We popped in to see my brother and tribe last weekend, and Little Miss ended up playing on their Playstation 2. It has to be said that it wasn't the first time - more often than not when we pop in, the "children" (I apply the inverted commas out of deference to my older nephew who is within spitting distance of his teens) want to get the Playstation out. If there is any feeling in the air that the parents may not be agreeable to this idea, then younger nephew, who is almost two years younger than Little Miss and thus qualifies as The Youngest, is sent to beard the adults in their lair, to ask whether the Playstation can be got out. He does it with such innocent hope, that one does feel a real pang at the fact that his older brother and Little Miss are using him in the manner of a canary down a mineshaft.

But last week, as it happened, Young Sir was already ensconced on the Playstation when we arrived, and was merrily busying himself stealing a hovercraft in what looked like the South of France. The game was some variation on Grand Theft Auto - I appreciate that giving you the actual title would perhaps be of more use, but I'm afraid that the number of video game titles I know can be listed on the fingers of one hand, and at least two of those are "Lara Croft and..."

When I was young, my parents would occasionally say something like, "I can remember when BBC2 started" or would talk about the arcane witchcraft of "old money" or, in Dad's case anyway, would recall rationing, and in those moments they would seem to be like ancient creatures heralding from somewhere just north of the Dark Ages. But perhaps inevitably, I now find myself dangerously close to becoming like that myself, when I mention, for example, that I can recall a world before computer games.

In fact I can remember the very first computer game we ever had. I suppose that technically speaking it may have been a video game, since it didn't come with the trappings of a computer (and since this was the seventies, and "the trappings of a computer" would almost certainly have entailed a large flashing cabinet with a spool-to-spool tape machine on the front, I would certainly have noticed it) but then the same can be said of its Playstation, Sega, Sony, and X-Box descendants. The first game of this type that we got was the now-legendary paddle game known as 'Pong' - it came with four different games on it, although they were all very simple variations on a pretty basic theme. They were, from memory, singles tennis, doubles tennis, squash, and, erm, practice, which was effectively squash on your own.

Before you all scoff at such unsophisticated gaming, let me just list the number of play-enhancing features that this equipment came with. First, when confidence was established, one could adjust the size of one's paddle, so that it was smaller and thus more of a challenge to hit the ball. Second, one of the two controllers (the master one) came with a 'reset' button, which meant that if things were going badly for the player holding it, he or she could accidentally reset the game - I genuinely cannot remember ever doing that, but I also genuinely can't believe that I never did. Third, it made a pleasant sort of noise when the bat hit the ball. Fourth... Well, actually that's about it (and I was stretching it with number three) but nevertheless at the time it was a revelation. Again from memory, it was a Christmas present from an Uncle who had clearly hit his present-buying stride by that time - a previous Christmas he had bought brother and me an amazing intercom system, which was two actual phones, which could be wired up and used to communicate from upstairs to downstairs (and back again of course) without recourse to our more normal policy of good old-fashioned shouting. (I can remember the phones to this day, but alas it was a few years too early for me to even think of answering with a cry of, "Curnow here, on red!")

But back to my pong, as it were, and it certainly provided us with good, solid entertainment, for a very long time. We actually still have it here, although it no longer works, but it was at the very least significant in that suddenly one could use the television for entertainment at a time of one's own choosing, rather than just when the BBC or ITV told you to. In a time before even VCRs had started to appear in the average household, this really was like a slice of the 21st Century come early.

Of course, when we were only three-quarters of the way through the twentieth century, we had a very different perception of what the twenty-first would be like, quite at odds with the, well, rather pedestrian reality. I feel sure that I can't be the only one disappointed by the distinct absence of air-cars, silver jumpsuits and food pills in everyday life. But as regards computer/video games, within about five years of the revelation that was pong, it had been superseded by something even more futuristic - for Christmas 1982 my brother got a Sinclair Spectrum, which yes (since it's the first thing people always say when they hear that name) had those aggravating rubber keys.

