I went to see Sigue Sigue Sputnik this week, chums. They were great.

You love boys and I love your eyes!

PAGE 2

Of course, to many of you, that name won’t mean anything at all. Sigue Sigue Sputnik were a pop band of the 80s who nicked a load of Blade-Runner-meets-manga imagery and attached it to a curious proto-retro-techno-disco (tm) sound and proclaimed it to be "The Fifth Generation Of Rock’n’Roll".

The hype surrounding the band was incredible, with a supposed £4m advance on their record contract with EMI, but when the records came out the public just laughed, and Sputnik disappeared from view as quickly as they’d arrived.

PAGE 3

"And what do Sigue Sigue Sputnik have to do with the fun and crazy world of video games, you idiot?", you might be asking at this point. "Do you think we’ve got nothing better to do than sit here listening to you ramble off on a nostalgia trip/unasked-for history lesson about some gang of techno-gonk pop losers from the Stone Age?"

And after smacking you one in the teeth, you impertinent scamp, my answer to your question would be this: Sometimes, the future doesn’t quite turn out how you expected it to.

PAGE 4

Because as we enter The Fifth Generation Of Video Games, we’ve already had a few surprises.

Firstly, we’ve seen Sony make a bigger mess-up of launching the PS2 than anyone ever expected. The previously-infallible company got just about everything wrong, from the confusing pre-order system and the delayed rollout to the stupid price and the awful collection of launch games.

And of course, we’ve seen Sega give up on making games machines at all.

PAGE 5

We’ve seen video games finally become cool, but then unexpectedly blow it and go all nerdy again.

(And you KNOW that games are for nerds again – the only stuff that sells right now is either granny-market drivel like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, train-spotting spod rubbish like Championship Manager or awful skateboarding and wrestling games for unusually dim-witted nine-year-olds. I mean, skateboarding? What next, a hula-hoop simulator? Pull yourselves together, for flip’s sake.)

PAGE 6

We’ve seen the once-thriving games mag market die on its feet, with one-time giants EMAP getting out of the business completely, and market leaders Future suffering disaster after disaster, sacking hundreds of people as sales of their (often shockingly poor) mags crash through the floor.

And we’ve seen some of the biggest companies in the games business either fold or get themselves taken over as they lose millions and millions of pounds on a yearly basis.

PAGE 7

And the funny thing is, all of this has happened while sales of games themselves have never been higher.

(And perhaps, just perhaps, that’s because games have, in real terms, never been cheaper since the era of, well, Sigue Sigue Sputnik.)