- The stunning graphics of the Spider-Man game from 1983. Games have evolved, but Morrissey still makes records that sound like the ones he made 25 years ago.
I’m too young to have lived through any really interesting developments in either popular music or cinema. Sure, things have changed since I was 18 back in the late 80s, but not much really, and even the bands of today that I listen to (The White Stripes, Black Mountain, Franz Ferdinand etc) aren’t really doing anything new. At the same time, I realise that I have actually lived through what I think will be remembered in history as the golden age of at least one form of entertainment: video games.
We go back a long way. I remember my brother’s Atari consol back in the late 70s that had Pong (though we called it Tennis; I didn’t know it was called Pong until I saw it called that in an episode of The Simpsons), and I had a handheld Space Invaders console in the mid 80s where a marauding army of 4 (yes, FOUR!) aliens marched towards you. Yet I’ve never been a really big gamer; unlike some of my friends, I didn’t spend entire evenings at high school trying to build up my status on Elite (I spent them listening to Pink Floyd instead), but I’ve usually had some console or other in the house.
The games I’ve liked the most are the sports simulations, and you can actually illustrate the development of games by looking at how these have evolved over the years. After Pong, the first football game I played was on the Spectrum 48K (a computer with the memory the size of an email) called (I think) Matchday where you could score directly from throw-ins. Then, a while later, Sensible Soccer came along which we thought was really, really sophisticated because you could, like, change formations. Soon though, the developers realised that people might prefer football games where the default view wasn’t that of passing overhead in a zeppelin, and for the last 15 years or so, Fifa and Pro Evolution/ISS have been duking it out and getting increasingly sophisticated. Too sophisticated, maybe, both games have more functions and formations than now I know what to do with; I used to like tweaking things here and there, but these days I tend to just send out the default squads. I wish someone would develop a version for Scottish football fans where the only formation available is 4-4-2, and the tactical options consist of shouting “Man on, Darren!” or “Get intae him, Malkie!” It would be a lot simpler. Maybe I’m just getting old.
I believe there is a Scottish version of a soccer sim that puts you where the real action is. ie on the terrace, shouting inane comments and singing appalling sectarian songs, that are exactly the same tune for both sets of morons but with the words changed slightly.
You can also score points by coming up with the lamest hackneyed excuses for your parochial tribalist bile.
Eg. I hate Rangers/Celtic fans coz they are all bigots. 100
points
You can always tell a hun/tim coz their eyes are close thegither. 2 points
You can tell when it’s a Scottish football simulator because the pitch is on a 45 degree slant, and there are rocks sticking out of the centre circle.
My nephew, whenever he would play a Champions League game as Juventus on Pro Evolution, would turn the crowd settings down to zero to get that authentic “Empty Stadium” atmosphere that you get with Juve on European nights. If ever they make a Scottish football version, they’ll need to make sure that they import that important functionaility.
Computer games are for speedoes, with the honourable exception of One-Nil, a football simulation developed by New Era in 1992, which includes English and Scottish modules, so I get to manage a Partick Thistle team that includes Davie Irons and Wullie Jamieson.
3-5-2, Positioning push forward, Aggression go in hard. Up you, ya bass.
I use Dosshell and Dosbox to tun it on my PC, and spend many happy hours, putting the boot into Dave McPherson, Ian Durrant, Paul McStay and Frankie McAvennie.