No, it wasn't the new edition of Madden NFL 10 (although that's an impressive game if you are an NFL fan). Nor is the game that captivated me from Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, or any of the other major publishers. Oddly enough, this amazing game is offered by a team of Dutch influenza researchers. It's called the Great Flu.

While there is no shortage of online issue-oriented games shoveled out to the Web crowd by politicos, nonprofits, and marketing types nowadays, very few have the depth to keep one occupied for more than a few minutes. But the Great Flu brings the opposite problem: It's hard to tear yourself away. The free-to-play title, which challenges players to prevent the spread of a global flu pandemic, is riveting.

As the game begins, players are graphically reminded that the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic killed 40 million people. Alerted to the enormity of the task, the player is next placed at the controls of a global health-resource system. There are five possible strains of influenza that may confront the player. These range from a fairly mild strain passed on from chickens to a severe, fast-spreading virus called the Broadway Flu. Initially, I opted to tackle Gamers Flu, a nasty bug that first appears at an international video-game conference in China.

While very entertaining in an edge-of-your-seat way, the Great Flu is primarily an educational game that drives home several key points about pandemic avoidance. Chief among these is that resources are scarce and need to be allocated efficiently. Players begin with a $2 billion budget; that may sound like a lot, but it disappears quickly. Each possible action has a different cost associated with it. Public-information campaigns and the distribution of face masks, for example, are relatively cheap. Closing airports and isolating infected individuals are very expensive options. Research teams can be tasked with developing vaccines. But, as the game explains, there is a large amount of guesswork involved in this process, since researchers need to predict the likely strain of flu in advance of an outbreak.

In the game, my battle against Gamers Flu started out badly. Within a month of the first reported cases in China, 50,000 people were infected and the outbreak had spread to the West Coast of the United States. The first deaths followed shortly. Although I ultimately was able to get on top of the situation, in another play-through I wasn't so lucky. The fictitious Broadway Flu started in New York but quickly spread globally. More than nine million died before it was declared under control. The secretary of health had resigned, there was rioting in the streets, and the global economy was in tatters.

While the Great Flu is a terrific game, it also packs an emotional punch, offering the tense excitement of a well-done medical drama. With kids heading back to school soon, teachers should definitely check this one out. Students will learn much about this important topic as they make strategic decisions. Oh, and they will enjoy themselves enormously in the bargain. In a very real sense, titles such as the Great Flu show the power of the video-game medium to be both inspiring and educational.

A lot has changed since this column first appeared in The Inquirer on New Year's Day 1998. Back then, my hair used to be dark and my children were in grade school, shortly to become ensnared by the Pokemon craze. The original PlayStation was the reigning king of consoles. Handheld gaming meant playing on the black-and-white screen of the original Game Boy. Online competition was relatively new and something only PC gamers could enjoy.

Almost a dozen years later, Nintendo's hardware has changed but it still owns the handheld space. A challenge looms, however, from the iPhone. Sony, which dominated the console scene for a decade with the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, is absorbing massive losses with the PlayStation 3. And online play has become an intrinsic part of the console-gaming experience. As for me, my hair is more gray than brown these day. My sons are off to college and my daughter will follow next year.

Since that first column - a review of a long-forgotten PC title called Creatures - I've seen games and systems come and go and I've written about much of it in this space. In those years, the video-game medium went from being merely a pleasant way to pass the time to a deeply entrenched part of the modern cultural landscape. And while it has been my great pleasure to chronicle the growth of games, for a variety of reasons the time has come for me to hang up my keyboard.

For a kid from Mayfair who grew up reading The Inquirer every morning, writing for the paper has been one of the great experiences of my life. During the nearly dozen years that I've penned this column I have been guided by a succession of amazing editors - true professionals - and I thank them for their patience and wisdom. But most especially, I've been blessed with great Inquirer readers who are passionate about their games.

Play on.

Power Up:

The Great Flu