I haven't played Flashback in almost 20 years. The iOS port is burdened with a control system so faffy and unintuitive that I had to sit through the entire intro sequence three times in the first 15 minutes (including one full shutdown and reboot due to a particularly cretinous oversight on the developer's part*). Now I'm here, which experienced Flashback players will recognise as being roughly six seconds from the start:

HOW IN THE HOLY NAME OF THE POPE'S TINY WITHERED COCK DO YOU GET BACK OUT OF THIS SCREEN?

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I'm flying a rocket pack! (And a jet plane and a hang-glider.) Over a beautiful tropical island packed with features that are just begging to have stunts pulled in, through and around them! There's a volcano! And it's all in 3D!

I shouldn't be this bored, should I?

There are two groups of videogamers in the UK (and perhaps the world) whose Venn diagram has a surprisingly small intersection. In Group A we have "People who own a Nintendo DS", and in Group B there's "People interested in buying a Nintendo 3DS".

In fairness, this may be because Group B is so small it'd be a tiny intersection even if it was entirely contained within Group B, but that's neither here nor there. In any event, because WoSland loves Nintendo so much, we're going to try to help increase it a bit.

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We need a new word for videogames. The term was coined back in the 1970s to describe something that at the time was a completely new and revolutionary artform (it must be barely conceivable to today's gamers that there was a time in living memory when such things as games played on a TV screen simply didn't exist), and the image it conjured up was a straightforward one of Asteroids, Pac-Man and Space Invaders – that is, an abstract, magical, ultra-modern type of entertainment, born in technology and totally unrelated to any kind of leisure pursuit that had ever gone before it.

The very word "videogame" inherently depicted something that was exciting, glamorous and – because most games were located in arcades, places where under-18s weren't allowed – slightly forbidden and dangerous too.

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Well, it's all been happening in the world of the 3DS since WoSland decreed it relevant by deciding to get one last week. Nintendo are talking about stick-on second analogue pads, brand-new models with the 3D effect toned down, and trailing mysterious big announcements for the Tokyo Game Show that sent the beleaguered company's stock soaring.

Obviously WoSland is flattered that its Seal Of Grudging Sort-Of Approval has generated such dramatic activity, but much more important than that is the fact that my 3DS now has a game to play. So how's that gone?

Since it's apparently Namco Week here at WoSland, let's find out.

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In keeping with their general levels of inept bumbling irritancy, Namco have ungraciously just rendered much of last Saturday's enthusiastic piece about Pac-Man S inaccurate and redundant, by wiping the leaderboards and releasing a new and substantially different version of the game.

Luckily for them the new version is even better, and therefore few will die.

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I know. I don't even like Namco very much. But in the world of videogames, all too often if you want a job doing properly you have to do it yourself.

I had to fork out eight quid to buy Galaga Legions DX and find out if it was any good or not, because not one of the dozens of useless "reviews" published on the internet told me anything I needed to know about it. Hopefully you, at least, won't have the same problem.

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Actually, I probably still won't. Google is one of the most sinister multiglobal corporations on Earth, and it still astonishes me that people will entrust them with their main email accounts. But more importantly, they don't have this.

(It's not that I have a lot of faith in Facebook either, you understand. I'm extremely selective about what apps I let it install and what personal data I keep there, and I pretty much only accept people I actually know in real life as friends, with few exceptions. But games this good are welcome to know my fictitious school history if they want to.)

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Is, of all things, a Facebook game. I know! Specifically, it's Pac-Man S.

Namco are on a great run of doing excellent stuff with their old IP these days, and we might easily have been recommending New Rally-X S instead, which is also pretty darn good. But Pac-Man S, which borrows several elements from the Pac-Man Championship games, is arguably even spiffier.

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So I've got a 3DS now. For someone who's still just about a functional videogames journalist, the professional obligation and the economics finally more or less converged, and I'm now the owner of a rather handsome Cosmos Black machine. (No games yet, but I'll pick some up at some point.)

But don't worry, viewers – WoSland's principles remain firmly intact.

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Phoenix HD is a high-def remake of the original Phoenix (69p), which is itself one of the App Store's finest shmups, adding Retina graphics, Universal support and an array of very pretty additional background scenery.

Obviously, now that it's a substantially better game, it's gone free forever.

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Alert viewers will already be aware of WoSland's determination never to give Nintendo any more of its money until the end of time. Yet I have to admit I'm mildly tempted by the 3DS now that it's going for as little as £115 new (and I have some stuff I can flog to CEX to offset the outlay). So I thought I might see if I could pick one up preowned, saving a couple of quid and more importantly keeping my cash out of Nintendo's pockets.

I'm thinking probably not from Gamestation, though.

Free today: the inaccurately-named 8 Bit Rally. I actually paid money for this a couple of weeks ago, like some sort of chump, and had been waiting for a spare moment to write about it. I still haven't really got one (I'm so busy lately you wouldn't believe it), so I'll be quick.

It's Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge 2011.

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Alert viewers will doubtless recall a recent piece in which we praised the toweringly magnificent gameplay engine of Evolution Tennis for iOS, while savagely attacking its awful, unbelievably user-hostile metastructure.

As ever, though, WoSland's nudging has managed to secure tangible and thrillingly awesome results where others merely flail around impotently.

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If anyone ever doubted the uselessness of the modern videogames media, consider this – when you're working in the specialist press, and your only job is to bring people news related to videogames, how shit must you be if you get scooped at reporting videogame news by the Metro?

But that's only passingly what I want to talk about today.

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