If anyone's ever told Hans Jorgen Olsen that video games are a waste of time, they'll have to eat their words.

Olsen, 12, saved his sister from a moose using the knowledge he gained playing World of Warcraft, reports the Norwegian online newspaper Nettavisen.

The pair were walking through the woods in the central Norwegian town of Leksvik when they came face-to-face with an angry moose.

Olsen knew what he had to do, thanks to the countless hours spent playing WOW, a multi-player online role-playing game.

First, he taunted the animal to get it away from his sister. In WOW, players use taunting to get monsters off their less well-armed team members.

Then, when the beast came after him, he played dead.

"When you reach level 30, you learn a trick called the fake death. That's what I did - I pretended I was dead, and then the moose lost interest," he said. "It went really well."