Climbing my first wall in Tomb Raider, playing Sonic the Hedgehog with my dad … snatches of games I’ve played over the years deliver a world unclouded by nagging doubts
It occurred to me recently that I’ve been playing video games for more than 40 years. Sitting on a bus home that evening, I tried to recall my actual real first memories of them. All I could catch were odd scraps. Seeing Pong on a neighbour’s TV, courtesy of a Grandstand 2000 console – I guess that would have been the late 1970s. Playing Space Invaders somewhere – in a pub? A chippy? I remember the first alien laser blast hitting one of my forcefield defences – a memory I possibly share with Hideo Kojima: he said those very shields gave him the idea for making a stealth game.
My memories of Commodore 64 games are similarly fractured. The voice synthesis at the start of Ghostbusters, the knocking at the spaceship door in Rescue on Fractalus!, the microchip mini-game in Paradroid. Little snatches of innovation that took my breath away. To me, the PlayStation/Saturn era is about glimpses of worlds opening up. Spinning through a curve in Colin McRae Rally and seeing the muddy countryside rolling out in front of me. Climbing that first wall in Tomb Raider and stumbling into the cavern network beyond. Those moments you open a new door in the Resident Evil mansion and a scene of opulent horror oozes out, as bright and icky as decaying fruit.
