When the basic "electronic tennis" game, Pong, first appeared in American bars in 1972 it created a sensation that has only since been replicated by the 1990s Karaoke boom in Japan. In relative terms, of course, Pong was as fun and innovative in the 1970s as any video game now, but the basic principles of video gaming have always, in any case, remained the same—score the points, beat the enemy, come back for more. The term "video game" could only really be applied when Atari and Nintendo introduced game consoles into the home throughout the 1970s; the idea being that you would slot your Pong cartridges into the console and play the games through your television set—hence video rather than computer games. But the term has come to cover the main aspect of the medium, playing sight-and-sound games through any convenient screen.

In some sense...