These months just seem to get shorter and shorter, don’t they, chums? Still, what a lot of action we’ve been packing into the time.

Where be my camper van?

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So what should we talk about? Game Boy Advance? Nah. Everything worth saying about it’s been said a hundred times already. (a – It’s really cute; b – It’s just a load of re-released old SNES games; c – Why’s the screen so dark?; d – The games are HOW much?)

What about the PS2 hard drive? (Out in the US/Japan later this month at $150. Don’t bet your life savings on it ever appearing here, or on anyone writing any games for it.) Nah. It’s obvious to anyone that Sony have gone to Scooby Doo’s Nutcase Motel, what’s to discuss?

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Similarly, talking about the Xbox or Gamecube would just be a waste of your time and mine, viewers. The situation with both couldn’t be any clearer – Xbox is doomed, no interesting games and going to be beaten to market by a super-cheap Gamecube.

As for the GC itself, of course, we’re in for a few more years of business as usual from Nintendo – a tiny trickle of doubtless horrendously-priced software, barely-disguised contempt for its customers, but games so good that we’ll all just put up with it anyway. Ho hum.

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Perhaps I could use the column as some kind of important health warning.

I seem to have reached critical gaming mass in my flat. There are now so many consoles and computers constantly plugged in here that I think I may have overloaded something or created some kind of weird electromagnetic field, because something blows up or stops working pretty much every day. I’m down to my last three tellies already. Be careful out there, gaming pals.

But no, that’s probably just me.

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So what’s left? I could bang on some more about the fantastic new pinball emulation program that’s been taking up all my time for the last couple of months, but I want to keep that to myself for a little longer. Ha.

I could do something on how all the big gaming websites are closing one after another, but that’s a bit dull and half of you don’t care about the Net anyway. (Which also rules out gloating about how, just like I’ve said for years, it’s turned out nobody really DOES give a chuff about online gaming after all.)

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I could always tell you an anecdote about the minority-interest digital-TV gaming show I just filmed some stuff for, but who the heck would care?

So I’m afraid that this month, chums, you’re just going to have to entertain yourselves. I’d suggest going out into the sunshine, but unfortunately summer just appears to have ended. (You all missed it playing Formula One 2001, you pasty saps.) Read a book or something.