8-bit 8 Year Old - Brought to you by James Wormald -

The year was 1993. Jurassic Park is released in cinemas. Bill Clinton takes over as U.S. President. Unforgiven wins the Best Picture Oscar. The U.S. military decide to let in the gays, as long as they don’t go around being all gay about it. Classic video game title Doom is released for the nation’s 8 year olds to not be allowed to play. And I turn 8 years old. Doom was incredibly pioneering amidst the 1993 gaming market. The first of its kind to utilise 3D graphics within true third dimension spatiality. What all that means is that as well as being able to move forward or back, and up or down, in two dimensions on the screen, you could now also move left or right, and instead of looking at the character from a side view, you could now see a 3D view of what the character could see. Pioneering stuff.

I however, was 8. I was not interested in technological advances. Despite some of my colleague’s life or death outlook on getting their hands on copies of Doom, in part I’m certain to the technology, but also the grizzly nature of the plot. When scientific experiments to create a teleportation gateway between Mars’ moons goes awry, you’re the only marine left, standing between the evil creatures from Hell, and Earth. I was 8 years old! I was a good boy. I was too focused on a cool blue hedgehog who just wanted to run about in the grass and have a laugh. His only even slightly post-watershed feature was having a little too much attitude. Nevertheless, Doom was the ‘it’ game of the year.

My earliest memories of video games were of things like The Lion King, Micro Machines, Shooting Gallery, Back to the Future, Cool Spot, Fantasy Zone. The most violent game I ever played was Golden Axe, where you defeated enemies with a sword. The only way to get past a ‘baddie’ in any other game, was simply to jump on them. That’s not gonna convince a group of Christian mums it’s the cause of a High School Massacre is it? And I loved them. Happiest time of my life, kicking my feet, piloting a little red spaceship around, collecting coins to buy some bigger wings. But when I heard one of those big red crab-like bastards on the edge of the screen, or there was a diagonal line of purple shits bearing down on me, I’d flap my little wings as fast I could towards the nearest ‘warp’, and hide under my jumper. That was proper Game Fear.

Fast forward to present day. I don’t have a games console any more. I haven’t since 2003. I’m not about to go on to suggest playing video games is a childish pastime, and any grown adult caught with their fingerprints on a controller should be ridiculed by his ex’s new boyfriend. It’s supposed to be relaxing. Gazz has an X-Box, and I’ll play one or two of the games from time to time. I even took time recently to think about a new game I wanted to buy for myself... a game that I would enjoy, that I would play often enough to make it worth £40-50. I came up with nothing.

It’s not that I’ve got any more mature believe me. I sat down to write this article at 08:30 this morning. Thought I might get a little research in, so found a Flash version of Mario. It’s now 18:30 and I’m still not past level 3. Still, just because I’ve been playing the original 8-bit, 2D version all day, don’t be fooled into thinking I like it. I fucking hate it. In fact, if I think back 17 years a little harder, I hated every one of those games. They were so shitting hard! I never completed any of them. Most I rarely surpassed the third level (a pattern emerges). When I started writing this article, I already had an ending. Something to do with today’s games, with their graphics, their movie star voice-overs, and cinematic cut sequences... they’re shit. That’s all fine sure, but they never surpass the great gameplay of those late eighties and early nineties classics. I would then begin to bang on about the gameplay of the old games again. You could pick them up, and instantly get into it. But after a little thought I’m beginning to remember, the only thing I could instantly get, was annoyed.

The reason I played them so much wasn’t because I enjoyed it, it’s that they were so addictive, I couldn’t bare the thought that the game had beaten me, again! After getting so close that time. If I just had one more go. 30 more minutes, I was sure to win right? I was almost there. I wasn’t. I was never almost there.

Games are so much better nowadays than they used to be. Not because of the plotlines, the seventh generation game engines, the realistic rag-doll physics, or any of that crap. They let you save. I get to actually relax playing a game, and Gazz’ wireless controller doesn’t go through the wall.