For shit & giggles last night, I dragged out the Nomad and popped in Gunstar Heroes for a quick play. I knew I’d catch the attention of my 4 year old, who was off in the corner arming his GI Joes for a battle. By the worried look on my Golden Retriever’s face, who was lying in the opposite corner, I imagined a mighty war would soon be under way.

Gunstar Heroes is a Metal Slug-ish type game, that was made for the Sega Genesis(Megadrive). From “go”, bullets fly, bad guys drop and there’s fantastic, over the top explosions. I believe there’s a story line there, but I honestly can’t tell you what’s it about. For me it’s just progressions through the levels and trying in earnest to defeat the boss. Standard stuff, right? Yeah I guess.

Upon hearing the catchy music, gun fire and loud ‘BANGS’, I’ve caught the attention of the little one, who’s already has his cheek pressed up against mine, watching the game unfold.

And then the questions. Oh, many, many questions.

“Who is that , dad?”
“Who is he fighting?”
“What’s that there?”
“Why are they chasing him?”
“Is that GI Joe?”

The last one kind of got me. It’s obvious the main character doesn’t look like GI Joe, nor any of Joe’s friends. But the screen was small enough, and the graphics crude enough, to think “Hey that very well could be GI Joe.”

So as the dog saw his break and bee-lined out the door, I lied to the lad, “Yes son, that’s GI Joe” – But wait, I didn’t lie did I? Games allow you to pretend what you want to pretend. At least the older games were more forgiving. Kind of tough with the new ones, since, well, they look exactly like what they should be looking like. Had I been playing Halo3 on our 50″ HDTV in the family room, the kid would know right away, that’s not GI Joe.