In Bubble Bauble you electrocute the bad guys by bursting the bubble they're in. In Renegade and numerous other games, you have to kill many gang members before you get to kill their leader. Contra is one of the few games that feature conventional machine gun-toting good guys, but to win, you have to shoot aliens in the heart. In each game, the enemy has a specific weakness that you must know and exploit in order to kill him. Twelve year-old Cindy G. swears that Gumshoe is not violent, but her brother, Kevin, disagrees.
Sports games are the exception.
All my subjects knew a good selection of sports games where there's nothing more aggressive than getting a ball across a line. Twelve year- old Sean E. says he doesn't play the killing games because they're all basically the same, but the sports games are more varied. She says her four year-old cousin is a better player than she, and that she's teased for her disinterest in the game. In Evan's opinion, most kids play Nintendo, but don't watch tv. He says that he's tired of Nintendo, however, and now likes tv.