I spent five minutes with MultiVersus over the weekend, which turned into ten minutes and then an hour and then the best part of a morning. MultiVersus is great! If you aren't aware of it, it's a Warner Bros-themed Smash Bros-alike. You choose from a bunch of familiar characters, and then fight on 2D stages. Your aim is to get ring-outs by lobbing enemies off the screen, and the more damage you do, the further they fly when you hit them. Best of four wins. Simple.
Not simple, obviously, and here's where an admission comes in. I love the idea of Smash Bros - and I particularly adore the way that the games have become sort of Nintendo museums, beautiful virtual dioramas in their own right. But I am thick and slow and these games have always looked fast and complicated. All of these Nintendo characters, some of which I am happy to admit I have not really heard of, fighting it out in astonishingly swift battles.
I think there are two reasons MultiVersus clicked. Three actually, the bonus third being that I was playing alongside my daughter, whose enthusiasm for these things always carries me aloft with it. Anyway, the other two reasons: One, MultiVersus is new, so there's that sense of getting in on the ground floor. Even if people are turning up with Smash Bros experience - and they are, and it's helping them - the psychological toll is lightened, because this is a game that's been around for a few weeks at most.