A video games arcade, with its wild-eyed, manic youth and cacophony of sound, looks like being a pretty ferile place for exploration if you happen to be a sociologist. But not many would take the extreme step of actually succumbing hopelessly to a video game - and then write a book about it.

David Sudnow has done just that, describing his experience as a pilgrimage through a microworld bordered by a TV screen. That amounted to him spending three months (or so he says) in virtual solitary confinement, trying to master the classic, but now somewhat outdated, Breakout. (You remember - you try to break through a wall of bricks at the top of the screen with a ball that bounces to and fro.)

So what's so special about Breakout? And can you really write more than 200 pages about such a simple game and not bore the reader to death? The answer probably lies in whther you're a games nut or not. Sudnow certainly wasn't before the day he retrieved his teenage son from a video arcade. That's how it all started.

But Sudnow probably wouldn't have fallen for the like of Missile Command. "Play Breakout," he extorts. "It's fun, it's gentle, you don't have to shoot missiles or people or alien beings, don't have to be a human jackhammer, rapping your finger on a button hundreds of times a minute... Just back and forth and back and forth."

From the instant he's plugged the machine in and served the first ball, Sudnow takes us through his solitary experience chapter by chapter, recording not just his own discoveries about Breakout and how to master it, but fathoming out the depths of that disease, games-mania.

Occasionally it all becomes rather wearing on your patience. Sudnow insists on recording the minutae of his discoveries - the ways in which eyes, hand and paddles coordinate, the intricacies of strategic play, the ins and outs of developing greater skill, the problems of concentration...

You can forgive him that; after all, he is a scientist, eager to record faithfully every detail of his journey. What's less palatable is his liberal use of jargon - words like "neuroemotional", "motorific", "cathexis" and many more. On top of that, there's his occasional flights of rhetoric and literary fantasy. All that abstract stuff and his Americanisms may not be to your taste.

His quest took him to Atari's HQ in Santa Clara where he managed to dig up a few priceless gems of information. "I was amongst colleagues, fellow microathletes," he enthuses. So there's nothing random about Breakout, he discovers. You could take a perfect path from start to finish and clear the screen with a single ball. Reinforced, he returns and plays on... and on, and on.

On a practical level, this book gives you all you ever need to know about the intricacies of playing Breakout and might inspire you to dust off your Atari console for a few quick serves. For the more abstract-minded, it's a passable study of a modern phenomenon. But to enjoy it you really must have the same manic devotion to video games as Sudnow himself - and there can't be many like him around.

Overall, a complete run-down on Breakout... but for hardened enthusiasts only.