John Game was born on 3 June 1915 in Launceston, Tasmania, the son of Tasman Aylward Game, a bank manager and Clarice Turner. He was the eldest of four sons. His brothers were James Aylward Game, Peter Aylward Game and David Aylward Game, a general practitioner. John married Barbara Lancaster Beddom on 11 November 1939. The marriage produced a son Christopher Aylward Game, a medical practitioner, and Elizabeth Aylward Game, who trained as a lawyer and is now in information technology.

John grew up in Adelaide and was educated at St Peter’s College and later, at the University of Adelaide. He won a scholarship to St Mark’s College for the duration of his medical course, graduating top of his year in 1938.

After a year as resident medical officer at Royal Adelaide Hospital, he joined the RAAF and served in Australia, Moratai and Singapore, rising to the rank of Group Captain. For two years after World War II, he was commanding officer at Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital and during this time, completed a Doctorate in Medicine at the University of Melbourne.

Awarded a Red Cross Scholarship, John went to the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, London where he worked with some of the doyens of neurology. He was enormously influenced by the late Sir Charles Symonds and the late Sir Francis Walshe. On returning to Australia, he was appointed assistant neurologist at the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, working with the late Leonard Cox (qv2) and in 1955 was appointed honorary neurologist at that hospital.

He was dedicated to his work and conducted a post graduate teaching round on Saturday mornings which inevitably finished after mid-day, at which stage he would then finish consultations around the hospital often as late as 3.00 pm. Outpatient clinics also tended to continue well into the evening. In 1963, he resigned from the Alfred Hospital and devoted himself to private practice.

John was a founding member of the Australian Association of Neurologist (AAN) in 1950. At that time, he was one of only four physicians in Australia to practise neurology exclusively, all of them being in Melbourne. Later, he served as secretary and president of the AAN. He contributed much to the affairs of world neurology in an organisational capacity, serving as Vice President for the World Congress of Neurology for some eight years.

With his neurosurgical colleague, Keith Bradley, John founded the Australian Neurological Foundation (re-named the Australian Brain Foundation) in 1970. This foundation continues to flourish, raising money for research and education around Australia. For his services to neurology he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1982.

He was also a director of the Van Cleef Foundation, which was set up by the late Louis Roet, a philanthropist who left a significant gift to establish a Chair of Neuroscience at the Alfred Hospital. Eventually, in 1996, these funds were transferred from the Van Cleef Foundation to Monash University and a personal chair in neuroscience was established at Alfred Hospital. On 23 September 1996, Professor Elsdon Storey commenced duties as the inaugural professor. This biographer spent many hours in discussion and planning of this chair.

John Game was an outstanding clinical neurologist, respected and admired by his colleagues and patients. An excellent teacher, very much in the English style, his early resignation from the teaching hospital was a great loss to the community.

Eventually, ill health forced his retirement from clinical practice in the mid 1980’s but he continued to take a keen interest in neurological matters until shortly before his death on 4 December 1995 after a long and debilitating battle with Parkinson's disease.