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If little Billy (or his dad) wants the ultimate gaming platform to help pass the holiday hours while holed up waiting for the rain to ease this Christmas, what should they buy?

Way-back in the olden days, there weren't a lot of choices if you wanted to play computer games. There was the dedicated games box -- which played eight versions of Pong and "breakout" -- or you fired up your old cassette-based microcomputer and crossed your fingers while some lame bit of code took half an hour to load -- then failed with a CRC error.

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Then, with an offering from Atari, the games console appeared and began to offer a really simple and interesting alternative to those clunky early options.

Now you could just throw a plastic cartridge into a slot, turn on the power and play cool games like Missile Command, Asteroids and other arcade shoot-em-ups on your own TV -- in colour!

Although similar games started appearing for the raft of 8-bit home computers that were around at the time, the lack of a universal joystick interface meant that gameplay was compromised by the need to control things through the keyboard.

Enter the IBM PC...

Although it lacked serious graphics capability -- offering the choice of a monochrome screen with reasonable resolution but very slow phosphor (aka: smeary movement) or a very chunky and palette limited CGA option, the PC did introduce a standard for joystick interfaces.

Once the PC platform became "the" standard, game developers started pouring out software and third-party hardware developers created a raft of new and ever more powerful graphics cards to hike performance.

Today, the average PC is a very capable games platform and the graphics card alone has significantly more processing power than you can shake a stick at.

But the humble games console has not rested on its laurels. Not only has it become far more powerful than those old cartridge-based Atari units, it's also diversified into the hand-held and table-top sectors.

Now we're spoilt for choice. Playstation, xbox, PSP, tricked-out PCs, etc.

And this is the problem... what's the best option?

Does a modern well-spec'd PC still outperform the latest generation of games consoles when it comes to gaming? Or does the convenience of the XBox and PS2 make up for any small performance trade-off?

What's your perfect gaming platform and, for that matter, what are this year's hottest games?

Is it worth subscribing to an online gaming service? Does the novelty wear off racing your virtual car against other drivers from around the globe?

I suspect that there are a lot of people who are presently considering their computer-based gaming options right now -- why not lend them a hand?

And please don't forget to send me your best links for the Christmas bonanza version of Lighten Up that will be published next week.

Oh, and I almost forgot -- don't forget to visit the sponsor's website and maybe even drop them a line to thank them for their sponsorship of this column.

Tell us all and see what others have to say in The Aardvark Forums

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