From then on, he quickly acquired a series of games, which at the time seemed state-of-the-art, but which I fear would reveal me to be little better than a dinosaur if I showed them to Little Miss (or indeed either nephew). Jet Set Willy (and if the fact that this was a game released in all good faith, without any considerations of people snickering at its title, doesn't show how much more innocent those times were, then I don't know what will), Atic Atac, Jet Pac, The Pyramid, The Oracle's Cave... They're probably not far short now of the sort of simplistic game a child could knock up on a home PC in half an hour, but at the time they were something very new, and very exciting. And also, with their various themes of shooting aliens, hunting for crystals, and the like, they were all games of a clearly fantastic bent.

Arguably "Grand Theft Auto" and its ilk are the same, in that a lifestyle stealing cars (or hovercraft) from the sunnier tourist spots of Europe and the American East Coast is unlikely to be the day-to-day drudge of many people; but it's certainly more tied to 'reality' in terms of its look and its game play than ever any of our innocent, 2-D Sinclair games were. And if "Grand Theft Auto" is still arguably fantastic, a game based on the D-Day landings, or on the jungle warfare of Vietnam, certainly isn't.

Oddly enough, though, I can't quite bring myself to continue this diatribe by berating video game producers for creating such horribly grim and aggressive games and passing them off as suitable entertainment for children... because it brings me back to being a lumbering prehistoric monster with a brain the size of a pea. Every generation tends to be critical of those that follow, and I can feel myself even now teetering on the brink of that particular trap.

My mother was once mortified (and I hope she isn't reading this, as 29 years later she's probably only just forgotten about it) when in answer to the question "What is your hobby?" at Primary School, my brother answered "Watching TV." His teacher was apparently most disapproving, stating not the opinion but the unequivocal fact that "Watching TV is not a hobby." Perhaps it isn't, but when you consider that at the time there were only three channels, that none of those was broadcast around the clock, and that children's programming took up perhaps an hour, maybe two, each day, I think it could easily be argued that it was in fact precisely a hobby activity, rather than (as it can become nowadays, what with hundreds of channels running non-stop) an obsession.

A generation before, and my brother's teacher might have found herself as a child told off for "wasting time listenin' to that darned radio". Her parents might have got into trouble for using the record-player to play their "rubbishy jive music"... and so although my knee-jerk reaction IS to say it, I desperately don't want to ever find myself saying, "Turn off that damned computer game and go and do something useful."

It isn't just a matter of different generations, though, is it. It's certainly a makeable case that there is something tasteless about D-Day being reduced to a computer game... but on the other hand, are scores of war films over the years really any better? Both forms are using a horrific reality solely for entertainment. Hitler gets a humorous cameo in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" - is that acceptable? Where do you, where can you, draw that line? I'm not sure, and I'm certainly not going to try - it's a very difficult one to call, and is what philosophers have dubbed "the Allo Allo debate".

At the end of the day, and indeed the end of this column, it isn't as simple as saying such-and-such is OK (whether that such-and-such be computer games produced before 1995, or war films made before the 1980s, or whatever). It's the context of it that's more important. To use "Doctor Who" not in an anorak sense for a change, but because it's a good example, Mary Whitehouse made the case in the 1970s that it was unsuitable for young children, to which the riposte is that it is if they are watching it alone but they shouldn't be. Likewise, there's probably not much harm in a teenager playing "Operation Normandy" for an hour or so, if he or she then switches it off, and goes out to play football with his mates, or goes shopping, or sits down to a good meal with his parents. If, on the other hand, somebody is playing "Operation Normandy" wishing they were there, or imagining they were there, for hours on end, as a substitute for life, then that clearly is a bad thing.

So with that in mind (and because I can't even get past level two on Sonic the flippin' Hedgehog!) I'm going to turn off this damned computer now and go and do something useful.

Game Over.