What Moment Made You Fall In Love With Games?

Everyone has one particular moment that crystallised the magic of video games.

When I was a kid, my brother and I had a childhood friend who’s family would, every so often, go on a holiday somewhere. I can’t remember the reasons why, but that friend ended up staying at our house for a week or so, and as a result we all ended up in the computer room together playing one video game or another.

My dad was away at the time – he worked as a marine engineer, so he spent half of the year away at sea – and so while Mum slept, my brother, myself and this friend would just stay up late at night, whittling away through turns of Heroes of Might and Magic or Gazillionaire Deluxe.

I don’t quite remember what hooked us on that weird, MS Paint-esque economy game quite so much. But more than two decades on, I can still hear the sound effect of the alien who granted you the loan for your spaceship. (They sounded a hell of a lot like Waluigi, actually.)

But there was something in those shared moments, an unspoken, quiet appreciation to see things through to the end. Maybe HOMM 3 was just that good a game. Maybe it was just nice to get to the finish line together; none of us were particularly competitive back then, although I would later find my taste for that in Counter-Strike and StarCraft.

What about yourselves, though: what moment, whether it be a story beat or something special in multiplayer, crystallised the moment that made you fall in love with video games?


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