What has been the biggest videogaming let-down for you last year?
I'll probably get stalked for this but I'm gonna say Half-Life. I can imagine the hate mail already... bear with me. Problem was I bought the game and upgraded to a new Voodoo 2 card so I could get the full bowel-loosening Half-Life experience. Did it work? Did it bollocks. I spent about three hours on the phone to the voodoo helpdesk and then another three trying to get through to Sierra only to find out that two other people I knew had exactly the same problem and we had to wait for a patch. The games industry's reputation for extending deadlines is often justified and generally worth the wait, BUT if a PC game gets into the shops I'd like to buy it in the belief it will actually work. How can they tempt people from the console market if it takes six hours of 'tweaking' your set-up before you can have a game? Rant over...

Any titles you're really looking forward to in the near future?
Gran Turismo 2 is high on my wish list. They've got 400 cars you can play with, including a ripsnorter of a Ford Escort Mk1. Memories of Staine's one-way system come flooding back. Lionhead's Black and White is looking like an epic. I've got a friend who's doing the artificial intelligence for it, so I'm getting regular progress reports (they've just finished the clouds...). In fact I'm a little frightened that it may end up taking over my life. Having control over your own pet monster who learns if you leave him/her alone and doesn't puke on the carpet - no need to have kids! I might have to ration this one... And I want to see a sequel to GoldenEye except with bigger guns, much bigger guns.

When all's said and done, what's your favourite game ever?
Not an obscure Cantonese import I'm afraid but... Super Mario Kart. The courses were so beautifully balanced that once you perfected them you could relearn them going the wrong way round! And there was no 'best' character either. A good player could win with any of them. I look back and think of Yoshi like a long lost friend. In fact I miss him. A couple of years ago me and my mate played for nearly 30 hours straight. I remember the day his Nintendo broke. All I heard was this unearthly howl. Next thing I know he's belting down the road on his bike only to return an hour later with a brand new SNES under his arm. Admittedly he's in therapy now but then he always could beat me on Rainbow Road. All that secret late night practise must have got to him!