Video Games

The helicopter hovers over the troubled nation of Sheylan, which is limping from drought and civil war. An aid worker turns to you and tells you to conduct an aerial assessment of the crisis and find those in need of food. You nod to the avatar, hunker down in front of your computer, and move your mouse to guide the chopper and scour the fictional scene. It's a video game - but not just any video game brimming with animated adventure. Food Force is part of a broad genre called serious games, and a niche within it whose mission is social awareness and change.

It was 6 in the morning when Karen Kosoy discovered her kindergartner still glued to the Nintendo game - he'd stayed up all night trying to rescue a legendary princess named Zelda. "My God, he's addicted," she remembers thinking. Jamie Kosoy has his own memory: His mother pulled the plug and threw the video game player in the trash. "The most traumatic moment of my life," he says. By middle school, while friends were playing street hockey outside, Kosoy was rushing indoors to chart their stats on his computer.

Pennsylvania State University Great Valley is an unlikely setting for a summer camp. There's no swing set or baseball field on campus, just two buildings, with a few benches out front for graduate students to take lunch or cigarette breaks during the day. The graduate campus is hosting a summer camp for the sixth straight summer, however, albeit an unusual one. The VideoGame.Net Summer Camp Experience will give sixth through 12th graders a crash course in video-game making through mid-August.

Ah, the holidays. The season of love, joy, peace and Mortal Kombat, Lethal Enforcers and Street Fighter. These last three are the titles of video games sought by many shoppers willing to stand in line under speakers musically proclaiming "good will to man" to get their hands on video games whose labels promise they "show no mercy. " But does all this video violence provoke violence? The verdict is still out. "There are studies," said psychologist Patrick McGuffin, "that say 70 percent of all video games have a violent theme, but there are no studies that have proved that watching violence in any form - video games, television, movies or music videos - causes someone to be violent," said McGuffin, of Upper Providence Township.

Where some people see cartoons, others see modern art. Anime, the genre of animated film that came of age in the 1960s in Japan, has taken its time finding a mainstream American audience. It's a step up from Saturday morning Looney Tunes, and loyal fans have seen its popularity rise in the United States over more than two decades. To bring the anime community in Philly together, a small group of fans is putting on the fourth KosaiKon AniFest at Villanova University's Bartley Hall on Saturday.

About 20 children, chanting and carrying signs demanding the freedom to play video games at the borough's swim club, protested before the start of the Borough Council meeting last night as members arrived. The protesters, members of the swimming and diving team, chanted, "We want our games back," and held up signs that said "Why are you taking away our games?" and "$300 is nuts. " The group was responding to a tax ordinance that the borough recently began enforcing, charging all profitable organizations $300 per mechanical game per year.

This season's blockbuster video games give players the opportunity to hijack cars, mow down the walking undead with heavy artillery, and ogle topless women. But gamers too young for such content may find little else. "I think it's a little bit scary that the best games coming onto the market that we're all talking about are the very violent first-person shooters," said David Walsh, president of the National Institute on Media and the Family. The nonprofit watchdog group released its annual video- game report card yesterday.

Having caused panic, death and devastation in the heartland, I turned my bloodshot eyes and bloodstained claws eastward. I would have the ultimate satisfaction. I would destroy Philadelphia! Would I unleash Snarling George, the gigantic gorilla? Perhaps Lizzie Lizard, that blood-crazed reptile? No. For Philadelphia it would be slavering, befanged Ralph, the raging werewolf. Heh heh heh. The only thing standing in my way was a dwindling supply of quarters. I had ravaged Peoria, Joliet and Chicago and was now roaring and snorting through the hapless hamlet of Kalamazoo.

As Americans become more alarmed by violence and politicians assail those who turn it into entertainment, the industry is taking a second look at its movies, television programs, music and even video games. Yesterday, shortly before a Senate panel began a hearing on the effect of violent or sexually explicit video games, a coalition of 140 manufacturers and distributors offered to set up a rating system. They proposed labels of GA for a general audience including young children; MA-13, for more mature audiences over 13 years of age, and MA-17 for those over 17. "The market does not need and the public does not want another government entity to be created for this purpose," Ilene Rosenthal, general counsel for the Software Publishers Association, said.

The Electronics Boutique in the King of Prussia Mall starts to fill with people, young and old, after 6 p.m. on a weekday, but the two teens in caps and backpacks bypass the multicolored clutter of games and gadgets. They are immediately drawn to the demo screen, where games can be tried free. They pick up a bout begun by the fan before them, and a cartoonish woman, dressed tough but seductive, begins to dart around the screen chased by men in suits. She punches and kicks her attackers as the boys feel out the game.