Game Room

While it's sometimes nice to be surprised by the lesser-known parts of a back catalogue, it's hard to understand why Konami didn't go for the A-list jugular at the launch party. Games like the snake-chasing maze game, Jungler, are fun for a few minutes, but that's probably all the time you'll ever need - and that's true for a lot of these titles. Unless you're invested in memories of your 10 year-old self, you'll struggle to justify forking over the extra cash once you finish the free demo. Frankly, even the 40 MSP (£0.34) per session option feels over the odds.

But if Konami's line-up seems disappointing, just wait until you delve into the nether regions of the Intellivision and Atari 2600 collection. Eight Atari 2600 games make the cut, but out of Adventure, Combat, Outlaw, Millipede, Realsports Tennis, Football, Star Raiders and Yars' Revenge, only the latter even raises a flicker of interest - and that's mainly because of its status as the first psychedelic videogame.

Even if these games came in packs of 10, it would be moronic to spend more than a couple of quid on them, so spirit-crushingly awful is their quality. If Microsoft imagines that people are silly enough to pay 240 Points a pop for them then it surely underestimates the intelligence of the average retro gamer.

Yet somehow it still gets worse. I never fathomed - even at the time - why anyone would willingly pay for an Intellivision system, and the fact that arguably the world's worst-ever gaming system has been given pride of place in the Game Room is mystifying.

Seven equally terrible titles make an appearance, and, again, cost the flat rate of 240 Points to actually own. So you have a choice of Space Hawk, Sea Battle, Space Armada, Mountain Madness Super Pro Skiing, Armor Battle, Football, Astrosmash and Sub Hunt, but not one of them is even worth investigating via the demo play.

Perhaps for a laugh you might want to check out Space Armada or Astro Smash to see how bad shooters were back then, or cackle maniacally at the embarrassing Super Pro Skiing. Most likely, you'll fire up something like Sea Battle and stare in mute confusion, wondering what on earth is going on, or stab idiotically at the controls in the hope that something will happen. Is this Microsoft's idea of a joke? 240 Points? Even the most throwaway releases on the Indie Games channel wouldn't dare to charge that.

Yet hope remains that the Game Room project can stumble its way towards being interesting in the long haul. Over 1000 games are promised over time, and one would hope that, eventually, there will be enough quality examples of gaming's glorious past to fulfil its promise.

But to do that, it needs not only the best publishers, but for them to use this as more than a dumping ground for games that few people cared about in the first place. Anyone even vaguely schooled in retro gaming has a decent grasp for what the best games were. I just hope that Krome and the folks at Microsoft are putting quality rather than quantity first.