Were we so different back then? Look towards the realms of the SNES and Mega Drive (don’t panic my American friends; I’ll put in Genesis as well, just to keep you with us). The innovation I’d have everyone look to is the advent of the 3D chips within the cartridges. StarWing got things off to a good start with the advent of Nintendo’s Super FX chip and paved the way for quite a few others, but this didn’t stop Sega from getting in on the act with their own SVP chip, resulting in a decent Virtua Racing conversion for the 16 bit console (some would say even better than the 32X one).

What it shows is that the grip of commercial need and desire started at an early age for the industry. Don’t get me wrong, in the old computer days of C64s, Amstrads and Spectrums the only real business struggle was working out which joystick was going to be sturdy enough to withstand a 1000m race on Daley Thompson’s Decathlon. To me, it’s the ferocity of this dog-eat-dog business structure that’s killing productive thought process and restricting a huge bulk of ingenious originality from breaking free and infecting the gaming world with a new-found feeling of optimism.

There is an obvious and more probable solution to the query posed at the start. The simple fact is we’ve all grown up. Gone are the days when we found sleeping an afterthought with the launch of a new title just hours away (well, for most of us anyway) and it’s replaced by a more mature look at the industry though older eyes. For those who have gone past 25 years of age, congratulations, you are now gaming veterans. Our qualities consist of looking past yearly sequels with a new found scepticism, wondering which member of the coding staff stole the innovations and left us with last year’s game.