This page isn't about which games are evil. We don't think that way, and we don't want to start a fight with anybody's family. M-rated games are made for adults, the same way R-rated movies are, and plenty of adults enjoy them. Richard has played a couple at a friend's house himself. Our kids are 12, 9 and 6, and these games aren't made for them. That's the whole reason.

Each of these came up because one of our kids asked for it, usually because a friend has it. Here's what the box says, what we said, and how it went.

What it is: A horror game. You play a rookie police officer or a young woman looking for her brother, in a city overrun by zombies, and you fight your way through a police station and worse with whatever weapons you can find. The content descriptors on the back of the box mention blood and gore and violence. It's designed to frighten you, and from what we've seen, it does.

How it came up: Catherine saw it at a sleepover, where a friend's older brother was playing it. She said it was "so scary, it was awesome," and then she slept with the hall light on for three nights.

What we said: No, and we told her why: the rating says 17, and the three nights with the light on told us the rest. We didn't make a big speech. We did call the other parents before the next sleepover, nicely, and found out they hadn't known their son was playing it with the younger girls in the room. They were glad we called.

What it is: A one-on-one fighting game with human-looking fighters, a lot of blood, and special finishing moves, called fatalities, where the winner kills the loser in some gruesome way at the end of a match. That last part is what the series is famous for, and it's the reason for the rating.

How it came up: Andrew said "everybody at school has it." We asked around. Two boys in his class have it. Everybody else has heard about it from those two boys.

What we said: No. We explained the difference between Smash Bros., which he already has, where the characters bounce off the screen, and a game where the point of the ending is to show somebody getting killed. He understood more than we expected him to. He still thinks we're wrong. He's nine, and that's his job.

What it is: You look down on a city from above and play a criminal. You steal cars, do jobs for gangsters, and run from the police. You can run people over, and the game rewards you for it. There's also strong language.

How it came up: Their cousin, who is sixteen, had it at Grandma's over the Fourth of July. His parents are fine with it for him. That's their call, and he's sixteen.

What we said: We asked him, privately and politely, to play something else while the younger cousins were in the room, and he did, without any fuss. He's a good kid. That's all it took.

And one we haven't decided yet. Catherine has asked about GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64, which a lot of her friends play. It's rated T, for 13 and up, and she'll be 13 in February. We rented it, and Richard played it with her for an evening. It's a shooting game, but the violence is not graphic. We're leaning toward yes, for her birthday, with the rule that it's not played when Victoria is in the room. We'll let you know.

What we've learned from saying no: Explain once, calmly, and don't make the game into forbidden fruit. Offer something good that they can play. Talk to other parents, kindly. And remember it's not forever. At some point they'll be old enough to decide for themselves, and we hope by then they'll have picked up some of the way we decide, which is really the point of all this.