These words used to be a crutch for the lame. You got your butt handed to you in Street Fighter II or thrown off the road in Hang On and of course the computer cheated. They couldn't beat you fairly. You knew the truth was that you sucked, or at least just weren't good enough, but you weren't about to tell your friends or family that. And with practice, you'd eventually come back and leave the machine eating your dust and the accusations of cheating were usually forgotten.

Things have changed a lot in the gaming industry in the past few years and a disturbing trend has emerged in many current games: the computer does cheat. It's called, among other, more unpolite terms, "rubber band AI" which reflects the fact that when you get a certain amount ahead of the computer, it slingshots back in front of you, ignoring whatever rules you yourself had to follow.

Racing games are usually the worst offenders of this. You'll be well ahead of your closest competitor nearing the final lap, only to find them immediately on your tail or passing you without explanation. Fighting games are also guilty. It's a pity that few programmers read my column because I'd tell them how much they suck if they use such a tactic. In the olden days, these tricks weren't needed. If I left someone eating my wake in Mario Kart, they stayed there unless I screwed up or they used that damned Thunderbolt attack to shrink me. When I had a Samurai Shodown opponent on the ropes, they didn't just magically start blocking all my attacks and chopping me to pieces.

It's hard to say if it's a sign of a poor programming generation, or whether people just can't handle trying to live up to the hype of things like "It's Thinking" on modern game systems, but it's something that needs to stop. If I want to see cheating in a game, I'll plug in my GameShark and show my system the meaning of the word. And considering how many countless times I've flown my lone space fighter against hundreds of waves of enemy ships to save the Universe in one game or another, I can still say with a straight face, let's try and keep it a bit fair, okay?