For this week's cover story on video games, TIME staff members not only interviewed manufacturers, distributors, arcade operators and scores of gamesters, they also displayed exceptional dedication as they took on their story subject face to face. Los Angeles Correspondent Jeff Melvoin was especially enthusiastic: "I played every game I could get my hands on and dropped a fast $65 in the process." Chicago's Steven Holmes wrestled with several games and concluded: "My reflexes have improved, though I can't say my mind has expanded a whole lot."

In Winter Park, Fla., it took Sandra Hinson only one quarter "to confirm what I'd known since high school phys.-ed.: yours truly is a total eye-hand klutz." TIME Contributor John Skow, who wrote the story, claims "no aptitude, but considerable attraction" toward the beeping machines. He found his skill grew roughly at the rate his money vanished. Skow also tested home game systems and found what any father could have predicted: his 15-year-old daughter wiped him out. Working with Skow was Reporter-Researcher Peter Ainslie, who has been dueling with arcade machines for three years. "At one place, there are some really serious players," he says. "Not long ago, part of the ceiling fell in, probably because of the vibration of 60 machines going at top volume. I bet most of the players didn't even look up. They thought it was just another special effect." Exposure to Pac Man, Asteroids and Space Invaders produced one adverse reaction. Says Holmes: "In most games and sports, you learn teamwork and how to adjust to the strengths and weaknesses of others, attributes that serve you well the rest of your life. Video games do not seem to produce any transferable skills." Ainslie disagrees: "While most people over 30 are somewhat intimidated by computers," he says, "the younger game players accept them as tools to be used, to be taken for granted, to be enjoyed. They are better prepared than we are for the computer revolution." Skow, a cheerful skeptic, refuses to endow the phenomenon with any cosmic significance at all. His view: "It's just another manifestation of human mania, our endearing quality of going relentlessly after absolutely pointless goals."