When I was a little boy, my parents didn't actually let me play video games. "Rots the mind," they said. Instead, they encouraged me to use my imagination by building me a small 3x3x3 sound proof chamber that they called "Florian's Reflection Room." The walls were an unadorned white; the temperature a constant 72 degrees. Sometimes, they'd just lock me up in there for hours (although this is only a guess, since there was no way to tell time) encouraging me to expand the powers of my mind.

And expand they did! I had some just amazing adventures in that little box. For example, there was that one time when I imagined that I was an astronaut who had escaped earth seconds before it blew up, destined to float through the universe alone for the rest of my life, and no matter how much I hoped and prayed, I'd never meet another human soul as long as I lived and would die utterly alone. Or that time I imagined that I actually had thousands of little friends: imaginary spiders that scurried all over my body. You know, sometimes, in fact, I wonder if I'm not still locked in my Reflection Room, just imagining all this. But no. Solipsism's insane.

The point is that I can personally endorse this article, 'How to Play a Video Game on Paper.' Who needs a $600 console when you've got a 25 cent pencil and a piece of loose leaf? Who needs video game designers when you've got the rainbow power of imagination?

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I never thought I'd see the day that playing video games got even more frickin' pathetic. Florian Eckhardt

How to Play a Video Game on Paper [WikiHow, via Digg]

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