The moment that almost makes me tear up arrives early in the game. WALL-E -- a wheel-legged little guy with robot eyes and arms -- comes in contact with a female robot named EVE, who has flown to the planet briefly for a purpose. Then, she begins to leave.

As EVE's spaceship prepares for liftoff, WALL-E -- the last, working garbage-cleaning robot in the world -- goes back to his lonesome task. He looks up at the shaking ship and begins to call for EVE not to leave. He sprints to the rocket on his wheels, wailing something akin to "goodbye" and "don't go."

This is a heartbreak, sumptuously crafted and musically scored, delivered as pixels, as created here by the Pixar talents and the game's designers. I came thisclose to losing it. Why?

WALL-E, with a spark of human sadness in his eyes, is the embodiment of animism, the innocent notion that souls or spirits live not just in humans but in animals as well as inanimate objects, ranging from boxes to rocks to robots.

You've seen animism in the robots of "Star Wars" and other sci-fi flicks, as well as the "Toy Story" toys, the boy and the teddy bear in "Artificial Intelligence," any Disney movie with a talking teapot, any "Harry Potter" film with a killer tree, and in the evil-animism films of "The Car," "Christine," "The Shining" and the "Evil Dead" series.

"WALL-E's" romanticized animism succeeds on philosophical levels. There's an allusion to the "ghost in the machine," since EVE is shaped like Casper the ghost and travels with WALL-E the machine. There's EVE's name, of course, paralleling the Adam-like solitude of male "WALL-E."

And commerce is brutally satirized as a destructive force. Wherever WALL-E goes on Earth, or on spaceships, he hears overhead announcements of sales pitches: "If you're not happy, you're not consuming!" When humans show up, they are obese and sitting robotlike in shopping carts.

These thoughtful deliberations are put to good use since "WALL-E's" game play is entertaining, breezy and fairly addictive. As WALL-E, you roll across garbage heaps, past dust storms, through spaceships and even zip around in outer space. It can be repetitive as you grab square blocks of trash and throw them at robots and other creatures that want to harm you.

But the repetition is overwhelmed by the beauty of the science of art, with lovely changes of scenery; sleek movements of WALL-E; well-borrowed game play from "Star Wars," "Frogger," "Asteroids" and other classics; and an extraordinary and melancholy music score that plays on your psyche.

It is a rare, humanistic adventure starring robots who seem human, and humans who seem robotic. It yearns for you to break free of a compartmentalized world, detached and depressed, for even if you have been left alone, you are not alone. Just look. Look at all this splendor before you, and breathe it in.

("WALL-E" retails for $50 for PS 3, Wii, Xbox 360; $30 for PS 2, PSP, DS -- Plays fairly addictive. Looks great. Challenging. Rated "E" for cartoon violence. Four stars out of four.)

 

"Guns of the Patriots" is clearly the solo-mission game to beat this summer, and it should be regarded as a great work of art. I'll get to that in a second. But it's newsworthy that, since the Supreme Court just ruled in a 5-4 throwdown that the Second Amendment gives us the right to bear arms, we are bearing them.

In "Guns of the Patriots" alone, you can equip yourself with: three submachine guns, five assault rifles, four sniper rifles, two shotguns, a machine gun, a missile launcher, a tranquilizer gun, five handguns, two hand grenades, a stun grenade, four smoke grenades, two mines, C4 explosives, and you can top off your guns with scopes, suppressors, laser sights and rifle grips.

You need all those guns, because the year is 2014, and you are an old hero soldier who must shoot through heavily populated battlefields in the Middle East, Africa and beyond in a very long action-adventure where villains and their expendable troops are rising up to conquer territory, yada, yada.

The futuristic guns of this war are technologically locked. That is, each soldier's gun fires only for him or her. If you pick up a dead man's rifle, it won't shoot, because you don't have the right computer chip to unlock it, although you can hire a gunrunner to fix it for you.

Pretty nifty, right? Maybe the Supreme Court could approve a law demanding such technological safety chips someday. That way, children won't grab daddy's gun and accidentally kill each other with it. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

"Guns of the Patriots" is pretty close to a masterpiece and contains some of the most addictive gaming of 2008. Battlefields come fast and furious. The game lasts forever. Cinematic film scenes go on for so long that as one scene rolled on my TV in the background, I cooked lunch, ate it and fed my cats. There may be a whole movie of scenes in "Guns."

