#33 - Being old

We’re talking about anniversaries of old games. The usual smattering of PS2 classics come up, released 20-25 years ago. That’s fine. Everyone remembers the PS2, don’t they? Then Alex Kidd in Miracle World is brought up. It’s discussed as if it’s a complete relic, a game no one will have any memory of. I owned it. I played it a lot, in the 80s. It was released 40 years ago!

Oh, and when the LEGO PlayStation arrived the other week, my son didn’t have a clue what the console was. The past is starting to be a very long time ago.

No one really prepares you for being old. I’m not talking about being old enough to get reduced ticket prices at the cinema and a bus pass, but just sort of old enough to know you aren’t young any more. It’s the age when you start to imagine if you’ll still be doing the same job at your retirement, when the senior players at your favourite football club are over 10 years your junior, when you’re tired just because you lived through a day, but feel like a day can’t be shortened by sleep because, well, days matter more now.

My entire working life has been writing about video games, helping other people write about video games, or doing management admin around people writing about video games. I don’t believe I’ll suddenly start disliking video games (although it does feel like the industry is doing its best to achieve this) when I hit 60, 65… 70, but I do struggle to see myself reviewing the latest God of War or discussing why a company’s behaviour is absolute bullshit whilst also looking after grandkids! I’m 43 (44 next week!) and I spend a lot of time worrying about working for another 20+ years.

This year in particular feels like it’s gone by in the blink of an eye. My work life was turned upside down, and the emptiness felt without a job left me with far too much time to think about not having enough time. I can already hear people typing snarky responses to this, but we went to Butlin’s a few years ago (going each year became a bit of a family thing), but at no point did I consider it might have been the last time… until recently. Butlin’s isn’t high-end holidaying, but the idea of never doing something again, even if that thing is a fairly rundown holiday park with an average but unlimited food court, fills me with existential dread. I wish I’d said a proper goodbye to Billy Butlin!

This is such a dark way of looking at things, but it’s hard to stop yourself going down that rabbit hole. I’m 43, so how many more games consoles will I buy? 5? That doesn’t sound like many. We get an amazing curry from a local place, perhaps every four months or so. If I worked out how many more of these I’m going to eat in my life, I'd probably be horrified. The numbers are all too small. This is the reality of time ticking on, and things you loved disappearing forever.

There’s a real chance that I may never see some friends again. In person at least. Partly because I’m a social gremlin, but also because people just drift apart. Good intentions fall to the wayside, and then suddenly it’s 20 years since you last connected and everyone has kids to look after.

All of this is magnified, I think, if you have kids. The rapid march of time is seen in them, making them bigger, stronger, and smarter, while the parents have more touchstones to track their own ageing. Google’s constant delivery of memories, made possible by phones that allow you to easily document every moment in detail, is an at times rude reminder of what was. Just this morning I saw a photo of my now 13-year-old son when he was turning 4.  It showed the house we’ve lived in for nearly a decade still looking largely like it did when we moved in, friends and family we’ve not seen in years. At once you feel like you did all that time ago, yet also starkly aware of how much has changed.

A popular way for people on social media to make parents feel miserable is to trot out the classic “One day you will pick up and hug your child for the last time and you won’t even realise it”. The idea being that at some point they become too big. It works. Every time I read a post along those lines I get a twinge of sadness. My son, already as tall as my wife, is sadly beyond this point. My daughter, the nipper she is, still thankfully has some years to go.

But I’m fully aware that some people don’t get dealt the same cards and aren’t as fortunate, so I try to look ahead rather than back. My daughter went on her first school trip on a train this week (to a toy museum!), and that’s wonderful for her. My son is experiencing new things every day at secondary school - he made quiches last week. My wife and I ate a brand-new homemade sandwich at lunchtime - a variation of a classic in this house, and it was marvellous!

I do feel old. A lot of life and living is behind me. But I hope more is ahead.

I’m still frantically trying to play as many of the year’s games as possible, this week somewhat hampered by also needing to play recent games for work. Still, I gave Screamer a good go, and it’s one I definitely want to go back to. Although it has nothing in common with the PC original other than its name and that it has cars in it, it does have the arcade racing vibes of that 90s era racer. I am not convinced by the style of 2026 Screamer, but the handling is superb. I’m loving the feel of the cars as they nip around at speed.

This newsletter was mostly about being old, but I’ve been doing plenty of other stuff. I’ll have a think about some other bits and pieces and round them up in the quick reviews below. I’m a critic, too, you see.

Things I can review:

• Insidious (HBO Max): I think I’d confused Insidious with the other Patrick Wilson-starring horror franchise, The Conjuring. While The Conjuring sees Wilson’s character’s wife talking to the dead, in Insidious Wilson is the one who has the connection. Strangely similar, but also quite different in terms of vibes. Insidious has a kind of creeping terror (although not nearly enough in my opinion), while The Conjuring has brilliant horror chops, and is far more unsettling. I also watched the sequel, Insidious 2, which does some smart (or dumb, I can’t decide) things to tie into the first film. 3 dream walks out of 5 demons who want to possess a child.
• Sinister (HBO Max): Not sure how I missed this one, given it’s got Ethan Hawke in, and Ethan Hawke is pretty much always great. While Insidious felt a little generic, Sinister uses the found footage trope very well, giving it a neat spin to create some real tension. I didn’t love the more supernatural element to the story, but few horror movies would have the balls to end like this does. 4 home movies out of 5 creepy drawings.
• Sorted Food (YouTube): In the days directly following my redundancy earlier in the year, I didn’t feel like doing much. I tended to watch films and then watch YouTube. One channel I found that I think stands above is Sorted Food. I don’t know anything about the guys who present this, so I hope they aren’t awful in real life, but it’s essentially a cooking channel, with a mixture of challenges and tests. It’s laid back, fun, features some genuinely interesting stuff, and is a nice way to fill a spare 20 minutes here and there. 5 kitchen gadgets out of 5 unknown tins of food.