Gauntlet has been in my top-ten arcade games for as long as I remember. It was with a great deal of pleasure and anticipation, then, that I went out and bought Midway Arcade Treasures on the PS2.

Having played it for 2 evenings solid, two-player mode, I now realise that Gauntlet is less a game, and more a form of entertainment. There is, like many other games of its time, no real objective, and no end. The difference with this and its peers is that there is unlimited life, as long as you had the money to buy extra health. Nearly all the other classics had a “10p for three lives” premise, which meant that you had to be good to progress and get the high-score. It was not important to be good at Gauntlet : being rich was good enough.

The console incarnation allows you to add extra health by a simple click of a button, which, for most people, is far too tempting to ignore.

And so, because of the relative simplicity of the game, after the initial retro-rush, I was left suitably unimpressed. There was not enough development in the game to warrant my interest. 100 levels was more than enough (and I only played this much because I was unaware there was no end).

I still have a fondness for Gauntlet, and will still feature high on my list as an arcade-game. I don’t think I’ll be playing the console version again (until I get Gauntlet 2 on Midway Arcade Treasures vol.2).

When I first heard the news, at the end of last year, that a 22-year old man had bought an island in a MMORPG for almost £18,000, even I, as a fervent gamer, began to doubt my own keenness in gaming, and certain other people’s understanding of what life really is about.

However, reading further I can now appreciate the potential of what the Australian, David Storey, has done.

The game, Project Entropia, by a Swedish company MindArk AB, is free to download. Items, land, mining-rights etc cost in-game dollars (PED). PED’s can be bought using a credit card, and 1 PED is worth $1 (US).

The 6000 acre island is therefor an investment, especially when one considers the game’s 200,000 registered players, and these type of games, according to the BBC, “have a gross economic impact equivalent to the GDP of the African nation of Namibia.”

You see, the young antipodean has taxation rights on hunting and mining activities, as well as income from the sale of land lots.

Whether Mr Storey bought the island for economic purposes is not clear, but as long as the game maintains the public’s attention, then he has possibly made the year’s strangest investment. I just hope the other 200,000 odd players are not 16 year-olds with little spending power.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of one of the classic video games in history : Space Invaders.

25 years and still going strong. There can’t be a mobile telephone in production that hasn’t some variation of this game available. Numerous sites offer Flash/Java incarnations. Even two of the kids at my school are currently playing it as I write.

So, in this special year, what have Midway or Taito done to celebrate? Well, perhaps I’ve missed it, but the only things I can find are a t-shirt and multi-platform game, which includes a 3D version.

Someone, somewhere, has missed a golden opportunity to earn some dublons.

I haven’t seen a single competition, book, TV program, poster or range of merchandise (except the aforementioned t-shirt.) I haven’t even begun to rack my brain for further money-making ideas, and I’m sure any marketing geek worth his/her salt could do a lot better than my suggestions.

Space Invaders truly missed its opportunity to take over the world.