My parents weren’t against video games per se, but they didn’t really understand them. It was the ‘90s, so the media was fervent with warnings about the horrors of ‘screen time’ turning your kids’ eyes square. Nobody understood the silent revolution that home electronics was undergoing; my parents’ generation grew up without mobile phones at all, let alone the omniscient devices that were about to hit our pockets over the next decade.
But I felt left out. All my friends played games, and I wanted in. I was allowed to watch Jungle Run and Blue Peter after school, but only a safe distance away from the telly. They also didn’t mind me playing on my best mate’s PS2 all night on sleepovers – which is how I fell in love with the awful Eragon game, got scared of Spider-Man villains, and spent hours locked in Kaiju battles against Mecha-Godzilla – but, in fairness, they weren’t that frequent.
Still, I wasn’t allowed a console of my own. My parents had their reasons, and as the parent of a toddler myself now, I completely understand. What am I going to do when my daughter wants a phone with TikTok and YouTube and all that? Who knows. We might move to the forest and grow our own carrots away from the internet or something.
Back then, I hatched a plan. A plan more cunning than a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University. A plan to become a capital-G Gamer like all my friends and join in playground conversations with more input than just “oh” and “wow”. My plan was so devious and backhanded that I almost felt bad, but if it got me to my desired destination of Gamer City, then who was I to let silly little morals stop me?
I entered a competition in a book magazine. Stop laughing. First prize was a Game Boy Advance, but more importantly, a signed copy of my favourite author’s new book. It was Muddle Earth, a Lord of the Rings parody by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell of Edge Chronicles fame, and it was fantastic, thank you very much. My research shows they penned a sequel satirising Harry Potter and The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe which I will pretend doesn’t exist.
As probably the only subscriber to this children’s literature magazine, I obviously won the competition, netting myself my precious signed book and the handheld conso- wait, what? The parcel containing my brand new Game Boy Advance was intercepted en route. A shameless thief tore open the package, helping themself to my first ever games console and a copy of Super Mario Advance 2. They left the children’s book for some reason.
This story has a happy ending, don’t worry. I (or, more accurately, my mum) contacted the magazine to explain what had happened, and they sent out another Game Boy. As compensation for the thievery, they also sent me a load of bonus Muddle Earth merch, including a deck of playing cards, a pen, and likely a bunch of other stuff that I don’t remember after two decades have passed. By this time, I’d read the novel cover to cover and, not knowing any card games, loaded up my first Mario game. My first game. I’d talked about them, had turns passing the pad before, but this was my first game of my very own. And it all went downhill from there.
I quickly doubled my games collection to include Pokemon Silver – Gen 3 was already out at the time, but Silver was all they had at Birkenhead Market, and likely all I could afford with my pocket money. I maxed the clock at 999 hours in it, and reached a million points on my Mario save file, an effort my Proper Gamer friend was mighty impressed with until he realised I was stuck on World 2. He promptly whizzed through the rest of the game for me, and I played through every level at my own pace, safe in the knowledge that I could just skip it if it became too much.
My parents were happy for me, despite their reservations. How could they not be? I’d won this fair and square, and was good at sharing with my younger brother. They didn’t need to know about the torch-in-mouth-under-the-covers nights anyway, and it kept me quiet on long car journeys. They were hardly going to take it away from me.
I like to think they grew fond of the Game Boy. My dad still doesn’t get why we have to make Pokemon fight each other – maybe I’ll show him Snap instead – but they bought us a family Wii for Christmas after all their parent friends had praised it, and we spent hours playing Wii Sports and Mario & Sonic at the Olympics together. They were less interested when I asked for an Xbox 360, Halo 3, and Call of Duty, but it all appeared under the Christmas tree.
I don’t think any of that would have happened without winning that Game Boy. My career in writing about games definitely wouldn’t have happened. And now you’re all stuck with me. Thank Muddle Earth for that.