The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 94

SAN DIEGO COUNTY EDITION VIEW Cos Anijclco (Times Friday, November 25, 1988 Part IV What's Hot, What's Not 'Interactive' Toys Spur New Worry About Violence Video Games and Old Favorites Top Best-Seller List By DAVID LARSEN, Times Staff Writer The craze that once fizzled has come back with a happy vengeance. For the second December in a row, video games continue to head the list of what's hot for the holiday season. Rick Anguilla, editor of the New York-based trade publication Toy Hobby World, predicted that Nintendo, the home video game that was launched in late 1986 and soared to the top of last year's list, would capture more than 75 of the market share this year. The The pitfalls of giving. Page Unsafe toys.

Page 8. balance of the home video game sales to Christmas and Hanukkah shoppers is expected to go mostly to entries from Atari and Sega. "To put things into perspective," Anguilla said, "at its peak a few years ago, the highly popular Cabbage Patch doll did about $600 million in sales and Nintendo will exceed $1.7 billion in the United States by the end of this year." Nintendo's basic Action Set costs about $100, and new this year is a Power Set (about $150), which includes a Power Pad on which a player can use his or her body movements to interact with something on the screen, perhaps aerobics or jumping hurdles. Software cartridges for the various brands of video systems are priced between $20 and $40. Shortages Predicted Anguilla predicted that there will be a temporary shortage of top-selling software such as Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, Super Mario Brothers II, Double Dragon, The Legend of Zelda, and its sequel Zelda II The Adventure of Link.

In addition to Nintendo itself, 30 companies are licensed to design games for its sets, according to Bonnie M. Powell, spokeswoman for Nintendo of America Inc. The just-released Toy Hit Parade, a fixture of Toy Hobby World, tells what is making toy retail cash registers ring: 1 Nintendo Entertainment System 2 Perfume Pretty Barbie Doll 3 Micro Machines 4 Pictionary 5 Real Ghostbusters 6 GIJoe 7 Win, Lose or Draw 8 Hot Wheels 9 Starting Lineup 10 Dolly Surprise No. 2 on the list should come as no surprise to children or parents. Nearly Please see POPULAR, Page 11 By ANN SEAMAN A winsome elf named Link paused at the bombed-out doorway, sword in one hand, flamethrower in the other.

"Don't go in there!" yelled 10-year-old Gene Lee, determined to protect Link from the fanciful creatures waiting to attack. "There's Like-Likes in there, and they'll take away your magical shield!" Link, star of the hot-selling game The Legend of Zelda, belongs to a pack of "new generation" characters leading a revival of the annual $2-billion U.S. home video game market. But with sound effects, graphics and story lines far more captivating and complex than their blob-chasing antecedents of a decade ago, these "interactive" and "role-playing" games are also reviving an old worry: Do the self-esteem and computer skills the games teach outweigh their sometimes violent content? Experts are particularly wary of video games that hew closer to real life. For example, also available to home consumers are games such as Operation Wolf and Contra, featuring jungle warfare, and Shinobi, about terrorists and their hostages.

Priced from $20 to $40, the games do not include the required television playback unit, which costs about $100. Perhaps most controversial of all is the street-punk warfare game Double Dragon, in which a woman in a tight red dress is punched unconscious and carried off by several men. Using a control paddle, a player "becomes" hero Billy Lee, who uses knives, whips, a baseball bat and dynamite against the kidnapers. Action Games Sell Big Introduced last June, Double Dragon sold 100,000 copies in its first 30 days, said a spokesman for Nintendo of America which dominates the home video game market with games like The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Brothers and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. The company also expects to introduce game versions of the horror films "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" next spring.

"Action games are what the kids want now," said Byron Cook, president of Corsicana, Tex. -based Trade west a licensee of Nintendo of America. "I don't think kids view Double Dragon in that context of violence. It's just fun action, me against the bad guy. They don't attach the importance to it that adults do." Indeed, some parents and psychologists worry that such games make violence Please see VIOLENCE, Page 8 ELLEN JASKOL Los Angeles Times Jaime Brabo, 3A, gives careful consideration to a Nintendo Entertainment System at Toys 'R' Us in Culver City.

inn 'Toy companies are realizing something now that they probably didn't a couple years says Rick Anguilla, editor World. 'They are having to make things with play value. Talking dolls had no inherent play value-maybe not enough left to a child's imagination. People are taking into consideration the dollar-to-fun Los Angeles Times Pat McDermott and kids Toni, 2, and Anthony, 15 months, shop for toys. Making a Case for Quick, Confrontational Therapy I 1 By CATHERINE M.

