Video Games

How many of us harbor a secret festering of envy for Howard Phillips, 29, suburbanite, husband and father? He commutes 15 miles to his office outside Seattle every day, picks up some coffee in a Styrofoam cup and settles down to the nine- or 10-hour grind. Playing games. Every morning he finds video games on his desk, games that he has to play, usually for hours, to discover whether he likes them. He must continually ask himself the same question: "Am I having fun?"

Mark Chavez is neither a fighter nor a superhero. He performs no back flips or terrifying jabs. And he carries no weapons. But he's singing now of the ultimate martial arts battle, standing with his band Adema at the center of a live multimedia fight fantasy, shouting from the stage grim warnings about imaginary enemies to a crowd thick with video gamers. The song is "Immortal," Adema's brutal rock theme to Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, the next title in the popular Midway Games series making its debut at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3)

We've relished the Pepsi vs. Coke Challenge, pondered the merits of Reebok vs. Nike, argued between Ford and Chevy trucks. This fall, we'll be confronted by more than $40 million in advertisements for a new generation of video games. And upstart Sega's advertising blitz goes one-on-one against Nintendo. So we'll just have to decide which of the three 16-bit video game systems is the one we can't live without. Will it be Nintendo's new Super NES - just arriving on store shelves priced at $199 and positioned as a "complement" to the extremely popular, but long- in-the-tooth, 8-bit NES system?

Do video games cause epileptic seizures? That was the question British researchers asked themselves following Christmas 1994, when computer games were a popular gift and families and the press reported a surge in seizures. Last week, at the International Epilepsy Congress, British researchers presented the results of one of the most thorough studies ever done on the subject. What they found was that TVs and computer games can trigger seizures under certain conditions, in a very small percentage of people.

If you're waiting for something with a name like Gulf War or Saddam Slayer to reach the home video-game market or the video arcade any time soon, don't hold your breath. The top four manufacturers of video and arcade games - Nintendo, Sega, Atari and NEC - say they have no plans to capitalize on the war in the Persian Gulf by introducing Desert Storm games. "I don't think it's in good taste, personally," says Ken Wirt, vice president of home entertainment for NEC Technologies Inc. "Besides, it takes anywhere from nine to 12 months to develop a good video game.

Rosanne Corcoran's thumbs fly around the purple GameCube controller at warp speed. "Gotcha!" she gloats, as her alter ego, Bowser, throws Mario out at third in an intense game of Mario Superstar Baseball in the family room of her Trappe home. "Darn," mutters 8-year-old Rosemary Corcoran, staring at the 52-inch TV. Her fingers mash buttons as she scrambles to help Mario recover. Rosemary really wants the bragging rights that will accompany this win. Rosanne, you see, isn't just another child glued to a console.

The Pentagon has launched a $13 million marketing experiment at the Franklin Mills Mall in Northeast Philadelphia. It's an effort to sell the Army as a brand, like Disney, and it could one day be replicated in malls all over America. It's called the Army Experience Center, and it was recently confronted by 200 angry citizens from around the mid-Atlantic region, seven of whom were arrested. Their beef was the center's use of tax dollars to assemble what amounts to a sophisticated trap.

Hey, vidkid. Flick on the old TV and get ready to play a fast, giddy, desperate game of Who Gets the Billions in the wild and crazy video-games industry. That's right, video games. You know, the things you popped into your video system in the early '80s and played on your TV - until you and millions of other vidkids got bored and sent the industry into a tailspin. Well, vidkid, that's changed. The most dramatic nose-diver in the history of the electronics industry is making the most dramatic comeback since Lazarus.

Twenty years ago, in the nation's most popular video game, players controlled a little yellow circle named Pac-Man, which roamed around a maze eating dots while battling colorful blobs named Inky and Blinky. In the best-selling and most widely rented game of the 2002 holiday season, a player assumes the role of a drug dealer and car thief who is rewarded for committing crimes. By pressing the proper buttons on a Sony PlayStation 2 controller, the player can hire a prostitute, then kill her to get his money back; or assault a pedestrian with a golf club, carjack the ambulance that comes to save the victim, and use the vehicle to run over police.

Like a cross between the robot-hustling Jawas in "Star Wars" and Santa's little helpers, Todd Tuckey and his small staff work day and night, six days a week, rebuilding and refurbishing arcade classics like Pac Man, Centipede, Defender and Galaxian. Tuckey's TNT Amusements is selling more video games than ever before. And he's selling these games for twice as much as he was two years ago. But no one seems to be complaining. Business is so good, in fact, that he's stopped advertising and at times actually turns prospective customers away.