Getting on board with the video game craze, but behind the curve

Not only will my children need therapy to cope with the bait-and-switch we've played on them regarding "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," but now they're going to suffer from a video game disparity with their peers.

Many children today are learning to play video games on expensive systems like PS2 or XBox, or whatever the rage is these days. We just received an Atari Flashback 2 as a Christmas gift from my wife's aunt in Atlantic City. While other children are playing games based on movies like "The Incredibles" or "Lord of the Rings," with state-of-the-art computer graphics, my girls think the coolest thing ever is to play Pong or Outlaw, with clunky graphics from the early 1980s.

The game console looks like a miniature version of the old Atari 2600, but without the need for cartridges. Instead, there are 30 or 40 games programmed in, with all the variations and skill levels that came on the cartridges. It's a hoot for my wife and me, since our generation grew up during the first video game craze, which was driven and dominated by Atari.

The Atari Flashback 2 doesn't have some of the games I really enjoyed, like Space Invaders, but it has enough of the games I did enjoy that I'm having a good time playing it for old times' sake. (And so far, I've managed to avoid letting it become a complete and utter time waster.)