1-up! Part 1

Computer games.

I loved them as a child.  I still recall the day in 1983 when my dad brought home our very first computer, the power house that was the 48K ZX Spectrum. We played Horace Goes Skiing. A lot.  You basically played a blob called Horace, and as I recall you had to navigate the blob across a road a la Frogger style to hire a pair of ski's before taking to the slopes, and by slopes I mean jerkily moving down a white screen through some poorly animated slaloms. It was a simple game with simple needs. And I loved it.

I was hooked on computer games from there on in. The Spectrum gave way to the Atari ST (1990), then the Amiga (1993).  The games on these machines, especially the latter, were about a billion times more sophisticated as far as graphics, sound and scope were concerned, but I also noticed something else, something that was reflected in world of films.

Although great in the main, some of these newer, better looking games were incredibly boring to play. The Spectrum was renowned for having awful graphics yet had thousands of games that were an absolute joy.  This was because the programmers for the Spectrum were all too aware of it's short comings, so concentrated on arguably the most important element of all - the game play.

What does this have to do with films?

For some reason or another, we humans love spectacle.  We actually crave being impressed (although I'm getting ahead of myself here - this is a topic for another post).  Hollywood recognised this years ago and so started to churn out tales that were all spectacle and special effects with no real consideration for the actual story.  They still do, because there is a market out there for that type of film.

What we really want them to do is concentrate on the story first, effects second. No tail-wag-dog, thankyouverymuch.

Now, the Amiga was finally retired and replaced by a Playstaion (PS1). Most games up until this point had been in 2D but we were now living in a 3D world (of course, the PC had been in said world for a bit longer than this, but as it cost around £1,000 to buy a machine capable of playing these games, I didn't really learn of their existence until a few years later).

It was on the PS1 in 1997 that I had my most powerful gaming experience to date; I played a game that made you care so much about the characters that it actually made gown men cry (I was not one of them, but I was deeply shocked by the event that caused said tears).

What game could possibly do this?