Oliver Adam’s

WHAT’S ANNOYING HIM Balls to kids’ latest computer games!

AS I’ve been impregnating women for a couple of decades now, I have a wide age range of kids to buy for.

Each passing birthday or Christmas shows just how quickly technology for kids is developing, and to be honest, I can’t keep up.

Keeping up is what got me into this multi-child scenario, but kids’ technology has got me beat, especially when it comes to computer games.

I wouldn’t say my childhood was massively improved by the Binatone TV game I had, with the six “games” built in, but then I don’t see kids being any happier than I was now that they have X-boxes.

One of the my old games involved moving a white line up and down trying to hit a white “ball” (a square dot). If your opponent missed it when the ball eventually got to the other side, you got a point.

Apparently it was “tennis”. There was also squash (the lines were shorter) and football (the dot was bigger). There were a couple of other games, but they all involved white lines and a dot.

Then the ZX Spectrum came out, and the biggest victory wasn’t winning the game but getting the bloody thing to load successfully in the first place.

Tape recorder started, then half an hour of looking at hundreds of different coloured flashing lines, and covering your ears to block out the chaotic, digital screeching noise. It was like your computer was having an orgasm.

But at least once the game had loaded (if it did) you could simply play the sodding thing.

These days games require much more than just the “z” and “x” keys for left and right, and the space-bar to fire. Now you need about five hands and three brains.

If you want to play tennis on your TV now you have to train your player, book him in for physio, manage his diet, choose the right trainers… You need a bloody sports science degree.

Luckily, they’re not difficult to come by, and you can do one in almost the same time it used to take to load a Spectrum game, but it’s still an unnecessary hassle.

Shooting games are equally baffling. The array of different weapons, ammo, armour and other gear.

You might as well just go the one step further and join the army for real. Or visit America. And then the Wii came out. When I first heard mention of the Nintendo Wii I thought that it was something you could get a girl in Thailand to do for $10.

Turns out it was the first time you could actually use the movement of your body to play a game and was heralded as a great leap in game playing. But it wasn’t. The white, square Wii looks like the white dot on the Binatone, and is no more useful.

Now, I have a white games console that can be found in the boot of my car rather than under the telly. Playing it involves physically moving also. It’s called “a ball”.

The park has very realistic 3D graphics, my opponents look amazingly realistic, and it runs really smoothly with no loading time.

So Christmas is sorted. Kids – if you ask for a games console... you’ll get a football. A cheap white one. And just be grateful it’s not square.