As a relatively young medium, videogames have been evolving at a dramatic rate. Back in the late 1970s/early 1980s gaming was in a very primitive and abstract form. Games were glorified technical demos with simple concepts, simpler graphics, and a nagging sense of addiction that had videogame enthusiasts itching to insert coins in a huge arcade cabinet for another round of play. Now in 2009 (30 years later), we've got big budget games with hyperrealistic graphics and game physics built on real-world principles that can be played in the comfort of your own home.

As with our movies, most gamers gravitate towards games founded on easily defined concepts. We love to imagine we're the latest greatest guitarist in an up and coming Rock Band. We love living our criminal fantasies through gameplay sessions of Grand Theft Auto. We want to kill things with guns in one of many excellent First Person Shooter games like Halo and Left 4 Dead.

Even the groundbreaking interactive game systems from Nintendo found it's success in easily definable concepts. The Wii became "the" system to get when parents and grandparents discovered that with it you could play 10 frames of Bowling in your living room. The Nintendo DS was seen as a quirky project until kids whose parents refused to buy them a pet dog could get the next best thing: an interactive puppy in the sensation that was Nintendogs.

It's interesting how even with the limitless options that are provided to us within the context of videogames, consumers positively respond to the most familiar of concepts (why do you think licensed games continue to succeed despite mostly poor quality product?). But I firmly believe there is room for stuff that's a bit more experimental... and I'm happy to say that it seems that most developers are finding that opportunity in the newly explored realm of downloadable games on the newest game systems like PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, DSi and (to a lesser extent) Iphone.

Of the more experimental games, I LOVE games that attempt to give players a psychadelic experience. With videogames' ability to surround players with a multi-sensory interactive experience (audio, visual, tactile) its possible to overwhelm the player's senses and create an experience unlike any experienced in the real world. Here are some of the finer examples of videogame psychadelia: Tempest (1980s), Rez (1990s), Frequency (2000s), Bit Trip: Beat (2009).

BIT TRIP: BEAT (WII)

FREQUENCY (PS2)

REZ (PS2)

TEMPEST (ARCADE)