Re-Igniting The Spark

As anyone who’s endured my old postings here, or had to have a conversation with me will tell you, I have a bit of a hobby in video games. Those who know me better would probably choke on whatever they were eating to hear me call it a bit of a hobby, and in all honesty they’d be right.

Ever since receiving a Sinclair Spectrum 48K (yes, yes, the rubber keyed beast) for Christmas when I was but a wee nipper, I’ve been completely captivated. I shudder to think what percentage of my life has been wasted invested in my hobby, but I think if my life were represented by a pie chart, the games-playing-time slice would be the size of the piece of cake you secretly want to take, but daren’t for fear of looking like a fat piggy. As the years have gone by I’ve worked my way through system after system, computer after computer, always playing games and pretty much always enjoying it.

I noticed over the last couple of generations of hardware though that something had changed. I guess some people would call it growing up, growing out of my childhood games, but in truth I think it was me looking at games in a more analytical light. I first noticed myself doing it with Super Mario Kart, I was watching the karts whizzing around the track and thinking "They aren’t moving at all, it’s just moving the floor around". It annoyed the heck out of me because I loved that game! It grew from there really, instead of just enjoying a game for what it is, I was looking too deeply into it.

One of the things I notice from looking back at old copies of magazines like Crash and Sinclair User (via the magic of the internet and sites like WorldOfSpectrum) is the advertising and the way games are treated, and I think that’s what’s changed. Nowadays for the vast majority of games, the person playing has had a lot of the work done for them, in the sense that the game is depicting everything as realistically as it can for the most part. There’s very little imagination needed, whereas back then you had to take what was written on the box and the adverts and build it in your mind. I miss that to an extent.

Nowadays though I’m making an effort to enjoy them more. I know that sounds like a bit of an oxymoron, or a contradiction in terms – making an effort to relax and enjoy something??? But to me that means closing my reviewer’s eyes, and opening the eyes I had as a kid. Super Mario Galaxy (cue shameless plug to my latest review) has restored my faith in developers’ ability to make a genuine fun game again, something which is so sadly lacking now. Those who can make good games tend to focus on realism, franchise tie-ins or making things ‘gritty’. Nintendo are showing with this current generation of consoles and handhelds that fun is still the king, and it always will be.

Make me grin or laugh while I’m playing, and I’m sold. That’s the bottom line.

3 Responses

  1. LOUISE says:

    skim read….skim read….skim read……………..nope.NERD ALERT! 😀

  2. hey adam, just reading your musings and thought i would leave a message. I am a big fan of the old speccy games. I have various arcade and computer emulators on my mac and absolutely love them – takes me back to when i was a spotty little teenager. My favourite was always Ikari Warriors in the arcade and jack the nipper on the spectrum. Good stuff!!

  3. adam says:

    Good to see you Russell, sparring was fun last weekend 🙂

    I’m a huge emulator fan myself, I tend to stick to Kawaks for Neo Geo and Capcom CPS1/2 stuff, snes9x and various other bits and pieces. I was always a MASSIVE pinball fan too, there’s a great combination of programs which lets you play any of the real tables on your PC if you use vpinmame and visual pinball. Not sure if there’s a mac equivalent though :/

    Maybe we need some inter-club competition on the games too 😉

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