Photo by Nikita Kachanovsky on Unsplash.

As far back as I can remember, I have been playing video games. While I have come to accept the grim reality of being labelled a ‘gamer’, a term mashed through ten layers of irony by the internet in the past decade, it was a concept that never really occurred to me when I was young. Whilst I played video games, I was not invested in (and/or unhealthily fixated on) any particular one in the same way that I tend to become nowadays, as any of my former housemates could tell you. I was, also, not very good at them. Due to the moderately firm influence of my parents, I was not actually allowed to catapult myself into gaming head-on, limited to a sensible ‘only on weekends, for a couple of hours’ rule. This all changed around the age of 11, after I got Minecraft on the family PC, became obsessed, and figured out that I could play secretly, a lot, while my parents were at work. Coinciding more or less with the onset of both puberty and pocket money, this marked the beginning of a new chapter. First of all, though, I want to talk about my experiences before that, starting very early on.

My dad bought a PS2 slim around the time I was three years old, and pretty soon, he started letting me play on it. Before this, however, I ought to mention the earliest game that I remember playing. It wasn’t on a console. It was an unhinged game named Bush Royal Rampage, in which you played as both George W. Bush and the Queen of England smashing through London taking down terrorists shooting-gallery style. The Queen slays with her purple assault rifle. I replayed the game while writing, and the first thing the game asks you is if you are 14 years old. My dad must have misread that as 4. One thing that I am concerned about for children today is that they may not be exposed to the treasure trove of browser games that I grew up with, playing classics such as the Papa Louie series and all of the old Nitrome games. They are like the tapas of gaming. You get to try the flavour of lots of different dishes but none of them will fill you up individually like a full meal will.

Anyway, let’s come back to the PS2, the sturdiest console I’ve ever owned. Unlike most of my friends who played video games, I was stuck with the PS2 until I turned 16, when I eventually gathered up the money to buy my mate’s old PS3. One thing that I miss about that era of gaming was that nearly any film or franchise coming out had a tie-in game. The earliest game I remember playing on it was Peter Jackson’s King Kong, and I’d go on to own several: Ratatouille, Shrek Super Slam, and even Coraline: The Game, although I never got round to playing the latter. These film-games in particular remind me of a sensation that I rarely feel these days; being genuinely rubbish at games. I don’t mean getting pummelled at the start of Dark Souls-type rubbish, I mean missing some blatantly obvious hint on screen and just muddling through-type rubbish. This doesn’t just apply to film-games, but their obvious rushed quality in many cases (with notable exceptions such as Return of the King and Star Wars: Battlefront) highlights my point. As a child, there was a sense of genuine wonder at the created world of a game, well before I developed the critical lens of understanding gameplay loops and noticing bugs. Video games were not titles to be compared between each other and get bored of, but experiences that felt entirely unique from one another, even if they were mechanically basic. If I could recommend a game that exemplifies this wonderful mediocrity, I would tell you to play Pitfall: The Lost Expedition, one of my all-time favourites.

The older I got, the more out of date my PS2 console became, and more of my friends began to get newer consoles or play games their parents bought them on the computer. I remember very clearly the mix of envy and excitement I would feel when I was at the house of a friend with a newer console or games. When I was about 8, I had a friend, Adam, whose house I loved going to, because we could play Smash Bros Brawl, Minecraft, and the new Lego Star Wars, among others. As a child, so many of these games were out of my reach because I wasn’t getting any money to upgrade my stuff and my parents thought I was fine with the PS2, which, in fairness, I was. As a result, every time I got to play a game that was of a newer generation than the PS2, or on PC, or the Wii, it was an event for me. Nowadays, I have a PS4 and my creaky laptop can run a few games, so I can easily access the vast majority of games I’m interested in playing. However, I think that the ease of access combined with the pandemic meant that I’ve lost the excitement to play most new games, with some rare exceptions. Without a doubt, the perceived scarcity of games during childhood added to the mystery and wonder of playing new ones.

As I reach the end of this retrospective, I notice that I sound a little jaded about gaming these days. In reality, I’m not, but looking back on my childhood experiences has made me realise that what I’m missing now is the ability to enjoy any new game, easy as it might be. This summer I tried playing the original Crash Bandicoot, and I have to say that, playing it for the first time, I found it a little too simple and boring. But as a child, I wouldn’t have cared. This is partially because I would have been a lot worse at it, and partially because I would have been happy to get to play a new game. I appreciate the way that gaming felt as a child, but I don’t much care to go back to that. I’m happy enough to break my brain playing Sekiro again for the nth time.