In the days before laptops, video games for me pretty much reached the apex in the Space Invaders/Asteroids era, and I never played them at home. I played them in bars, where it was a good way a) to kill time and b) avoid being stinking drunk by only 9:30pm. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, especially if one of them is constantly wrapped around a twelve-ounce Budweiser.
Of course, once one outgrows the bar scene which I plan to do any day now many of the things associated with it begin to lose their luster as well. I can’t shoot pool nearly as well as I used to, not that I was any sort of Mosconi Fats to begin with, but that is not the point.
But I am totally lost in today’s laptop gaming world. Nor do I own an X-Box, Playstation, or Wii (which looks to me like a misspelled abbreviation of World War II). I know nothing of controllers, game pads, or joysticks.
When I first got started on laptops, Tetris was all the rage. I tried it a few times, but soon lost interest. Then along came Solitaire. Vegas Solitaire. Vegas 3-Card Solitaire!
I was hooked. My co-workers and I set up marathon games on the single laptop in our workspace,...