OK, Im not a gamer. I say that as if its something to be ashamed of, but I know that its acceptable nowadays. I mean, if you head down to the misery that is HMV Oxford Street. Then you'll see that the music section is full of clueless old people whilst the gaming section is rife with the sexy sex youth of today.
I played games when I were a lad; a product of the 8-bit / 16-bit home computer revolution. ZX Spectrum > Oric-1 (anyone?) > Commodore 64 > Commodore Amiga A500. But since the power pack on the Amiga blew up, I've never really felt the need to go back and wreck my hands playing Kick Off 2. Besides I had an Apple Macintosh by then and they never made games for them. Unless you considered Aldus Pagemaker possessing arcade-like qualities.
However, recently I got given a brand new Sony Playstation 3 - a sweetener from a client that I was working with at the time - but no games. So having very little knowledge and even less money on such things I didn't really have much of an idea. I knew I didn't really like first person perspective shooting games. I find them too violent and fast for my slow brain, as embarrassingly demonstrated at a post work Doom session many years ago. And everything else on offer seemed expensive and lacklustre. I also applied the same concept for movie sequels as I did to video games - ie. they're gonna be shite.
A few months prior to getting the PS3, my friend Anil had reminded me of a game I really genuinely enjoyed playing at a friends house a few years ago. It was Katamari Damacy on the Playstation 2. A bizarre Japanese arcade puzzler with the most amazing soundtrack. Bandai Namco, the original publishers, had decided to release an iPhone version, so that became my first (and only) game-based download on the iPhone. And yes, I've resisted Angry Birds. So when I realised that a PS3 version of the Katamari franchise was out, the decision was simple.
In terms of the experience - the shift from controlling 16-bit sprites on a CRT TV to playing in 1080p HD on a plasma hasn't been a radical one, only because the way interaction with games I think has remained the same by and large. I'd say that those older games were actually more interesting because of the fact that your imagination filled in the gaps due to the primitive graphics. Nowadays, there's no room for any of that, as every pixel seems to be laboriously slaved over. I doubt the Katamari disc will ever leave the PS3, but on the other hand I am intrigued by the likes of Portal 2 and I might even indulge in a racing game (so long as its as good as Buggy Boy on the Commodore 64).
Whilst I've always been attracted towards a borderline futurist attitude with music, in that I'm always more thrilled and excited by the new and strange over anything rehashed. The same cannot be said for computer games, where I'm totally aware that there is a sensation of pure nostalgia being triggered whenever the PS3 is booted up. I hope I never feel the same way about music.
