ran around demonstrating how soft his was and then getting our buddies to punch him hard. Damn that hurt.

If I install a Fleshlight in my Teddy Ruxpin will Eliza tell me "Not tonight dear, I have a headache"?!!!!

Parappa the Rapper was nothing more than a video-game Simple Simon. Don't know why it appealed to anyone...to call the gameplay "mindless" would be an understatement.