BY ANDREW MOODY

I was a young teenager when the Nintendo 64 was released in Europe on March 1^st 1997. My Dad bought one for the family the next year, complete with two controllers, a rumble pack and games Goldeneye (1997) and World Cup 98 (1998). Goldeneye was based on the 1995 movie, the player controls MI6 agent James Bond, navigating a series of levels to complete objectives, such as recovering or destroying objects, and shooting enemies. In multiplayer mode, up to four players compete in several death match scenarios via split-screen. It was a dazzling upgrade from the Doom style of first person shooter, and possibly the most influential and popular game of the 1990s. I remember fondly the split-screen battles I had with my school friends all those years ago.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke (1962)

Unlike the previous World Cup games which were in 2D and showed a bird’s-eye view, World Cup 98 used a 3D engine, enabling the players to view the game from several, more realistic angles with far improved gameplay. The N64 system was cutting edge for the mid-90’s, Time named it Machine of the Year in 1996, and in 2011, IGN named it the ninth-greatest video game console ever made.

Now over 25 years later, I purchased a second hand Nintendo 64 package from Amazon with twenty games, two controllers, rumble pack and memory add on for less than £200, another perk in our golden age of consumer choice. For me, writing is the drug, and whatever I need to support my craft can only be a bonus. Having spent the past 21 years within the NHS psychiatric system, including two incidents of legal homelessness, I am now settled into life in a rehab unit in South East London, and my daily routine supports my mental health and creative output. The Clozapine I take for my paranoid schizophrenia has settled my sleep pattern, my mood and my appetite.  Since last August I have been working on a project that I see as my final book, THIS IS HARDCORE, a handwritten investigation into the stoic gnostic mind-set I have been investigating and developing through my entire adult life and career as a writer. I tend to wake early nowadays, and to begin my day, I switch on the N64 and play my three favourite games: World Cup 98, 1080 Snowboarding (1998)and Mario Kart 64 (1997), until I know what sentences to write to continue my final book. As both the last of Generation X and the first of the Millennials, video games have always been a huge part of my culture. I am old enough to remember the MS-DOS games like 1984’s Xonix and Alley Cat, which played on our archaic PC in the late 80s and early 90s. I also remember the fabulous point and click games like LucasArts Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992), Sierra’s Space Quest series(1986-1995) and Adventure Soft’s Simon the Sorcerer (1993). My development as a writer was intrinsically connected to the various video game narratives that dictated the culture I had been absorbed into.

Nowadays, the video game industry generates over 134 billion dollars worldwide annually, and there are simply too many games produced to ever really give an accurate assessment of the medium. As a child of the 1980s, this reality is not much of a surprise. Modern games like Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, Halo and Pro Evolution Soccer have taken the art of the video game to previously unheard of levels of ingenuity. If I wanted, I suppose I could invest in a PlayStation 5, and disappear into these immersive, brilliantly designed games. As Hollywood continues its decline into oblivion with its ceaseless releases of ineptly written movies and TV shows, the video game industry (although not recession proof) will surely keep pushing the medium and the narrative and artistic possibilities of the video game. Luckily for me, now safely housed in an operational rehab unit after a lifetime of poverty, homelessness and mental illness, my daily Nintendo 64 therapy is more than enough to keep the game going.