The games industry, as any long time observer will have spotted, goes through peaks, troughs and fads. Pong and Centipede turned into text-adventures, which in turn gave way to platformers, then we had 3D, then RPGs, then realism, in all it's guises, and now we face the most odious fad: Casual, family and puzzle games.

[sigh]

I'm a man. It's true. I like violence (in games), I like women, I like cars, I like aeroplanes, I like really big explosions, I like boobage, I'm not ashamed, I do. I like testing my spacial awareness, my reflexes and my (hard to see) mental prowess.

You see, I thought, I honestly did, when I smacked the prostitute over the head with the crow-bar in Grand Theft Auto to get my money back -- I thought it was funny. It was. It's still funny.

And you know what? I'm not alone. Be honest. I'm not. So, what dark lord has made the Wii, and it's happy-smiley fields of overtly-cheerful-gayness-games so damn popular? Grown men, waxing-lyrical about, about what? Super Mario Galaxies? You can climb on a giant space bee -- "It's just Sublime".

Yeeeesss.

Okay.

Great.

Is it global warming? If I convert my 3.2L car to run on biodegradable fuels, and worry about my carbon-foot print, earn my green-Blue Peter badge, and stuff all my rotting egg shells, if I had any, in plastic bucket outside my front door, will these Nancie's leave me alone? Could the gaming world somehow go back to hoping some mild nudity will turn-up?

...but it's just a phase the games industry is going through. We know that. We know what the game makers will do. They will make a million casual games, run themselves into financial ruin, trying to sell Smego-the-brain-training-jello. And when they don't sell? Well, then they come back to us middle-core gamers, offering us games with naked women, guns and fast cars. And we'll buy them. Because, you know, no matter what, as you grow and change as man, violence, autos and boobs never, ever, lose their appeal.

Right now, in the anti-testosterone stakes, Nintendo are the worst offenders, and reading between the lines with Miyamoto, I can see why. Microsoft? Well, they only have FPS's, but Sony? ...no not even Sony are saints.

Sonys Top 5 women/family/casual gamer panderings.

1. [PSP]Loco Roco. You can move bits of yellow 2D jelly around. Nice. Sure. Yeah. It's a great game. Sure it is. Great. Maybe it was popular in mental wards, calming the uber-nutters before bedtime? Not in this house. We like our uber-nutters restless here.

2. [PSP]ME MY KATAMARI. Wuh-hoo-eee. Sun Flower continent? Saving the Red Pander stage? Does the pander look anything like Catherine Zeta Jones, in a bikini and all oiled up? No? Okay - I'll pass.

3. [PS1]PaRappa the Rapper. Arguably the grandfather of recent casual-plague. And no. No thank you.

4. [PSN] Flow. It is isn't it? It's tree hugging hippy crap. It is.

5. [PS2/PS3] Eyetoy. You can pretend to interact with the console and wash windows. Great. Better still, why don't you go outside with a bucket of water and wash windows? And if you're Miss Jones, do it in a bikini.

PSXkid.