I was innocent, once.

To be honest I didn’t think much of Peggle when it first came out on Xbox Live Arcade. Call it judging a game by its cover, if you will, but the prospect of playing a child-centred pinball-type game didn’t appeal at all. But I went ahead and downloaded the trial version anyway while I was busy creating extremely sexist female characters in Soul Calibur IV and pondering the worthiness of using Blanka against those cheap Sagat players in Street Fighter IV.

To my ultimate surprise and similarly for the hundreds and thousands of people who have purchased the game, Peggle is brilliant fun. I was sold as soon as the final orange peg was struck and Beethoven’s Ode To Joy began playing in a ridiculous smattering of rainbows and colour and triumph. What a great game!

And now, look at me. Just look at me. Playing online duel matches with dirty tactics: urging my opponent’s ball to not hit any orange pegs so as to cop the 25% points deduction penalty; stealing their green peg special abilities even after I’ve taken my own already; ‘snookering’ them by throwing my last shot so that they could not possibly hit the final orange peg and hence preventing them from gaining that massive Fever Bonus; and utterly, thoroughly, and wholeheartedly hoping that they screw up. Such behaviour would, and probably does given the likelihood of the child demographic playing this game around the world, make a youngster cry. Whereas me? I’m an adult: instead of crying, I just swear softly to myself when they hit a good shot and get a bucket bonus at the end of it. Up against Magic Hat Rabbit and Zen Ball Owl, avatars constructed soley with love and innocence in mind, when the colours of the rainbow explode to indicate that I have lost the match, I shout the words “Oh Fuck Off” with shocking sincerity.

Bullshit!

It is a game based as much on luck as it is on skill but the sheer possibilities are wondrous, however I never would have thought that a title encouraging such fun physics, goodwill, mutual friendliness, and above all, purity, would end up with me willing my opponent to mess up just so I could come away with an empty – but jubilant nonetheless – victory. Have I been completely corrupted as a human being? Well, given that I once called a successful Scary Ball player the C word under my breath, it sure bloody looks like it.