Downstairs the children fanned out to compete in virtual-reality games, steered old-fashioned bumper cars and chased one another with laser guns.

Michael Hollander, the president of the Long Island Convention and Visitors Bureau, said that at places like Sports Plus, he saw more adults playing the virtual-reality games than children.

Dexter and Jones are also seeking financing for their pièce de résistance , the King Dream Center, a $50-million interactive museum complete with virtual-reality games.

When they aren't skambling, Matt and his friends play elaborate virtual-reality games in some romantic setting like a computer-generated Sherwood Forest.

In each episode they walk into the scene of the crime as if they were stepping into a virtual-reality game.

At SegaGameworks, to open in the spring, patrons are to be able to play a broad spectrum of virtual-reality games and others in what is described as a fantasy atmosphere.

How do you counteract the effect of virtual-reality race-driving games and temper the heady mix of youth, mechanical power and newly discovered freedom?

Using a virtual-reality game that allows her to become her "worst fears," Allie takes on the personas of five other women, from her mother to Greta Garbo.

It's named for a virtual-reality game that the characters play with "biopods"--living disk drives that plug into vaginal holes at the base of people's spines.

Unlike the others, it focuses on a young woman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is already a "goddess" of virtual-reality games when the film begins.