BOWLING FOR EUROCORP

Videogames have been controversial since the early 1970s. Ever since Atari decided to build an arcade cabinet where the joysticks were replaced by pink domes designed to look like boobs which the players... twisted around? (Fact-checks doubtfully... yep, it’s true)... certain types have made it their mission to tell us videogames will destroy the Earth.

But grotesque torture game Chiller was a 1986 arcade cabinet, and Death Race only had stick-figures, so proper ranting-in-the-press controversy had to wait for 1992, which hit the moral majority with the double-punch of Doom and Mortal Kombat.

One of the clearest signs of gaming’s coming-of-age as an art-form was when it took over from “violent movies” as the go-to scapegoat. You