Java - another future?

Sun's http://www.sun.comJava language has certainly taken the Internet by storm. In case you don't know it it's a language people designed to build platform independent applications which can downloaded across the web, which includes games. The Riddler http://www.riddler.com organisation is already making use of Java for some of its on-line games.

The potential for gaming is there even if the games now available are not that sophisticated - mostly simple Space Invaders and tic-tac-toe five minute distractions. The future could herald a rush of Java based games which can be quickly downloaded and played on any platform anywhere. Even better Using Java game designers can link to sophisticated databases anywhere on the Internet. For a taste of Java, launch Netscape 2.0 and go to http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Programming_Languages/Java/Games.