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Show By Janet Wallis A quiet evening playing games Doesn't anyone spend a nice quiet evening playing games anymore? You know, "Checkers" with real checkers. Or "Rook" with real rooks? Or are your evenings like mine? Each family fami-ly member is all caught up in his own flashing, zinging, zapping, zooming electronic marvel. All except me. I'm left out. Electronic games have taken over. Nowadays no one wants to play a nice old-fashioned game of "Go Fishing." Afterall it can't visualize or verbalize or mesmerize. I wonder what "ancient Chinese" think of "new modern" electronic games? The game "Go" started in prehistoric pre-historic China and was originally played with rocks and crossed sticks. Now "Go" sets can cost in the thousands with players made of ivory and ebony and an inlaid gameboard. But the rules are the same. The game is almost impossible with even more combinations than chess. And, so I'm told, infinitely more intriguing. in-triguing. But even "Go" is being threatened. First electronics invaded the old fashioned acrade, then took over the supermarket, and now the home. I seldom see a housewife waste her grocery money on "Pac Man," but there are a lot of other addicts around. Some have become so hypnotized by the electronic wonders that they willingly will-ingly squander all their time, money and energy on them. Parents in a futile attempt to keep their young ones closer to home, have been forced, by necessity, to purchase pur-chase home-video games. These do keep the kids at home for awhile, but when Junior and his buddies bud-dies (and Dad and his buddies) have divided and conquered, its back to the arcades and the supermarket. The next parental pitfall is the home computer. (We fell into that one.) An inexpensive model costs only $500! Plus hardware. Software. Disk drive. Cassettes. Tapes. More "K." New keyboard. And so forth. After a few months with a home computer, I'm convinced that so- meone should organize a compm,, anonymous. The club would notser those who want to break the compu ! habit, because no one ever wantst It would be for addict's wives, motu and others who want to learn ho play second fiddle to a computet I've seen grown men stay upm four a.m. playing "Adventure," 0l to get up the next morning withR. looking like two burnt holes ii blanket, and start all over agi declaring, "Today I'll beat it!" My sister won't visit me any., because her husband upon anil-! locks himself up with the compit! and won't come out for days. Therj of the family is forced to play ' just for something to do. (There soon be an electronic "Uno.") No game is spared electroniciji: not even "Uno." My "computer programmer" has challenged his computer to pt "Go." Together they have slaved si; by side every spare minute forovc year. The last I dared ask him, lhf only had a few more kinks to worker and it's "Go" all the way from rocr and sticks to electronics. (He'd belts hurry, the last "Creative Compute magazine is already offering a soon: be marketed "Go" computer progrs; guaranteed to "challenge the mind In spite of the big hoopla overefe tronic games, I've resisted. I just he, they were not for me. Afterall & don't teach the human race to intera: and that's high on my list. But the other day my teenage s discarded this old calculator which longer beeps and boops and therefore useless. And do you W what? On it is the most fascinatH number game. After at least a tit sand tries, I have finally made: through the first slow series, thenfe fast series, to the "start all ok again." I proudly confess my higt; score has been in the fifty thousai: And I shall continue to hide in 5 bathroom and sneak out of bed af; everyone else is asleep, until I e make it to over the one-hundred ft: sand mark. By then perhaps eve will be ready to take on computerii "Go." |