Hello. This is a blog. Those of you with computer savviness will be thinking, yeah right. Been there, done that, worn a hole in the armpit of the t-shirt and am now using it as a shoe buffing cloth. Fair enough. I'm not so much a late adopter as an old spinster taking in lodgers when it comes to things ITular. Which is where the first topic of bloggery comes in. By the way, don't go expecting frequent updates or anything - this is my opportunity to occasionally brain-dump and vaguely arrange thoughts into grammatically acceptable sequences.
Anyway, to the subject of the impending adminstration-going-intoness of the high street perpetual teenager's electronic entertainment shop, Game. Apparently the playing of video games is, or as now appears to be the case, was big business. This has always been a source of amusement to me, seeing that I left home computer gaming behind in around 1985 when it became increasingly difficult to play games without having an extra hand, or the patience to read a small novel before being able to kill anything. Having grown up with games of a left-right-fire, or up-down-left-right-jump level of complexity, there came a point at which the effort required to simply come to terms with the basics of a game was greater than the effort required to complete others. Why would I want to spend an evening dicking around in the practice zone of a skateboarding game when I could spend that time getting halfway through Jet Set Willy?
And this is coming from someone who was at one point seriously addicted to video games. Back in the day it was a joy to find a random bin of Mastertronic tapes stuck away at the back of a short-lease Grey's department store, or on a never-before-seen stall down the Rag Market. I recognise the escapism value of games - I distinctly remember the morning I failed my first driving test, getting home and engaging in a marathon Son of Blagger session that saw me eventually stagger red-eyed into bed at 3am. And who knows how many of the dodgy chippies and taxi offices of Birmingham I would, without fear, stride into in the hope they had a decent
video machine - maybe a Scramble, Rally-X or, joy upon joy, Crazy Climber. This was the acme of games - a unique two-joystick affair wherein you scaled a series of skyscrapers and avoided plantpots, dumbells, pooping gulls and the occasional random gorilla, for no other reason than to be airlifted off by helicopter at the top. A brilliantly futile expedition, available to view in all its glory at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKIoIx9XPO0&feature=related
But there came a time when, as the Apostle Paul pompously had it, I put away childish things, boxed the Commodore 64 up in the loft and left the house between school bell and bed times. Since which time I have had but the fleetingest dalliances with the world of gamery - playing Crash Bandicoot very badly in a vain attempt to impress a girl; tinkering with that wax-on-wax-off window cleaning affair (a strange concept, why would I want to relax by pretending to do housework?); even dipping my toes into the world of consoles by buying a Dreamcast. Come on, I thought, Sega, internet connectivity, how can it fail? Simple - it had no good games. Along with buying a Fiat Stilo, this was my Betamax moment, my Laserdisc folly.
Which brings us to the present. I still have the Dreamcast, though its destiny is clearly eBay. And I still have the Commodore, which I dig out once every five years to remind myself how naff the synthesised voice was on Arabian Nights, and how easy it was to score goals in International Football by running with the ball bouncing on your head. But I just don't see the role of computer games in my life. I've played on Wii, which is a neat bit of kit, but all that does for me is remind me how bad I am at darts and golf in real life.
So the possible passing of Game will have no effect on me. I don't do games. What? iPhone games? Oh well, yes Angry Birds. And Doodle Jump. And Cut The Rope. And Harbourmaster. But they're not proper games are they? They don't really count. I mean, they're a bit simple aren't they? Oh...
