I’d like a chicken fried rice, prawn crackers and a game of Advance Wars, please. It’s getting to be a bit of a problem. I’ve moved house several times in the last few years and each time I’ve moved to a place with a takeaway next door. Or downstairs, or downstairs next-door-but-one. When I recently moved into my current premises there was no takeaway but then Coronaria, goddess of the fast food industry, looked down upon me and was saddened at my scrawniness. Her tears fell to earth, right near me, and the Eating-Plus Chinese Takeaway was formed from those tears. So it was this evening, while waiting for my order, that I was sitting next to a young Chinese man who was playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I noticed two things:

The first thing I noticed was that the GBA SP is perhaps the most perfect gaming device in existence. Somehow with just two shoulder buttons, two thumb buttons, and a D-pad, the boy’s fingers quickly brought up array after array of menus and stats, scanning them in a fraction of a second before hiding them again, making it look so natural that I can’t help being impressed. The SP is a wonderful piece of kit, designed purely for gaming pleasure – to be played on a train, on the loo or in a Chinese takeaway. It makes the act of playing a game an art form. Or something.

The second thing I noticed was that I felt a very strong urge to discuss ‘Games’ with this lad. I don’t know why, but I’m sure you’ve all felt it. It’s like being in a secret club – but you can’t just go up to someone playing FFTA and say “I like games too” for fear of appearing both extremely sad and disturbingly creepy. Looking over their shoulder is plain impolite, and you can’t just whip yours out for a bit of multiplayer fun because no-one has the right attachments with them when they’re out picking up “low-MSG” delicacies, even though the only thing better than a quick go on the GBA while waiting for your order is a quick multiplayer game while waiting for your order. Besides, what would you do? Wave your link cable around in the hope that they’ll notice and invite you to a game? In any case, by the time you’ve hooked up everything your crispy duck will be ready.

So that got me thinking about the next generation of handhelds: power of a PS2, two screens, music, video – all ‘revolutionary’ and all gimmicks. Wireless networking, I reckon, is the only innovation that will really prove to be a life-changer. You’ll be able to play multiplayer games on a whim, instantly – and you won’t need to worry about actually knowing or even actually speaking to the person you’re playing. That person with the PSP sitting five rows ahead of you in the train will be fully aware of your intentions when you set your own device to ‘discoverable’. It might only take ten minutes to get to work on the bus, but that’ll be long enough to frag the fat man in the crumpled suit on the lower deck a few times. When you’re in the pub and your mate has gone to the pisser, you’ll even be able to beat-up the resident drunk on SF2 Anniversary Anniversary Edition. It’s going to be great.

But then I started thinking a bit more about what it’s going to be like in a wireless gaming world. Is it really going to be like that? Are waiting rooms going to be full of patients armed with DS’s as they wait for NHS treatment?

Well no, it won’t. You’ll be sitting in a café when the kid you’re playing against realises he’s being beaten and runs out of range of the wireless link. Batteries will die at inopportune moments and kebabs will be slopped into your hands just when you’ve got one lap to go. It will all be a bit like XBox Live, but a Live where you’re actually within shouting (and hitting) distance of the twat who keeps driving the wrong way round the track. And of course you’ll also need to make sure you’ve got the same piece of kit as the other people you want to play against (N-Gage owners, take note).

But maybe, just maybe, in some not-too-distant future I’ll be playing Advance Wars against some random person waiting for my chicken fried rice and prawn crackers.

Oh, is that mine? Ta.

TEAMONKEY, July 2004.

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