Do you reckon that every time he walks down the console aisle in a Dixons superstore, Terry Christian mutters a number of expletives under his breath? From the dawn of The Word right through to online gaming and next-generation consoles, home entertainment has changed beyond all recognition. FG wonders if the videogame has finally come of age...
Steve Edwards

Consider your lifestyle a short five years ago. Chances are that an uneventful Friday night saw you down your local watering hole, (as a prelude for Saturday's intoxication) and ended in a drunken stagger back to a designated house or flat armed with a greasy kebab and plain chicken burger for the girlfriend (if applicable). Bursting into some unfortunate's place, one of the group would head for the toilet, another for the kitchen to sort out essential refreshment, while the rest parked themselves in front of the TV (which, incidentally, had only a VCR and satellite decoder beneath it).

Once the aimless channel-hopping started you usually ended up on Channel 4 with a certain cult TV show called The Word. There was no 'like it or hate it' as far as The Word was concerned. Everybody hated it, without exception. True, there was educational content - we learnt not to get a penis enlargement because immediately after the operation it looks like a piglet.

But piss-taking was the order of the day when Terry and Danni graced our screens. A new era of broadcasting had dawned -the unrehearsed, the disposable, the trashy, the raucous and the outrageous dominated late-night TV - the like of which had never been seen before The Word. People watched in their millions.

In time, all this changed as we began to perch our PlayStations, Saturns, and N64s on top of those satellite decoders. We came down from the spare room and shared the fun and frustration with our friends. We became communal gamers.