Dear Future Gamer,

Videogames came into my life back in 1991, when my flatmate brought home a Game Boy. Oh how I sneered! ... then I had a go at Tetris - surely the gaming equivalent of heroin. I thought I could handle it. Within a few weeks I had my own Game Boy, along with titles like Super Mario Land and Zelda: Link's Awakening. Okay, so I didn't watch so much telly.

Then I decided it would be great to buy a PC, on which I could make music (hard-disk recording was a new and exciting idea). So I bought a 100MHz 486 with the best of intentions. But a voice at the back of my mind was already telling me I could also play games on it.

I was quite happily sampling and sequencing on my new PC when I bought Little Big Adventure. My friends would visit and see me playing this surreal game with talking elephants and rabbits. They shook their heads sadly and stopped coming round.

Next came C&C, Magic Carpet and Sim City 2000. Games began to rapidly dispose of all my disposable income. When I realised that I could only run Red Alert in slow motion, I knew it was time for a Pentium. And more RAM. And a bigger hard drive. This computer had now become a voracious monster, gobbling up the contents of my bank account. 3Dfx? That'll do nicely! Faster Pentium 2? You'll also need a new motherboard, sir. Ker-ching!

I was so addicted, I even bought my friend's six-year-old daughter an N64 and watched in cruel delight as the whole family fell under the deadly spell of Mario 64. Last Christmas, I even bought one for myself just so I could play Zelda (unfortunately, I became so engrossed in full SLI mode in Half-Life that I have still barely started it).

I have no life left. Just numerous gold coins, stars and heart pieces. They call me "sad", but I ask, just who is the real sad man here? Okay, I admit it - it's me.

Captain Black, Manchester

FG: Welcome back to the word of videogames. You won’t find it so easy to escape this time, especially once you’ve got yourself hooked into the world of multiplayer games via the Internet.