Then you go online to find the same level of artistic detail accompanying multiplayer battlefields, which are littered with broken autos, half-destroyed homes and concrete rooftops that look strikingly like concrete rooftops, right down to sun stains and oil splatters.

There is serious thought to ponder in the plot. Narratives and dialogue depict a world at constant war. Characters explore literary themes of mortality, individualism, the rise of machines and interpersonal relationships.

Most of this is credited to co-writer-director Hideo Kojima, a legend in the gaming industry who retired a few years ago after he created the often stunning "Metal Gear Solid 3."

Alas, some gun-crazy fans of the "Metal Gear Solid" franchise were so upset, they forced Kojima out of retirement to make this new game. How did they convince him?

They sent him death threats.

Guns. Aren't they just awesome?

 

("Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots" by Konami retails for $60 for PS 3 -- Plays addictively fun. Looks amazing. Moderately to very challenging, depending on which settings you choose. Rated "M" for strong language, suggestive themes, violence, blood, crude humor. Four stars out of four.)

 

And yet, our military also is contending with mercenaries who have stored gold bars all over town squares and barns.

In fact, your side mission in "Bad Company" is to find that gold and become rich, even while you're trying not to get killed by whizzing bullets. As every game writer understands, this cinematic narrative is reminiscent of the films "Kelly's Heroes" and "Three Kings."

To pull off such a cynical story line, the war you are engaged in must seem potentially, morally iffy. Otherwise, you'd be a bad guy, looting towns, instead of merely fighting for freedom and other trademark, apple-pie Americanisms.

So the narrator says at the start, "War's fought for a number of reasons, but on the battlefield, every soldier has to find his own."

Our soldiers are fittingly characteristic of such stories. They are, as in "Kelly's Heroes" and "Three Kings," expendable misfits. They gab stupidly, but in a legitimately funny way. They're greedy. And the ethically compromised sergeant is to retire in a few days. All that's missing is Danny Glover.

This setup gives the game an oomph of a meaty plot. More important, the game play is stellar. The battlegrounds of "Bad Company" are huge, sprawling terrains. You drive tanks, helicopters and boats. And you jog across hill and dale, shooting bad guys with machine guns, sniper rifles and shotguns.

The most promising action is going online to join battles of up to 24 people in showdowns where you alternately play on offense, trying to blow up the enemy's bases, or on defense protecting your own bases. I don't love this online game mode. It's like waging war on a football field, one team at a time.

But the game's designers realize fans of previous "Battlefield" titles prefer online "Conquest" modes, where you battle on both offense and defense at the same time, trying to capture and protect a bunch of bases simultaneously. We shooting gamers love that sort of kill-the-man-with-the-ball chaos.

So to satisfy us, game designers have promised to release a "Conquest" mode as a free downloadable upgrade, although they didn't say when. Within weeks? Months?

Meanwhile, you can alternately play some other good, not great, online battles in another big war sequel out now, "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars," which has no serious plot to speak of as an offline solo game, except that aliens have invaded Earth and they're pointing weapons at your throat.

"Battlefield: Bad Company" is more fun. But "Enemy Territory" is solid, and it also excels online. The "Monster Truck"-like ads for the game are hilarious and accurate, saying you can steal weapons from the alien invasion destroying Earth, and each battlefield is a "square kilometer."

If that doesn't satisfy you, as the ad says, "How about calling orbital air strikes from outer space!?" Hell, yeah!

("Battlefield: Bad Company" retails for $60 for Xbox 360 and PS 3 -- Plays fun. Looks great. Starts easy, becomes challenging. Rated "T" for alcohol reference, strong language and violence. Four stars out of four.)

("Enemy Territory: Quake Wars" retails for $60 for Xbox and PS 3 -- Plays fun, though not great. Looks very good. Moderately easy to moderately challenging. Rated "T" for violence, mild language. Three stars.)

 

Meanwhile, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" is being cross-branded with a soda, a Web search engine, a fast-food restaurant, a chocolate candy and lunch snacks for kids.

But wait, there's more! Another big summer game is "Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures," which plays off the latest hero blockbuster by presenting characters, locales and even alligators in the form of LEGOs. That's why it's officially called "LEGO Indiana Jones."

Let us remember "branding" was originally that which cowboys seared into cowhides. Do you prefer to think of children as sear-able livestock?

For the purposes of this column, here's the next question: Are these video games any good? Well, they're good enough. "Kung Fu Panda" and "LEGO Indiana Jones" excel and stumble for similar reasons.

