Mario, get Yer Guns

What are the odds I will go off subject in this post? Still, I will try.  After reading yet another article calling yet another videogame a "burglary sim", I had to put pen to blog.  Why? Because its lazy journalism, sloppy and winds me up. Hell, the same could be thrown at television but for some peculiar reason we don't do that.
I don't watch television but from the clips I've seen on the interwebz and things I hear on forums, nothings changed from when I did used to watch it. Scheming, plots, adultery, revenge, murder, and bloodshed. Its all there, played out by glamorous women and guys with chiselled physiques. Gotta look your best when you're knee deep in sin right?
And so it goes that videogames have followed that same path. Those age restrictions on the box aren't there to make the case look pretty, videogames have matured and its illegal for soft parents to give in ("for ten minutes peace") and buy wee Jimmy a shooter with a bloody big red 18 stamped on the box. Is that ten minutes peace really worth a hefty fine? Dont think it doesn't happen because it does (more often than you'd care to think).
So we have a burglary sim now do we? What about Grand Theft Auto? Armed robbery sim? Dishonored? A murder sim?
These are games fer Crissakes, but the way some journalists describe them make them sound like guides on how to raise hell for real. One of my current favourite videogames is Thief, a game where, yep you guessed it, you skulk around an 18th century London inspired city, pilfering gold watches and clubbing hapless city guards over the noggin. But I don't play the game to train as a cat burglar, anymore than a fan of 24 watches the show in hope of becoming a CIA agent (or whatever the heck Kiefer Sutherland is meant to be).
And what frustrates me more is that I read this on a gaming website not the Daily Mail  (where one expects such petty sniping). Honestly, videogames have become a massive business in these last few years and deal with mature subjects. Can't we be at least as responsible when writing about them?

L'enfant Terrible

VHS Kid X

Hot Scalding

Teenage lads these days have it easy with the rise of this faceless beast we call the internet. Whenever they fancy a gander at some pornography the XXX websites are all here, begging you for attention, simply click the I Am Over 18 button and you are in grot Heaven. Back in my day however (and yes I sound like my grandfather) it was much more difficult. And for a teenage lad of my huge appetite for porn, it wasn't as easy as not bothering. No hurdle was too high in my quest for high heels and sheer stockings. Determined dot com (but without the dot com.)
In those days you either acquired your filth via friends who had gotten hold of their fathers secret stash, stole it from the top shelf of a newsagents or found some hidden in some hedgerow in the countryside (no doubt left behind by some kind hearted, lusty old tramp.) I was quite lucky too in that at 15 I passed for 18 and rented some from the local olde video shoppe. (I also helped out at another video shop and often helped myself to the undercounter stuff when left alone.)