Hello children!

Today, I'm going to tell you a story, a story of a horrible place, a place empty of happiness, innovation and soul. Are you all sitting comfortably? Good, now, let's begin.

Imagine a world without the humble shoulder buttons on your control pad: the pad is heavy, clunky and has far too many buttons that are too inaccessible to use without causing serious hand cramp. The start and select buttons are squished up against the control pad, so tiny that you cannot press them when you need them �leading to many unnecessary deaths that could have been avoided. On these controllers, bursting with buttons, a thousand grim tears are wept for there is no escape.

Imagine now that this control pad, bereft of shoulder buttons as it is, now also lacks a control stick. Mighty dragons rise from their digital pits to challenge you: you cannot tiptoe past without having to activate the sneak button on the over-laden pad, or even worse, no-one has ever considered that one might want to quietly sneak past a sleeping dragon rather than engaging it with your +10 Sword Of Much Killing. Yes, these controllers, overburdened with the absence of shoulder buttons also make grown men cry, thanks to a lack of analogue sensitivity.

Look upon this control pad for the final time children, for soon we will be moving to another place, but for now, look closely� can you see what else is missing? No? Look even closer, for you will not see it. Instead, pick up the pad, turn it over in your hands; plug it in, start a game, what do you notice? Does it tremble in your hands? Do you feel every blow, every strike of your opponent's sword? No, you do not. This controller, born of the depths of Hell and beyond is without rumble motors as well as shoulder buttons and the all-important joystick!

Steel yourselves, my friends, for now we go even deeper into this terrible place.

Now, imagine that in this terrible place, that the humble platformer had never been born, our runs, our jumps, or worlds, our levels, the terrible guardians that stood in our way� they never existed. Perhaps this is an unfair place; imagine instead that the platform game had been born, but it had never evolved. We are stuck in two dimensions, the only challenge being how long our patience would run before throwing down our control pads in anger and frustration.

But wait! There is a light at the end of the tunnel, for the handheld is still opening up new avenues of exploration and diversity to us! Except� the handheld barely got out of its infancy. Manufacturers believed that it was just a battery-eating fad that would never really take off. So the handheld died, it could not escape from the idea that it was supposed to be a different entity to its console brothers, believing instead that from the very off it should be a rival, rather than working to show that it had a right to exist independent of the rest. In time it could have been an equal to the consoles that sat under the T.V. with their enormous controllers, instead, it tried to run before it could walk. So it ran right into the path of an oncoming truck.

The Black Knight was never stopped here, never defeated by an all-conquering hero: no victory was won through determination, courage and loss. There is no happy-ever-after.

This is a horrible place, isn't it? Let's not stay here any more, because thankfully we do live in a world of shoulder buttons, rumble motors, analogue sticks, handhelds and platformers. Phew! And there's not been a better time to be a gamer; the future is beckoning with the promise of more innovations and new ways to experience games. The DS is sitting proudly next to me, and I've just finished another chapter on Resident Evil 4, later I might have a go on my 360 and play Jak and Daxter. Yep, I foresee a lot of videogames in my future. Yay!

�hmm? Where was this nightmarish land, you ask? Well, nowhere special, just a horrible place, a terrible vision of the way things could have been.

A world without Nintendo.

Iun Hockley
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