If you've ever played any of the LEGO "Star Wars" games, the long adventure of "Indiana Jones" seems very parallel in game style. You play as various LEGO people from the Indiana Jones universe, and you crack a whip at LEGO bad guys and LEGO snakes, and so on.

This is actually a lot of fun for stretches of time. Even though LEGOs are blocky, the motions move fluidly, and so do journeys through villages and buildings. The story line hems closely to the movies, although Harrison Ford was not required for voice-overs, since these LEGOs don't talk.

The problem with "LEGO Indiana Jones" is, as you remember from LEGO "Star Wars" games, you constantly have to build things with LEGOs, like bridges and airplanes, and this action has become tedious unless you've never played a LEGO game before.

Now check out "Kung Fu Panda." It is a new adventure with a new hero to video games, and Black's voice-overs are superbly spirited, yet the game play is very old hat. It is essentially a deep-focus version of a two-dimensional platform game.

While portraying Po, you run left to right, and up and down, and the TV screen looks like animated maps of goals. You punch things until they disappear. You run through floating gold coins in order to pick them up. And occasionally, you turn into a ball and roll quickly over buildings and other obstacles, a la Sonic the Hedgehog.

Black, reading the writers' silly-fun dialogue, saves the game from being boring, since he issues childlike, enthusiastic exclamations, like "totally awesome" and "bodacious!"

I have played -- and I have watched my nephew play -- much, much worse movie games than "LEGO Indiana Jones" and "Kung Fu Panda." They are cute and enjoyable to a degree, and could even prove addictive for a lot of kids. But they also are teaching old tricks to new consumers.

("Kung Fu Panda" retails for $50 for Xbox 360, PS 3 and Wii; $40 for PS 2; $40 for DS -- Plays fun despite being limited as a glorified 2-D throwback. Looks good. Moderately challenging. Rated "E 10+" for fantasy violence and mild language. Three stars out of four.)

("LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures" retails for $50 for Xbox 360, PS 3, Wii; $40 for PSP and PS 2; $30 for DS -- Plays fun but a tad too familiar to LEGO "Star Wars" gamers. Looks very good. Starts easy, becomes challenging. Rated "E 10+" for cartoon violence. Three and one-half stars.)

 

Ergo, I am "utilizing" this air conditioner by bashing someone's brains in with it. And this is linguistically fulfilling.

Or perhaps, I simply like creaming bad guys with heavy equipment. "The Incredible Hulk" certainly gives me ample opportunity to utilize ordinary and extraordinary objects in the pursuit of justice and national safety.

I pick up cars and heave them at villainous robot men. I utilize concrete blocks as shields to protect my muscular torso from incoming bullets.

Absolutely, the most pleasing utilization comes when I grab an enemy soldier by the waist with my huge palm, let him struggle and kick his legs with fruitless fits, then toss his twisting body at yet another bad guy aiming a gun at me. That is killing two nerds with one throw.

"Hulk" is based on the summer movie, and it features voice acting from the film's stars. But there is no captivating story line in the game. You are Bruce Banner. You've been turned into this large green fellow by gamma rays. U.S. soldiers and evil robot things try to slay you.

But really, who cares? You kill stuff that goes splat. Hurray.

Other reviewers have made much ado about the lack of originality in "Hulk," saying it hems closely to its predecessor, "The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction," from three years ago. This is true, but since I didn't overdose on "Ultimate Destruction," this "Hulk" seems like good times.

As the Hulk, I sprint across traffic in New York City. I am such a big beast that when I brush the sides of a city bus with my arm, the bus breaks and bends. When I run near trees, the percussive power of my feet pounding the ground destroys the trees.

So, yes, my carbon footprint is considerable. But there are evil creatures killing New Yorkers. You have to save the Earth from intruders before you can save it with a hug, or so I've heard.

It is not a long game. You can finish it within 10 hours if you're a regular gamer. And there is no online gaming, which is a big stink. The game also looks old, as if no one could be troubled with beefing up the artistry for high-definition TVs.

But "Hulk" moves a lot like the "Spider-Man" games, which is a good thing. I speed through gigantic New York adroitly, on foot as opposed to Spider-Man's web. I climb buildings and jump crazy distances, as does Spider-Man. And I destroy 50-story buildings by punching them. That is super cool.

