"Computer Games" is a song by New Zealand band Mi-Sex, released in September 1979 in Australia and New Zealand as the second single from their debut studio album, '' Graffiti Crimes'' (1979). The song peaked at number 1 in Australia and 5 in New Zealand. The music video was filmed on location at what was at the time

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North Sydney North Sydney is a suburb and commercial district on the Lower North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. And is the administrative centre for the local government area of North Sydney Council. History The Indigenous people on the s ...

centre and included gameplay from the 1979 arcade games '' Speed Freak'', ''

Basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appro ...

'' and '' Star Fire''. The single won the award for Best Australian Single at the 1979 ''TV Week''/'' Countdown'' Music Awards. The single was also released in Europe and North America, as well as South Africa where the band's name was altered to MS to satisfy censorship. The song was also re-recorded as the final track for the band's 1983 album '' Where Do They Go?'', a dub version was the 12" B-side of their 1983 single "Lost Time" and again on the 2016 EP ''

Extended Play An extended play (EP) is a Sound recording and reproduction, musical recording that contains more tracks than a Single (music), single but fewer than an album. Contemporary EPs generally contain up to eight tracks and have a playing time of 1 ...

''.

Reception

Musicologist

Ian McFarlane Ian McFarlane (born 1959) is an Australian music journalist, music historian and author, whose best known publication is the ''Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop'' (1999), which was updated for a second edition in 2017. As a journalist ...

opined that it was an "electro-pop anthem... with its simplistic, brain-teasing riff and Gilpin's mannered vocal yelps, "Computer Games" boasted little substance but was constructed for maximum effect. It came to epitomise the one word which has plagued the memory of Mi-Sex: 'contrived'."McFarlane
'Mi-Sex'
entry. Archived fro
the original
on 7 August 2004. Retrieved 7 May 2016. Stewart Mason from

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

said " Steve Gilpin's theatrical vocals, full of Brian Connolly-style hiccups and leaps into falsetto, are an interesting counterpoint to the unvarying electronic rhythm, particularly on the memorable stuttering chorus." ''

Cash Box ''Cashbox'', also known as ''Cash Box'', is an American music industry trade magazine, originally published weekly from July 1942 to November 1996. Ten years after its dissolution, it was revived and continues as ''Cashbox Magazine'', an online ...

'' said, "This avant-pop band has taken the sound first pioneered by Eno and

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and molded it into more of a hard rock sound. The band employs witty future-orientated lyrics to augment the swirling synthesized sounds."

Track listings

Australia/New Zealand 7" (BA 222563) # "Computer Games" – 3:54 # "Wot Do You Want?" – 2:55 Australian 12" # "Computer Games" (Disco Version) – 4:41 # "Graffiti Crimes" – 3:49 Spanish version # "Juego De Computadoras (Computer Games)" – 3:54 # "Que Queres? (Wot Do You Want?)" – 2:55 United Kingdom dance version # "Computer Games" (Special Dance Mix) – 6:17 # "Wot Do You Want?" – 2:55

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

References