I’ve a confession to make: I haven’t been playing games all that much recently. Alright, alright; I’ve not been playing them at all. As I write this, I’ve not touched any of my games in over a month. That might be a strange admission at the top of a column in a magazine about gaming, but… I’m of the firm belief not gaming is as much a part of gaming as the actual playing. If, like me, history lessons taught the importance of crop rotation, you know the necessity of leaving a field fallow for a season. It’s the same with games; having a break will make me appreciate them all the more when I next pick up a joypad.
I haven’t played games continuously during my life. There have been several periods where I didn’t touch them for months or more at a time. I’m in one of those dry spells now. No real reason for it other than having had a busy few months.
The first real fallow period I remember was after I left school and went to work. My Atari ST sat untouched for months, until I bought a Master System with one of my first paycheques, and Alex Kidd reignited it all over again. From then on, my wages were swallowed up by games. When the Mega Drive was released, things only got worse.
But it wasn’t to last. When I went to work at Teletext – initially as a graphic designer – my commute was 90 minutes, minimum, each way. I had young kids by then, and little time or energy for gaming once I got home. It wasn’t until I accidentally found myself writing Digitiser that I began playing again, after a break of a year or so – and this time not just for fun. It reminded me of what I’d missed.
At the other
