3. Tapper The feature on Starbucks this month heralded a new season for YS3. Gone were the wanton enactments of ultra-violent videogames from the Speccy Hall of Fame. Instead, a more people-friendly and laid-back era ushered in the safest and most rewarding Actual Reality yet as Robojon donned his bartender’s apron for Tapper. Level One: The Bar Things started off gently enough as Jon accustomed himself to the rules of the game. Patrons order a drink, Jon pulls the drink (and not the patron), Jon slides the pulled item down the bar to the patron, catches the empty glasses as they come back up and carries on to the next patron. Once he had worked out the difference between lemonade and Tetley’s (he doesn’t get out much), Jon was in full swing, taking orders and chucking pints like the trained half-cyborg he is. So far, so good. Level Two: The Bar (still) The difficulty moved up a notch or two with the second level as the patrons grew more numerous, hearing of Jon’s bartending fame. Lines soon formed back out into the street as the punters all queued, hoping for a beverage from the brilliant barman. Unfortunately, the multitasking option in Jon’s foil-coated brain wasn’t quite up to the challenge, and he started sliding empty glasses at the lines of terrified punters with alarming speed and accuracy. At least twelve died and seven more were injured before he realised his mistake. Life returned to normal, but the pressure was starting to show on his young face. Something would have to give, and soon. Level Three: The Bar (encore une fois) With the final level, the number of patrons and the complexity of their orders increased exponentially. They wanted bitter, they wanted stout, they wanted red wine and white wine, the kids wanted blackcurrant juice (which looks a lot like red wine) and they wanted every spirit this side of Buddhism. As the kids rolled in the aisles and slurred their pronouns and the adults thought their wine tasted funny, the rest of the YS3 crew decided to stop buy for a quick pint after work. Unfortunately, the line was still longer than a twenty-seven foot crocodile, and journalists after a busy day are not the most patient of people. There was shoving. There was pushing. There was name-calling. Someone shook the fruit machine to try and get a free banana. And there was an all-out pub brawl. The line degenerated into one huge fight, an chairs were broken over people’s heads for ages before the police turned up to sort things out. But they were all out of NARC for some inexplicable reason and, deciding that the whole pub was doped up, started shooting to kill severely. It took the finely-honed reflexes of the entire YS3 team to create a defence perimeter and disarm the offending coppers. Then, using the table legs as make-shift clubs, they beat the entire force to death. The scene of violence that was before him caused that odd twitch in Jon’s left foot as the rage and frustration gathered speed like a Ford Fiesta taking a run at a hill. Like an erupting volcano, he smashed one of the Sauvignon ’96 bottles over the head of the one then-living punter before perforating his prone body like swiss cheese. Feeling much better after all this, Jon pulled the entire YS3 team a pint and they had a laugh over the beer, peanuts and multitude of corpses. And they say violent videogames have no harmful effect on people.

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