("Hello viewers!")

This month, instead of pointing out how stupid other people are, I'm going to accept my fair share of the national burden of idiocy.

And why am I also a fool? Because of all the THINGS I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

HUH?

No.1 - The Japanese language.

Most Japanese people don't speak or read English. Their own language is from a different planet - there aren't even any letters in it, Billy!

So why are most Japanese games filled with such a curious mix-up of the two tongues, then? All the in-game text in English, say, (baffling the natives), but all the menus in weirdo foreign?

What's going on there?

I DON'T UNDERSTAND. Quite literally.

EH?

No.2 - Backwards incompatibility.

Every time someone invents a new kind of film, do all the cinemas showing movies made on the old type of film close down? No - that would be stupid.

So how come all new consoles, even from the same manufacturer, can never run the old games? It'd hardly cost them a penny - the PS already has a SNES inside it, for example. IT'S TRUE.

Old formats would still sell. Everyone would be happy. I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

WHAT THE?

No.3 - Commodore buyers.

I don't mean Amiga owners - heaven knows, they've got enough problems without me having a go.

But Escom, and now Viscorp, blowing millions of pounds buying the rights to a machine that's deader than a dead man's toenails - what's that all about?

What are they, stupid or something? What can they possibly hope to gain? Who do they think's going to buy one?

I DON'T UNDERSTAND THAT EITHER.

MY WIFE'S GOING TO KILL ME!

No.4 - How the software industry got to be so successful despite being almost entirely populated by utter cretins.

Game sales are awful. The charts are lifeless. Everyone's posting big losses and sacking lots of staff. No-one seems to know why. Let's play Guess-Me.

Movies cost £4. Albums cost £12. Top- flight football costs £15. Games cost £50, and most of them are crap. YOU can work it out. I can work it out. Why can't They? I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

I WAS BLIND, BUT NOW I SEE!

So you see, I'm not the clever big-shot know-everything I've been making myself out to be. Oh no. I'm stupid, too.

BUT NOT STUPID ENOUGH TO TRY TO SELL A CONSOLE WITH A STUPID NAME LIKE "3DO".

NOT STUPID ENOUGH TO DROP THE PRICE OF FIFA 96 BY 33% WITHIN A COUPLE OF MONTHS AND HOPE PEOPLE DON'T NOTICE.