But the screen is the center of action and here the idea is to make the edge-of-death experience plausible, even when the image is rudimentary. The genius of a game like Tetris is that the pressure comes purely from abstract, geometric maneuvering, a race against the implacable randomness swamping the screen. Other arcade games are less subtle. Their goal is to finely focus anxiety, making it seem that there are high stakes involved. The less a game trusts its own imagination to create a game-world, the more it relies on the latest technology for creating "realistic" effects, and the more it has to make "death" seem like death, and display gore.

One recent arcade game for 3DO, "Shock Wave," makes an ersatz realism work despite a game concept that is almost a genre itself: you are a rookie pilot, shooting down aliens. It uses live actors and dialogue to punctuate the shooting game. 3DO's technology allows a feeling of space and time in realistic landscapes. This is a game I have sweated through -- at least until I was shot down. "Shock Wave" is all the more ominous because it omits the usual bad-rock soundtrack. There is just the drone of the plane's engines and the thumps of alien fire. The Home Where the Heart Pounds Faster

The biggest achievement of Nintendo and now Sega, the two reigning giants of the video-game industry, has been to transcend the arcade. Anxiety and death and danger are still there, quick reflexes are still needed, but the atmosphere is different. Each system has developed unusual games that seem to inspire communal participation; the player is not shut off in an interior world of sensation and threat but is part of a group. Observers shout out suggestions, and veterans offer help through difficult parts. These games might never have been developed without the home in mind.

Like arcade games, they have various levels of play, but here the different levels reveal radically different worlds and different ways of maneuvering; one level might be underwater and another in midair on platforms. The brilliance of Nintendo's Mario Brothers games -- in which a mustachioed plumber is ostensibly out to rescue a princess -- is that everything is serious but everything is also amusing; there is a wry wit at work as waddling turtles become forces to be reckoned with and Mario sprouts wings and flies.

The Mario games, all developed by Sigeru Miyamoto of Japan, practically define the character of the home video game. There is a world to explore and secrets hidden throughout: ways to restore life, earn magic powers, escape a deadly opponent. Magazines publish maps, hints and codes that open up hidden regions that only masters of these strange universes c b; companies staff phones with "game counselors" to help those who can't find their way out.

Nintendo has not been able to find a character or a style to match the Mario series, and its last major entry, "Super Mario World," a few years ago was just a variation on a theme. The company is now mounting an aggressive marketing campaign for its new "Donkey Kong Country" game, which keeps the old formula intact but uses striking three-dimensional graphics for its leading ape.