The Playstation 5 is the pinnacle of modern gaming. With 16GB of RAM, an 8-core AMD Zen 2 processor, a frame rate of 120Hz and capable of displaying billions of different colours, it’s a formidable beast. But you can’t play
Knightmare on it. There’s absolutely no chance of controlling
The Young Ones. And as for
A Question of Sport? Forget about it. However, if you travel back in time and arm yourselves with just a few kilobytes and a cassette, you can enjoy all these and more.
As a youngster of limited ambition and energetic thumbs, I was a passionate gamer. From the raucous screech of Amstrad CPC loading screens that sounded like a dial-up modem having a nervous breakdown, through to the instant gratification of a well-moulded SNES cartridge and onto the point/click precision of PC gaming, I dashed through this pixelated wonderland like an Italian plumber.
But then, the inevitable happened. I discovered beer. Specifically, Newcastle Brown Ale - an earthy elixir which promised adulthood and led to countless calls on the porcelain telephone. My consoles started collecting dust and I embarked on a series of magical, unpredictable adventures that even the finest programmer would struggle to dream up.
Gaming, for me, is just a relic of a misspent youth. But it's also pure nostalgia. In those halycon days, there's one abiding memory which stands out: the shelves of my local computer shop sagging under the weight of TV tie-in computer games. Most of these 8-bit tributes to our favourite shows were terminal mediocrity. Occasionally, there was a touch of genius, but only fleetingly. On the whole, they were get-rich-quick schemes determined to rob schoolchildren of their precious pocket money.
I owned several of them. Many others, though, slipped through my clammy, adolescent fingers. Now, thanks to the magic of emulators, I can revisit them with adult hindsight and minus the load times.