How do you help a kid learn to program?

HELP! HELP! HELP!
My 15 year old nephew, who is a 24/7 Gameboy/Nintendo addict, has just emailed me as the family's token computer nerd asking me to help him write a computer game.
That's how *I* got into this racket-- I wanted to write computer games. Of course, the years have gone by, I've become a database programmer, and games have gotten bigger, faster, stronger, more violent, etc.
I haven't written a computer game in like 10 years now.
I'm not even sure what language to start with-- I started on FORTRAN and then TRS-80 BASIC. These were fine for writing games when Collosal Cavern was the best game in the world (hell, it still is, but my nephew doesn't know that). Obviously, in this group, Java is going to get big thumbs up, but I wonder if it won't be too steep of a learning curve. On the other hand, I learned all kinds of bad habits with BASIC. I love Perl, but I wonder if that will sour him for other languages (I mean, Perl does *too* much for you sometimes).
How would you guys do this? Is there a good book on Java game programming, for instance, with lots of shiny pictures of bad guys getting their entrails blown out of them? What language should I use? Anyone have a favorite game with source code that I can have him look at for examples?
Thanks in advance.

Ilja Preuss posted an article in the Teacher's Lounge about a new language called Squeak which makes Java look pre-historic. Funnily enough,
I was planning to look into that for my own 5-year old nephew and 3-year old niece to turn them into Squeakers.
The 5-yr old shows a penchant for microcosmic philosophy ,diplomacy, and negotiation and the 3-yr old thinks her 5-yr old brother rocks and woe betide anyone who thinks otherwise.
Squeakers filmmay be too basic.
regards
[ October 15, 2003: Message edited by: HS Thomas ]

modern game programming is not for the timid. they are usually written in C++ and use either directX or openGL. there are a lot of calls to directX and windows API calls (really knarly code). such a project takes a team of experts a long time to do. i thought i wanted to be a game programmer too, but now im not so sure. tile-based games are not as bad. there are free programs that can help you. try a search at www.google.com and you should find some.