What is most fascinating is that no matter how many monsters and robot fights are destroying the city, pedestrians continue to jaunt down the sidewalks, getting crunched by my feet and other violent tendencies. Also, thousands of yellow cabs transport commuters amid the mayhem.

That is just like New Yorkers. They've seen it all. They won't just stay home or flee town, because they refuse to succumb to fear. They will not be intimidated by any old giant, green utilizing man.

 

("The Incredible Hulk" retails for $60 for PS 3 and Xbox 360; $50 for Wii; $30 for PS 2 and DS -- Plays fun, if short and without online gaming. Looks adequate. Easy to challenging, depending on which settings you choose. Rated "T" for violence, mild blood, mild language. Three stars out of four.)

 

The two newest soccer games -- "UEFA Euro 2008" and "Pro Evolution Soccer 2008" -- make "European football" fairly manageable. At times, they're even kind of fun. I'm not saying they're addictive. But they don't make me want to gouge my eyes out due to ennui or anger.

Yes, anger. Video game soccer unleashes the fury. I've been complaining for five years or so that soccer games won't allow you to truly control your defensive players. As soon as you position a defender to steal a ball from a rival, the game automatically switches your controls to another defender on your team.

That's frustrating. Here's an analogy. Imagine if you were playing a baseball game, and just when you were guiding a left fielder to chase a ball, the game switched your controls to your center fielder. Yeah, that would cause you Major League rage.

The solution to this soccer-defense problem in both "UEFA Euro 2008" and "Pro Evolution Soccer 2008" is to constantly hold down one "apply pressure" button that forces your defensive players to automatically attack rivals who have the ball. This is a simple fix that makes you stop screaming from your couch.

Fortunately, both games boast good game play, otherwise. "Euro" and "Evolution" are fluid and intuitive to learn. They come with plenty of teams and leagues. And you can play multiplayer games online.

But here's the bittersweet bottom line. As much fun as "Euro" and "Evolution" can be, even for amateurs, it is a nightmare to determine how hard you should kick a ball to score. The slightest kick can either send a ball flying 20 feet over the net, or can merely dribble the ball toward the goaltender's feet.

Worse: You have to memorize up to 145 button combinations to make use of all the game's maneuvers. That includes simple things, such as shooting and passing, to complex moves such as "first-time shot/head ball," "stationary feint" and "Marseilles turn."

You can win without memorizing every step of the soccer field. And if you're a huge soccer fan, you'll probably love the details. But me? I'm moving on to a game more suited to my simple, action-crazed American brain, like golf, maybe.

 

("Pro Evolution Soccer 2008" retails for $50 for Xbox 360 and PS 3, $40 for Wii, $30 for PSP, PS 2 and DS -- Plays fun and deep if you like soccer, but complex and slow if you don't. Looks good. Challenging to very challenging, depending on which settings you choose. Rated "E." Three stars out of four.)

("UEFA Euro 2008" retails for $50 for Xbox 360 and PS 3, $40 for PSP, $30 for PS 2 -- Plays fun and deep if you like soccer, but complex and slow if you don't. Looks very good. Challenging to extremely challenging, depending on which settings you choose. Rated "E." Three stars.)

 

Crashing is, obviously, an integral part of driving fast. But in "Mario Kart Wii," it's constant and whimsical. This is another cutesy Nintendo Wii adventure set in a colorful land of deep-blue cartoon skies and puffy faced, comical characters.

You race and crash often as the usual suspects: Mario, Bowser, Donkey Kong and so on. You speed in cars and motorcycles. Choosing an auto or a character doesn't give you a leg up on the competition. Vehicle dynamics are the same, more or less.

But if it makes you feel better to win as, say, a girl named Peach in a hot rod, more power to you.

There's nothing surprising inside "Mario Kart Wii," but its 32 tracks are definitely super cute. Cows graze in your way. Mushroom heads and gophers pop up at you. And Mario lets out his silly "woohoo!"

More important, you can toss bombs and banana peels at rivals to slow them down. Or you can pick up a speed burst that catapults you ahead of cars.

The thing about this kind of kiddie title is it's way more fun to play with other people than alone. If you race solo against the artificial intelligence of the Wii computer, you're basically just memorizing hairpin turns and weapon upgrades.

But if you battle against people in your living room -- up to four players at a time -- then you've got yourself a little parlor game. And thankfully, you can take "Kart" online against up to 11 other gamers.

