Mrs
NightByCandleLight writes:
You spin me right round.
Hello! I've been asked to write an article-piece-thing
around ‘my take’ on gaming. I was going to write it
last night, but I decided to paint my nails Cadbury's purple,
to match my new chocolate coloured hair instead. So here I am,
on the way to a Mars Volta gig trying to type, while driving to
Nottingham in a 16 year old Micra, well Jonny is driving really.
I'm not driving and typing at the same time. That would be daft.
OOOh, vroom, vroom – ladies
love a sporty mota!
Games! I was first introduced to screens and
to little, imaginary, people when I was eight. Or more accurately
- I was introduced to my new best friend, a little egg with a
red hat and gloves. I called him (or rather games-maker man called
him) 'Dizzy'. He never let me down, apart from when my C64 tape
deck wouldn't let the tape load – a problem particularly
experienced with Chuckie Egg, dammit I loved that game. Why was
Chuckie Egg II so poor? After getting past that big dog and entering
the world of slidy poles, it never really seemed to go anywhere.
Dammit – get back to the point Louise!
My C64, Dizzy, me and my Dad, spent hours and hours playing computer
games while my mum was out at Craft Fairs. We split our time equally
between: making the world's largest batches of peanut brittle,
and running up giant phone bills on the Magicland Dizzy hotline.
Over time, my Dad and me branched out and tried other games. A
lot of them starred my new best friend but I was also quite taken
with a little boy who apparently ‘was of wonder’.
I loved the idea of saving the world on a skateboard, throwing
axes at giant bees and snakes. At age eleven I stopped playing
on my C64 so often because I now lived a lot closer to my friends,
and I had just discovered boys, or rather men. Five men. I'll
call them Take That – you see, if I was to be the future
bride of Robbie Williams, I had to spend less time with Dizzy,
and instead learn how to apply lipstick to my lips rather than
teeth.
The ‘boys’ switching
on Nottingham’s Christmas Lights.
(Robbie’s arse not pictured).
Games were absent from my life for quite a few
years after that – my next was to Mario, I think. For some
reason, as I write this, I have vague, earlier, recollections
of playing Sonic games in a house round the corner from mine,
not sure whose house it was so he can't have been a friend of
mine. Anyway, Mario – I was visiting a friend’s house
when I was about 15 and we were bored, and had no money to go
and buy (more) cheap cider, and besides we were still quite drubk.
Drunk, that is, from the party we’d had the night before
– it had started off as a drunken girly-night-in, you know,
making duck faces with the aid of Pringles and wearing bowls on
our heads, and then about ten lads from the neighbourhood arrived.
I think Liz knew them but I was too drunk to see, never-mind recognise
people.
Anyway, the next day, after playing ‘Rude
Scrabble’, Liz got her SNES out! Oh the genius, I was hooked
– little plumbers and mushrooms made so much sense as an
escape from my hormone-riddled teenage self! I never quite got
over my resentment off my parents that I felt toward them for
not buying me a SNES. That was the Christmas just after my eighteenth
birthday when Jonny, probably fed up of my moaning of about the
gaping hole in my existence, bought me a SNES! Yoshi and Kirby
– I would like to take this opportunity to thank you profusely
for coming into my life.
A stuffed elephant in a hat. Ahhhhh.
At this point games still weren't such a feature
of my life as they are now. In a way, it’s my own doing
that they now have such a presence – you see, I started
Jonny's collection, quite innocently I might add. May 5th 2001
– Mickleover May Day Fair "Jonny, I think you should
buy that Acorn Computer there." Ta Da! A collector is born.
Since that fateful day Jonny hasn’t ever looked back –
only forwards, in fact, to the next car boot sale. A few months,
and about 15 consoles, later another revolution occurred –
he joined a strange little forum called "Llamasoft"
or something like that. He was not alone in his odd little ways
– apparently there were more of these "collector"
people, and "games-maker” people there, this llamasoft
place was full too of people who just think games are fun. Even
better – sometimes they meet and play on these funny, bright
looking, interactive videos and they eat curry together. Sometimes
they even ride roller-coasters and visit farms!
Am I glad to be a part of this little world?
Yes. Am I a fan of games? Yes – if they are pretty. Am I
slightly annoyed that I'm sat in a cold car, in a cold car park,
trying to finish this thing with numb fingers. Yes.
Arse.
P.S. I have just been told the box, erm…box….erm…
car, is 13 years old (not the 16 claimed earlier) – a teenager
then. Lovely.
louise, December
2003
---
Pretty good Mars
Volta Site.
Ha, ha, ha. Hilarious web
page on which you can determine what colour Yoshi you are.
Fantastic community,
loosely connected by the games of Mr Jeff Minter.
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