Anyone old enough, or nerdy enough, to remember 1980s boys' comic Eagle will fondly recall a story called The Computer Warrior, about a boy called Bobby who got sucked into his computer to play his games in real life.
Come to think of it, the movie 'Tron' was more or less the same sort of thing.
We can't help thinking that sort of 1980s nostalgia is the only thing that can explain the creation of this extraordinary real-life version of Pong, the legendary Atari video game created in 1972 which more or less single-handedly invented computer gaming.
The people responsible for turning the game into a real-life sport work at a Japanese firm called eSports Ground, who hooked up a load of cameras, projectors and sensors to blur the lines between video games and proper sports.
The irony, of course, is that Pong is basically just air hockey in any case, but the other games playable via the system - among them Tetris, Asteroids and bat-and-ball classic Arkanoid - are much more 'gamey'. Or they used to be; now, they are athletic endeavours.