The opposite of "Mario Kart Wii" is "Gran Turismo 5: Prologue" for PS 3. It's a sober, unforgiving racing simulator featuring street rods, from Mazdas to Ferraris.

In "Mario" and other racers today, if you mess up, other cars slow down so you can catch up. But in "Prologue," you have to race as perfectly as you would in real life. If you blow a turn or two in a three-minute race, you are toast.

The steering is impressively intuitive. You control the direction of the car by pressing your thumb against the left joystick, and you control speed by thumbing the right joystick. Easy-peasy. Downside: The few tracks get repetitive in no time.

Like "Mario," all the best action is online or in multiplayer. That's where you get to drive against real people, and the feel of the game completely changes, as cars steered by people, not a computer, zigzag and knock you around. Oddly, though, there's no crashing. Your "GT 4" cars are indestructible.

Personally, I prefer "Mario Kart Wii," even though it's super easy. It's just funner. Plus, I like to play as a Peach in a hot rod. I'm all for girl power.

 

("Gran Turismo 5: Prologue" by Sony retails for $60 for PS 3 -- Plays fun but the low number of tracks get old. Plays most fun online. Looks fantastic. Starts challenging, gets more challenging. Rated "E" for mild suggestive themes. Three stars out of four.)

("Mario Kart Wii" by Nintendo retails for $50 including racing wheel for Wii -- Plays fun. Looks cutesy-cartoony. Easy offline; moderately challenging online. Rated "E" for comic mischief. Three stars.)

 

In other words, New Yorkers get Stockholm Syndrome. They fall in love with their captor, an unforgiving city.

I don't like to forage in New York or in the New York-patterned boroughs of Liberty City in "Grand Theft Auto 4." Everything in Liberty City is a hassle. You hijack a car, then cops drive after you, and it's nearly impossible to navigate roads, because they're troubled with traffic, obstacles and darkness.

I change the brightness settings on both my Xbox 360 and my 55-inch high-definition TV just so I can see other cars, street turns and where bad guys are coming from, especially when I battle real gamers online.

To keep perspective, this is my long complaint about an otherwise great game, even if it does start slow and boring. (Do you really have to shoot pool and go bowling? Seriously?)

This latest "GTA" offers another 60-hour offline adventure packed with extravagant cinematic scenes and murderous missions. It's also the first "GTA" with online shooting, which is nice, but body movements are sluggish. And you start each level with the worst handgun imaginable instead of a good machine gun.

It took about 1,000 people to make "GTA 4," including programmers, developers, producers and actors. You can see the depth. There is a big plot and awesome dialogue.

You play as Niko, a Serbian immigrant who has been coaxed by his cousin Roman's lies to move to the big city. But stupid Roman brings irate Niko into the crime world. You collect protection money and shoot rival cons with rifles, shotguns and machine guns.

As usual, you drive old muscle cars, ambulances, helicopters, cop cars, stretch limos and tons of horrible beater-cars that barely turn corners.

The best part is the writing. There are no better conversations in games than in "GTA" titles, except maybe for the "Destroy All Humans!" series. In "GTA," New York-y pedestrians say things like, "I'm late for therapy!" A woman you sex up says, "I've never dated a foreign guy before. A lot from another planet. But never from another country."

You buy lap dances from two strippers grooving to Goldfrapp's "Ooh La La," and you ask, "Are you, like, sisters or cousins or something?"

Radio stations in your hijacked vehicles play scores of classic and pop songs, but DJs also act as evil parodies of the real thing. DJs are racist, sexist and conservative, bemoaning even the loss of separate drinking fountains. This is not face-value cruelty, but rather a stinging, liberal satire of the right.

The liberalness makes me wonder why Democrats such as New Yorker Hillary Clinton assail games, which are generally to the left. I'm guessing she's never played a "Grand Theft Auto." Then again, she's got her own Stockholm Syndrome to keep her busy.

("Grand Theft Auto 4" by Rockstar retails for $60 for Xbox 360 and PS 3 -- Plays fun, though it starts slow offline, and the online gaming is sluggish, featuring terrible handguns. Looks great. Begins moderately easy but becomes challenging. Rated "M" for intense violence, blood, strong language, strong sexual content, partial nudity and use of drugs and alcohol. Four stars out of four.)

 

Meanwhile, the kind of fishing game that made us laugh and jump and brag has grown prettier and wiser with age. The new "Sega Bass Fishing" for the Wii is a sleeker sport than what Christine and I toyed with. Now there are grander-looking rain marshes, bridges, caves and parks.

