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Rez, the cool game for girls Feb, 2003

From the "why didn't I think of that first" department.... I bring you Rez, the stoner/rave game becoming exxxtremely popular in Japan among a new demographic of gamers: Japanese teenage girls. The game is extremely colorful with a veritable orgy of colors as you fly through "levels" destroying computer viruses accompanied by a great soundtrack and a device. Yes, a Device that vibrates to the explosions and music. See the review on Game Girl Advance to get what I mean.

Top game picks for Christmas December, 2002

Okay, this is going to seem a bit biased. About six years ago I was part of a management team that raised $39 million and formed five companies. Among them were three game companies: Red Storm Entertainment with author Tom Clancy, Timeline Computer Entertainment with author Michael Crichton, and iRock - originally with Ozzy Osbourne. Of those, both iRock and Red Storm Entertainment are still cranking out games. We sold Red Storm Entertainment to Ubisoft in 2000. So let it be known that I no longer have any vested interest in Red Storm. So my recommendations should be taken to heart.

Rainbow Six was the world's first realistic tactical first person shooter. This was a big departure from titles like Doom and Quake where you ran around shooting monsters and picking up health packs. The tagline for Rainbow six was "In the real world, one shot kills". You had to be really careful or your time on a given mission would be rather short. The gaming world responded well to this new genre and the game did $60 million in its first year. Over 6 million Rainbow Six games and mission packs have been sold since.

Today I recommend Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon (get the Island Thunder mod) and the upcoming Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield. All of them continue to break new ground in realism and heart pounding first person suspense.