SPEARNAK SAN DIEGO-Seated before a television set in his cramped Mission Valley office, psychiatrist Tom Trunnell watches a videotaped therapy session in which he persistently questions a middle-aged patient. The patient, an attorney, twists uncomfortably in his chair, obviously agitated by the "I'm angry." "What can you do about that?" "You keep telling me to do something about it, and I don't know what to do!" the man choked out angrily. Trunnell continued the questioning, and the lawyer, eventually worn down by it, burst into sobs, rocking in his chair like a child. SAN DIEGO COUNTY line of questioning. He had come to Trunnell after suffering from debilitating depression much of school girlfriend and was sitting crying in the breakfast nook, his mother said to him, 'Big boys don't cry and there are plenty of fish in the How's that for motherly love?" the doctor said.

Trunnell began treating the lawyer with traditional psychotherapeutic techniques. But after four months, he could see the treatment was going nowhere. During the middle of one session, he abruptly took a new tack. He confronted the attorney. Each time the man complained of feeling depressed, Trunnell asked him what he intended to do about it.

The client became irritated. As each defense came up, Trunnell attacked it. "How do you feel?" the therapist asked. "I feel helplessly backed into a corner, and I don't know where to go to get relief," the lawyer answered. "But how are you experiencing that? What does it feel like?" nell said, adding that a handful of his patients have been cured in one visit.

Scores of sessions can be avoided if the therapist forces the patient to seek a solution sooner. "Clients will take longer to resolve their problems if they know they can. One advantage of taking longer is that you can procrastinate facing your pain." Others in San Diego's psychiatric community disagree. Short-term therapy is a useful tool, they say, but not the only tool. They hardly agree with Trunnell's assessment that "traditional psychotherapy is going to die like a brontosaurus." "The therapy should be fit to the patients and their needs," said Dr.

Haig Koshkarian, a La Jolla-based psychoanalyst. "I would be concerned or wary of any therapist who said they had a treatment that worked for all people and all problems, and who, in addition, is critical of what others do." Please see THERAPY, Page 12 That confrontational technique helps patients get better more quickly, says Trunnell, who runs the San Diego Institute for Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy. According to Trunnell, long-term therapy is usually unnecessary. Most people, he says, can overcome their specific emotional or behavioral problems in one to 40 weekly sessions, with the average patient requiring about 20 visits over six months. "People don't want to wait around five years to be cured anymore," Trun his life.

A breakup with his high school girlfriend, his divorce, the deaths of his parents, all left him devastated, barely able to function. The lawyer became severely upset each time he separated from someone close to him, and the latest bout of depression, which had lasted three years, came after the death of his mother, whom Trunnell said was a cold, harsh woman. "When he broke up with his high BARBARA MARTIN Los Angeles Times Psychiatrist Torn Trunnell says some patients need to be more than gently prodded to solve problems. Taking a Short Cut to the Power Bob Fashion fr-T falling in love with modern versions of the bob that Brooks, a silent screen star, brought to prominence as Lulu in the 1929 film "Pandora's Box." It's the cut of choice for many highly visible, fast-track women of the '80s, including Vogue editor Anna Wintour, beauty expert Kathryn Klinger and home-video Please see POWER BOB, Page 18 Brooks-inspired bob. "My husband absolutely loves it" He's not alone.

All over Europe and America, others seem to be By ROSE-MARIE TURK, Times Staff Writer Suzanne Marlett, a free-lance producer of TV commercials, is 5-foot-2 and small boned. It's a combination, she says, that could lead some to wonder, "How is a little girl like you going to be taken seriously?" Having ruled out "sexy hair or hair I have to fuss with," Marlett, who swims daily and travels constantly, has hit on what she considers "the perfect cut for my size and attitude toward my profession. It's like a little black '20s cap. It's very neat, clean and chic. It makes me look professional, but there is a feminine softness to it." A powerful hairdo only an executive woman could adore? Hardly, says Marlett of her Louise Inside View ABBY: "The sweet touch of home." Page 2.

ANN LANDERS: A legal loophole saves a child abuser. Page 36. BRIDGE: Alfred Sheinwold's column. Page 24. MORE FASHION FEATURES: PAGES 18-31.

ELLEN JASKOL Lot Angekf Tim Suzanne Marlett in her "great business haircut." Louise Brooks, the bobbed silent-screen queen..