You use the interactive Wii wand as the pole. Jerk the wand forward to cast. Tug it to the left to reel in bass from the left. It's simple.

To tell the truth, I'd rather arcade-fish than fish-fish. Virtual fishing goes faster. The camera angle dips underwater and follows fish faces chasing my hooks, lines and sinkers. You can see the whole process play out with omnipotent vision. You don't have to slap mosquitoes nipping your nape.

And in "Sega Bass Fishing," an offscreen narrator tells you when to "turn the rod left," to help you battle large fish that tug hard against your purpose.

Surprisingly, you don't catch and release, even when you nab a little one and the narrator exclaims, "It's a baby!" Aww, poor little baby fish. Yeah, it's dead now.

The point is simple. You pile up as many fish as you can in time trials. Fish either rush to your tackle or they hide in dark corners, depending on basic factors: the depth of the pond; the time of day or night; and sunshine-to-rainy outings.

It's always ponderous when they decide they're smarter than you. But this is pretty great, to see them play hard to get. I have found myself talking at these fake prey, since Christine's not around for me to share jokes with, at the expense of the fish's fragile egos.

"Why won't you take the bait?" I ask.

They do not answer. Haughty fish.

And so, alone, "Sega Bass Fishing" is a fine little excursion from reality, to be spent in bursts of time-killing, rather than as all-night affairs.

I'm sure there are bigger lessons to be learned in fishing, and philosophizing to be had. But really, I just want a fishing partner to point at me and laugh, "In your face!," while grooving a victory dance to music memories in her head from parties long relinquished.

("Sega Bass Fishing" retails for $30 for Wii -- Plays fun, if limited. Looks fine. Easy. Rated "E." Three stars out of four.)

The chief witness was Sharpe, a one-time managing editor of GQ magazine. With a Tom Selleck mustache stretched across his face, he walked into courtrooms, pointed at the shots he vowed to pull off, a la Babe Ruth, and flipped them perfectly.

This proved pinball was a game of skill, and soon Sharpe's prowess convinced politicos to lift bans around the country.

Three decades later, Sharpe thinks pinball is harder and a younger man's game, especially when he goes to international pinball championships such as the one that hit Las Vegas a few weeks ago.

Sharpe still rocks the Tom Selleck mustache. He tries to tell me about the spirituality of pinball, but I'm more interested in the fact that his wife adorned a pinball machine's back glass while dressed in a bikini.

You see, when he became a star in the 1970s, manufacturers hired him to design pinball machines. His first foray was SharpShooter. The back glass featured Sharpe wearing Western gun wear. Next to him were photos of two women in swimwear. One model was his wife, Ellen.

"She's the woman with her hand a little higher up on my thigh," Sharpe says, grinning.

The other model was the president of the pinball company. Was she also hot in real life? "Oh, yeah," he says, as if I'm crazy for asking.

SharpShooter isn't around anymore. But some machines Sharpe mastered years ago are featured in the addictive little Wii video game "Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection."

If you're old enough to remember these "Williams'" titles, they'll shock you with flawless reproductions. They look exact, down to the grungy 25-cent slots.

On Wii, you "push" the table by shaking your hand controllers. If you push too much, you tilt. This perfect game play makes "Williams" the best pinball video game I've seen.

There are just enough classics to keep you busy for hours at a time: "Jive Time" (1970); "Gorgar" (1979); "Firepower" (1980); "Black Knight" (1980); "Sorcerer" (1980); "Space Shuttle" (1984); "Pinbot" (1986); "Taxi" (1988); "Whirlwind" (1990); and "Funhouse" (1990).

Several classics aren't here. But these make a fun gift, with multiball bonus extravaganzas, great sound effects and unquestionable physics.

In real life, Williams doesn't make pinball machines anymore. It creates gambling machines for Vegas. Today's sole manufacturer is Stern Pinball Inc. in Chicago. Like many companies, Stern is dealing with the recession and, oddly, smoking bans in watering holes, says company head Gary Stern.

"Now," he says, "they may stop at the store and buy a six pack, instead of going out to play in bars."

Or they might stay home and pretend to be Roger Sharpe, playing "Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection." There are worse fantasies.

 

("Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection" retails for $30 for Wii, $20 for PSP, and $15 for PS 2 -- Plays very fun. Looks great. Easy to challenging, depending on the pinball game. Rated "E." Three and one-half stars out of four.)