Columns

This month, I'd like to discuss a topic that, until recently, occupied a tiny part of my brain: that of computer gaming. I am no more a gamer than I am a swarthy Turkish herdsman. Nevertheless, I shall charge on, dazzling in my ignorance of contemporary gaming etiquette and parlance, wilfully making laughable n00b-type errors in my discourse. Huzzah!

I'm slightly too young to remember the early days of computer gaming. My parents, who will read this column in WHSmith before rearranging the entire magazine display to create an impenetrable MacUser wall, will reminisce about going to the pub to watch MASH and play Pong or Space Invaders, but frankly it doesn't sound like I missed much.

Laying aside the occasional thrill of visiting the home of a Spectrum-owning friend, my first proper encounter with gaming was through a Sega Master System II, purchased in the early 1990s at the nagging behest of my younger brother, who had recently endured a traumatic mid-term school change and needed a quick way to make friends. Excitingly, the Master System came with a game called Alex Kidd in Miracle World, the miracle apparently being that anyone was willing to spend the best part of a hundred quid to play a digital version of Rock, Paper, Scissors with a few blocky henchmen.

The Master System, and later, the Mega Drive, utterly failed to hold my attention. The games required tedious amounts of patience and the memorisation of various button sequences to pull off any cool-looking moves. The few female characters were, for the most part, busty idiots with rubbish powers. The things that I really wanted to do, like driving deliberately off-road to explore the Virtua Racing landscape,

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or organising my Lemmings into a peaceful democratic society, just weren't possible. My sporadic attempts to play Street Fighter were dismissed as 'button bashing' by my brother, and I soon learned to slope off to my grungey teenage bedroom whenever the controllers were broken out.

So ended my early gaming career.

Sixteen years passed, in which I stopped being a sullen teenager and became a sullen adult. The closest I came to a computer game in this time was navigating the options on my local Barclay's ATM.

Then something, or rather, someone happened. Dr Kawashima and his Brain Training. I know that there is nothing wrong with my brain. I am capable of tying my shoes and spelling 'archaeologist' and am as yet untroubled by why-the-jiggery-did-I-come-upstairs type memory problems. Tempted to give it a go after watching a cosy Captain Picard advert one night, I was dismayed to find the chortling Dr K assessing my brain as that of a 79-year-old. Outrage!

My next brain age was 54, and I was hooked. Soon I had my own profile with customised icons and special unlocked games. Dr K and I became fast friends, as he rewarded and complemented my progress. The most exciting part of this Brain Training palaver, though, was the social aspect. I could see Husband's scores and beat them, compare our feeble memory drawings of Japan and Henry VIII, and track his progress alongside mine. This was a game that appealed to my competitive streak and required concentration in levels that assured I wasn't going to get bored quickly. Of course, as much as Dr K reminded me that I needed to Brain Train regularly, my practice soon tailed off when I reached the goal brain age of 20. Ah well, back to Velcro shoes and 'old-stuff diggy man' shortly, then.

But a gaming monster was awoken within me. I became curious about these new, non-shooty, girl-friendly, mental skills-based games. I found myself too freakishly uncoordinated to properly enjoy the Wii I tried out at our neighbours, but I did appreciate how genteel the Wii Sports experience seemed, especially with a glass of port. Excited by the possibility of an on-tap PS3 opponent, Husband bought me SingStar and a couple of shiny microphones. All the fun of karaoke without the crippling public spectacle. I love it!