Video games

The first video game i ever played was probably on a Saturday morning round my auntie’s house. She had one of those cassette loaded computers (an Atari i think) which we played on. I remember Conan the Barbarian being one of my favourite games. I always looked forward to Saturday mornings, and when we couldn’t go round there, i was genuinely upset.

Probably the most standout video game of my childhood was Street Fighter 2, which i first played on an arcade machine whilst on holiday with my family at age 11 in Florida. We went on that holiday mainly for the trip to Disney World, but i remember very little of that, but i vividly remember the games of Street Fighter i played as the character Blanka. I think my parents would hate to hear that that was the highlight of the trip for me, all that money spent on the flights, accommodation, tickets to Disney World, and i would have been happy with an endless supply of quarters to slot into the arcade machine to try and fight my way through all the characters and defeat the final boss M Bison.

My friends and I would spend all our pocket money on video games growing up, with the SNES being the console of choice growing up. I think at one point i was so obsessed with a new game coming out - Secret of Mana - that i ordered the cartridge from America and bought a convertor for my SNES so i could play the game before it was officially released in the UK. I believe the cost was £60, and back in the 90s, that was a lot of money, but at the time it was so worth it!

University saw me and my house mates playing multi-player Golden Eye on the Nintendo 64, all huddled around a 14 inch tv with the screen split four ways. Incredible times, we had such a laugh.

Not long after we were networking our computers together through a linux server my house mate built, playing games like Doom or Unreal Tournament, shouting at each other from our bedrooms.

Post uni, there were meetups at friends houses where we’d all take our tv’s and xbox’s round, get setup all in the same room, then play multiplayer Call of Duty online. The sessions would last all day, with pizza ordered in, and not leaving until well into the early hours of the morning.

Then there was a gaming break. I grew up. I had kids. Video games weren’t for adults surely?

Then my son wanted to start playing games. He’d grown up with access to a tablet, so knew what games were all about, but when he was 11 he really wanted an xbox so he could play Fortnite. Needless to say, we ended up getting him one, and it wasn’t long after that i got one as well so i could play with him. This was probably a big mistake…

Four years later and i’m still playing Fortnite plus a load of other games, i won’t tell you how many hours i’ve clocked in on the xbox in total, it’s not something to be proud of, but i have enjoyed it nonetheless.

Video games are an amazing form of escapism. Perhaps too much so, with some people living their life online these days gaming, never leaving the house, and ruining their lives because of it. The flip side to this is people making careers from it doing the very same thing. Streaming has enabled people to sit and play video games all day whilst an audience of viewers watches them online. I even find myself watching people stream the games i enjoy playing, much like a football fan will tune in to watch their favourite team play at the weekends. At least the fans of football are limited to certain days and times to watch their team play, whereas online gaming is pretty much 24/7.

I wonder if we will ever see a time where gaming becomes so real that it is hard to tell the difference between the real world and the gaming world, exactly like what happened in the book ‘Ready Player One’, where players hook themselves up to an immersive virtual world, choosing their avatar, and interacting with other players inside the world, making friends, and enemies. With the way the world is going these days, i’d be down for a Ready Player One style future. Staying inside the comfort of my own home, yet being able to explore the universe with my friends inside a virtual world that is almost indistinguishable from the real one.

Someone send me a haptic suit and gloves, i’m ready.