When I was growing up, you kind of knew what a videogame was. I was born in 1971 – Iknow, I don’t look a day over 49 – and that first wave of games were all variations on a theme. Shoot something. Avoid something. Steer something. Admittedly, part of that easy-to-get simplicity was due to gaming’s arcade origins. You wouldn’t get, say, Civilization in an arcade.
But as the technology evolved, and moved more into the home, so too did the concept of what a game could be. Before then, games were easier to pick up and play, if not always to master. I’ve always pined for that simplicity. Yes, if you look at today’s indie games there are plenty which harken back to that early purity of concept, but they’re buried beneath a mountain of games which do a million different things at once, usually photorealistically.
I think the first time I remember feeling overwhelmed by a game was Elite. I’ve written before in this column about how I didn’t own a BBC Model B, but had access to the one owned by the school my mum worked at. She’d bring it home at weekends, and so I became very familiar with the likes of Frak!, Chuckie Egg and Exile.
A few of my friends had rich parents, and thus were lucky enough to own a Model B. They would all go on about what an epic experience Elite was, and so I had to play it. I was immediately out of my depth. Not only were there a lot of key combinations to remember, but it was a game that required an investment of time from the player. On my Spectrum, I’d always flitted from one game to another in quick bursts. Elite was having none of that. I’d gone in expecting something akin to the arcade version of Star Wars, but was presented with a game designed for players at home. There was a depth and richness to Elite’s universe that – to a
