OSX 10.4 weird startup issues

I have an iMac G4 running OSX.4, and recently the computer froze while in the middle of playing an online game. After a restart, the computer displayed the flashing '?' folder symbol, so I unplugged all of the non-power cables attached to it,m and it started up like regular. But after about 5 minutes of use, the computer started to act slower and slower until it was completely unusable. I restarted it again, and now every time I turn it on it goes straight to a blank gray screen, without any symbols appearing or a startup chime or anything.

Has anyone run into this problem before, or does anyone have any advice on what I might try to do to fix this problem?

Thanks,
-Ben

That sounds like a dead hard disk to me. My 600MHz iBook did that when both of its hard disks bit the dust!

That's not good :/ is there any way you think to be able to recover any of the data off of it? It's my parents computer and there's alot of info on it i'm sure they would be very unhappy to lose and all...

Is it backed up? Please, please tell me it's backed up...

unless mi padre has a super secret external hard drive he's failed to tell me about before, nope. Woo.

So does anyone else have any insight into this problem or should I go ahead and give up on rescuing this computer?