Richard Hearn is recapturing his gaming youth

Last week, I wrote about kids and technology, the theme having kicked off playing the Nintendo Wii. My column went down the kids’ path then and this week you get a nostalgia trip down digital lane.

The first time I saw my name in print was probably around 1985 when I guest-reviewed computer games for a national magazine. I say ‘guest-reviewed’; my 14-year old school friend had wangled a job as a reviewer, and I was sub-contracted to play and review games for the new, but it turned out unsuccessful, C16 computer. My payment was to keep the games and see my name in print.

Around the same time I had a game published, in the days when they listed the code and people were expected to studiously type in every line and hope they – or the magazine editor – hadn’t made a crucial and untraceable typing error. It was a two-player karate game, kept simple by using keyboard controls to kick and punch.
(My tip: if you’re player 1 and pressing ‘A’ when you run the game, basically you’ve won.)

“When you save something nowadays, it’s no longer on a screeching cassette tape”

That now seems a long time ago. I did more programming until the age of 18. My main attempt was to write the perfect football game, including scientific ricochets. Never quite happened. I had more success writing one of those games where you have to knock colourful bricks out of a wall. Then I stopped programming for 15 years, only returning to anything close six years ago when I started creating websites. Rather than Basic or Assembly Language, it was now HTML and Javascript. Oh, and when you save something nowadays, it’s no longer on a screeching cassette tape. That’s how long ago it was.

Playing games, though, continued. The Sentinel, Spindizzy, Sensible and then Actua Soccer (it was so often football games), Wipeout, Micro Machines. I remember going to the Theatre Royal on a day I’d played Tomb Raider too much and found myself calculating how many steps and jumps it would take me to get on stage. Time to have a break. The games only petered out when the kids were born when, strangely, I found I had a lot less time.

Until now perhaps, with our recent games on the Wii. Already, The Boy and Youngest™ have re-enacted road rage on Super Mario Kartz, and turned dancing into something more dangerous to the tune of ‘Kung Fu Fighting’. It’s newer technology, but I can tell it’s going to be the same old battles. I’ve re-bought a football game – not had a chance to play it yet – but I’m quietly optimistic. Let’s see how those ricochets stand up.