It’s not normal for me to be typing away while the world outside passes me by, but trains seem to be getting more and more modern by the minute. The idea of plugging in and pouring your thoughts into a pixelated documenting teapot, to me anyway, is about as unique and surprising as when we replaced cassettes with compact discs.

It led me to have a think. Gaming has come on quite a way since I was but a boy (you still act like one, so I don’t know about since – Ed.) but whereas we have pretty much forgotten about tapes and other media formats from the back of beyond, the same cannot be said when it comes to the actual games and a love for the older days when you would spend about 10 minutes waiting, cup of tea or soft drink in hand, hoping the datasette would get things loaded and not be doomed to see a syntax error staring you in the face.

I have to admit, I’m an old school gamer at heart, happier when there’s a Super Nintendo in my hand and getting Mario Kart on instead of tea bagging another innocent at Halo 3. The question I pose is a simple one, what is it that brings a lot of us back to the days when gaming didn’t have so much glam and razzamatazz?

The first thought with regards to an answer for this rather weird question would be this. A lot of us who grew up with gaming in our lives have, give or take the odd year or ten, got to about 30 years of age (well I have anyway) and it’s pretty much been there the whole time. I’m sure in about another 20 or so years from now we’ll see the kids of today look back at how great online gaming was when modern day interactive entertainment is all about surgically implanted holographs, making virtual reality look like a bad phone-in TV show.