Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual

Trigger Happy

very “real”-looking people; for the game to remain innocent, visceral fun, they must remain partial symbols, retain that “computer look.”

Modern videogames are in this way more seductive than ever, as thanks to their visual enhancement they challenge us doubly. The same gameplayer who couldn’t help just watching Lara for a while also mused that she found it more disturbing when Lara died than when Pac-Man died, because she saw the character drown in a “realistic” fashion. Modern games have the potential, as yet largely unfulfilled, to deliver a richer overall experience to the player.

The history of videogames’ iconic powers, their increasing ability to draw a pretty world, has opened up new potential for semiotic richness. But good graphics cannot work alone: what matters in modern gameplay terms is the interaction of all three types of sign. A gorgeous game with nothing interesting to do is just a bad piece of software.

As videogames deliver richer visual experiences, it seems, ever more people will be willing to pick them up and play. A good modern exploration game such as Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation (Lara’s last outing on the original PlayStation) depends very heavily in this way on its iconic attractiveness. Jeremy Smith of

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