Nostalgia for Gaming.

Speeding around Vice City on a motorbike with Slayer blasting out.

Gaming, as a young child, was a noisy area in a café. Machines beeping with the promise of defending the Earth against increasingly rapid columns of aliens. Of pill-gannets chasing ghosts through a never-ending maze to a repetitive series of bleeps and bloops. Like your mum in the 90s. They were the reserve of smoky arcades on seafronts, requiring disposable income, that as a six-year-old, I did not have. In short, a seldom enjoyed treat.

The Spectrum 48K

My parents spoiled me on Christmas, days before my seventh birthday. I opened a box, containing a Spectrum 48k home computer with rubber keys and a separate tape deck. Bundled with the computer were boxes filled with C90 tapes, each one containing fifteen-twenty games, as well as a further box overflowing with originals too. My parents, to this day, still talk about how rotten they felt buying a second-hand machine as a gift. I constantly reassure them that to me, it was perfect. Getting close to five-hundred games was far more important to me than the recency of the hardware.

And so began an interest. I made it my mission to play through every single game in that box. Some I liked, some I didn’t. Progress was slow, due largely to the five minute screech of the loading screens before each game that I could imagine being used today as a torture method in Guantanamo Bay. But I persevered, occasionally spending a few hours on each one. It took four years before I’d actually played them all (or realised they would never load).

My trusty Spectrum saw me through my tweens and early teenage years, waning only when my brother was gifted a Sega Master System. I’d play games with him, infuriating him by completing Sonic first, and then by lying that I’d completed Alex Kidd in Miracle World. But college beckoned. And with that, girls, booze, and ennui. Consoles would take a back seat for a few years.

After a few drunken years, and a dose of pant crustaceans, gaming caught my attention once more with the release of the Sony PlayStation. Games such as Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Ridge Racer, Battle Arena Toshinden, Wipeout, and Tekken all re-engaged me, but it was the release of one game that really got my attention: Resident Evil.

The Spencer Mansion from Resident Evil remake

For those unaware, Resident Evil is a survival horror game set primarily in a mansion during a zombie outbreak. Players have to juggle limited inventory space, limited ammo, and more enemies than you have bullets to deal with. It was a blend of puzzle solving, and horror movie staples that made me realise that gaming had been maturing with me. This was a game for adults. It had a B-movie quality to it, helped by the horrendous voice acting and poorly translated (or written) dialogue. And a genuine jump scare, the likes of which I had never experienced in the video game world.

Suddenly, gaming was a part of my life again, much to the chagrin of my wife. With one TV in the house, it meant she would have to endure those gaming sessions if she were home at the same time. After the divorce, came the game that caused my interest to blossom into a passion – Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Having played, and thoroughly enjoyed, the previous GTA3, I knew I was going to enjoy this game too. Mere moments in, I tuned a stolen car radio into VRock, being a metalhead and all, Anthrax – Madhouse was playing, which put a big smile on my face. Then, immediately afterwards, Slayer – Reign in Blood. The car reached maximum speed – I was more pumped than the most simple-minded American when they hear the letters ‘U’,’S’, and ‘A’ spoken in succession. The car didn’t survive this; the wall I ploughed into put pay to that. My character sprinted after a slow-moving vehicle. I needed to hear more.

I didn’t play the game for a good few hours. I was, on the game, but simply stealing cars, listening to the radio and causing mayhem. It was as if the game was made with only me in mind. To this day, I don’t think there has been a soundtrack to top this one. It captured the era perfectly, and did so without resorting to the biggest hits of the time. This was a compilation crafted with care and deep knowledge of the time period. And it was banger after banger, not just on VRock, but on Wave 103, Wildstyle, Fever 105, and Emotion 98.3. It was on the latter, that I decided to do something romantic for my new girlfriend; I parked my in-game car on a verdant bluff and tuned the radio into 98.3 as the sun set over a fictional version of Miami. She didn’t think it was romantic at all. Perhaps it was the prostitute I’d picked up to simulate her presence.

After we broke up, I had far more time to play games and, fortunately at the time, the budget to buy them. I was devouring them at an exponential rate, playing the successes of the time, but also discovering the under-appreciated gems as they came too. The Suffering, Beyond Good and Evil, Okami, and Project Zero. It was truly a great time to be alive. And locked away in a room away from the world.

The corridor shortly after THAT jump-sce ne.

As with anything – I will never get those feelings again. I may play games far better than any I have listed. I definitely have – Elden Ring, for example, but the spark has gone. Gaming seems to have lost a lot of its single-player focus in favour of trying desperately to become a new money sink. There hasn’t been a new Grand Theft Auto game since 2013, (at the time of writing, GTA 6 is scheduled for later this year) and none of them have had a soundtrack as good as Vice City’s (Los Santos came close). But all around me, I see younger folk getting those same vibes about new games, and I’m all for it. Plus, I have a much-delayed Beyond Good and Evil sequel, a reboot of Okami, and Resident Evil 9 to look forward to.