Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual

Trigger Happy

Home Video Game Software,” in which respondents were asked what kind of games they would like to see. Girls of 7 to 12, for example, would like “a chatting game,” while 16- to 18-year-olds envisage “a game in which a user creates various stories and can be a leading role.” As with so much else, the potential success of both types of posited game of course depends on massive advances in computer artificial intelligence. (These Japanese women, it seems, would also prefer to use skills they already possess—say, those of conversation—in a videogame context, rather than learn a complex and hermetic set of rules that applies to one game, or one genre only.)

But dissatisfaction with current videogame abilities isn’t monopolized by women. Male gamers, too, always want the next game to be better than the last one, to be doing something that was technologically unimaginable six months ago. This often means that they appear to be happy with a faster, prettier driving game. But is that really what they want, or is it just what the developers feed them?

The only thing we can be sure of for the moment is, reassuringly, that quality will out—that “gender” differences are dissolved in the face of a truly great game, such as Mario 64 or Final Fantasy VII (the latter

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