If you're a regular reader of Digitiser's Panel 4 column on the regular, telly-based Teletext service, you may well have read Stuart Campbell's recent opinion piece stressing the point that while it's all well and good to complain about unoriginality in the games industry, you're a bit of a fat idiot if you don't come up with some better ideas yourself.

Therefore, we grab S Campbell's baton with both our hands and take up the challenge. We present, for you our games - spins on existing genres, admittedly - which are approximately 44 times more original than 90% of games already out there. Prepare to feel the steel. Or something.

GAME 1: Vampire Nation.

A Quake clone with a difference. A vampire plague has spread across Britain, turning 80% of its populace into blood-thirsty vampires. Those left unaffected by the great blight are forced to take shelter in the London Underground, and subterranean military bases, only emerging during the daylight to scavenge for food. At night the country becomes the vampire's hunting ground... As the last of a long lineage of vampire hunters, the US military airlift you into a Britain sealed off by a naval blockade, to retrieve secret documents.

With day and night cycles, you could visit locations more than once, interacting with the desperate human populace during the day, while fighting the vampires at night. Familiar landmarks, such as the London Tube system, the Severn Bridge, Buckingham Palace and so forth could look spectacular if rendered with the appropriate feel of decay. Imagine being chased through the corridors of the Houses Of Parliament by a pair of ravenous vampire lions, while armed with only a stake-firing crossbow...

Of course, the notoriously difficult-to-kill nature of vamps would add an extra element to the game, requiring you to deliver that fatal stake to the heart rather than risk them getting up and legging it after you. Your arsenal could include holy water grenades, crucifix shields, and grated garlic. Mmm... garlic.

GAME 2: Fortunes Of War

A real-time wargame with a difference. Marrying the humour of Skool Daze to the resource-management of Command & Conquer, the potential for a street-level juvenile war game is obvious. Players could take control of gangs from rival schools, building up ammunition from catapults and water pistols, to go-karts and bikes by hoarding pocket money received from doing good-deeds, such as mowing lawns and washing cars.

Raids on opponents' tree-houses, or back garden dens, with frantic chases down alleyways and through parks, would deliver a healthy shot of nostalgia for older gamers, while amusing the rest of us with its Childrens Film Foundation-style flavourings. Of course, the inevitable sequel could bring things up to date by having the youths in the game mug old people while drunk on alcopops...

CONTINUES NEXT WEEK...