We all know there’s this massive WE DON’T TALK ABOUT THOSE PEOPLE thing where people play videogames but we don’t acknowledge that because we’ve managed to rewrite recent history to only consist of manly mens videogame history, right?

You can see it in how when we talk about Activision’s blockbusters we talk about Call Of Duty, we talk about the stuff they have with Blizzard and then we forget about Skylanders and stuff. You see it in how we like to keep up with the narrative that all videogames are filled to the brim with horrific violence and no-one would want to play them whilst conveniently forgetting there’s a massive market for the most banal of sims, Imagine:Coal Miner probably exists by now, there’s the Rock Bands, the Dance games and all those things, we forget about them because we don’t talk about them because we’re manly men who play games.

We even rewrite the history of digital distribution so it goes something like something something, Steam, XBOX LIVE, THE END and we forget about the millions of pounds and hundreds upon thousands of videogames that were sold through portals aimed, fairly often, at housewives and the like. We keep the divides stark and clear. None shall pass the manly man videogame. We invent derisory terms from the most innocuous of things like “cellphone game” and “flash game” because look at them, those things without all the blood, guts and glory of our manly man videogames, they disgust me, they really do. I SPIT ON THEM. And in no way does that make us look like dicks, oh no.

Then sometimes a game comes along and breaks down those divides and it does it with gusto. That’s Journey right there. It’s the not manly man game it’s OK to like.

Journey. It’s the game you show your family about how games can resonate emotionally. It’s the game they’ll likely be able to connect to. When every beat has been surgically (and clearly lovingly) engineered for MAXIMUM EMOTIONAL IMPACT it’s hard not to fall for its charms. It’s beautiful to look at, it’s got MAXIMUM EMOTIONAL IMPACT: THE MUSIC and a vague spiritual tone about life, death, rebirth and scarfs and everybody loves scarfs.

So far so cynical. So far so “you know, here’s a game that proves there’s more to videogames than shooting a man in the face”. So far so good then. Journey is absolutely fantastic for that and I’m fairly certain there’ll be a lot of words in end of year lists with Journey in it circling around this point. And whilst I’m of the firm opinion that in 2012 we shouldn’t need to be making this point, it’s fairly clear that in 2012 we need to be making this point more than fucking ever.

Take E3. E3 2012 left a weird fucking stain behind it, PRESS X TO TORTURE MENS. PRESS X TO INJURE WOMENS. PRESS X FOR SEXUAL GRUNTS. PRESS X TO CHEER AS SOMEONE GETS SHOTGUNNED IN THE FUCKING FACE THE FUCK IS UP WITH YOU PEOPLE.

This is videogames 2012. More broad a church than ever yet given an enormous platform to scream and shout about that variety, this is what we choose to present (with only a few honourable exceptions) so yes, we need stuff like Journey out there on a mainstream console. We’ve always needed it but RIGHT NOW, it seems fairly vital to have something mainstream you can point at and say THERE IS ANOTHER WAY even though there’s many an other way out there but we just don’t talk about them. We can work on that, though.

But that’s not why I’m listing Journey here. I’m including Journey because I really fucking liked Journey.

I loved the movement, how free it felt, how liberating it felt to just run around sliding and skidding through the sand. Journey really nails movement. I loved jumping around, faffing around with a multitude of mystery players as companions, never really registering that it was a multitude of players, it was always just “my companion”. I loved the music, I loved the spectacle of it all. It worked. I loved how each setpiece just worked. I loved how Journey was about a series of moments, perfectly crafted moments.

Sure, it’s a bit overly mystical and sometimes a bit too serious but hey, I don’t mind. Sometimes I just want big feel good things because sometimes I just want to feel good and Journey is content to let me have that when so many games go out of their way to deny me it. And sometimes, that’s reason enough for me. With Journey, it’s definitely reason enough.

The rest of the stuff? That’s just a nice bonus.

No-one does vectors quite like Sokurah does vectors. Ok, ok, X-Out and Wiebo certainly come close so perhaps I should rephrase that to no-one does vector games quite as well as Sokurah does vector games.

Black Widow is one of the runts of the twin stick family, passed over in favour of maintaining the holy narrative that first there was Robotron, then there was SmashTV then there was Geometry Wars and then there was all the twin stick videogames and can those indies please stop it please because they’re always making them inbetween those platform puzzlers, hipster shit and art games and hypertext games and adventure games and 3d exploration games and short form experiments and anyone would think that this is a vibrant scene or something how dare they. Fuckers.

And yeah, it’s not the best twin sticker ever but it’s interesting. It’s entertaining and it’s solid fun. What I appreciate the most about Sokurah’s takes on games in general is how despite being seriously ragged up to modern standards, the games still feel timeless. His quick remake of Imagine’s I INVENTED THE COLOUR INLAY AND THE COLOUR RED TASTES GOOD AND IS GOOD FOR YOU Arcadia a case in point, it’s flawed because the original is flawed but Arcadia is flawed and changing that becomes something not Arcadia to a large degree. I know when I felt tempted to have a go at it, I wanted to do so much more with it but then it just wouldn’t have been Arcadia anymore. Remakes. It’s a fucking awkward line sometimes.

But I also appreciate that he doesn’t go for the easy targets. Ray Norrish has already nailed Robotron with Mechatron, Llamatron exists in many forms so that base is covered. There’s a myriad of Geometry Wars variants out there from the shit to the sublime so who needs more of those? Like with his other remakes (bringing Dingo back to the ZX Spectrum for a prime example here) they’re not hard or awkward remakes because they’re content heavy, they’re awkward because they’re the games that maybe only a few people give a fuck about and they’re a bloody hard sell to the public. Everyone remembers Head Over fucking Heels, we all know people wank themselves into a hyperspace frenzy over the dream of getting Elite remade in modern tech and that’s great but there’s a whole history of videogames that maybe didn’t change the world quite so much. Fucked if we should forget them because you didn’t get a bike for Xmas, you got a Vic Viper and a handful of teenage space opera fantasies and lalala procedural yes we fucking know, shut up.

This is Black Widow

Words from my GameCityPrize submission…

Games can be art, games should be art. Games should be about fun. Games could be about fun. Games should be about rules. Games should be about competition. Games should be about this, that, the other. Ooh, Cinema. Ooh, Citizen Kane. Well, YOUR MUM.

“What a defence!”, I hear you cry. But I’m not out to make a defence, I don’t need to defend anything. Games is and games are and games are many things.

Proteus is a game. It’s got an end goal. It’s got rules. It’s a game. If anyone asks. It’s also art. Because y’know, Space Giraffe is art so Proteus can be art. But it’s not art because it doesn’t follow the traditional gaming things that gaming things do, it’s art because it’s artful, it’s beautiful. In the same way that shrubbery is beautiful, y’know?

Shrubbery? Beautiful? Yes! Go take a walk in the countryside, go on. If you’re in the inner city, take a bus, have a drive, do something, go somewhere for a walk. Breathe in the fresh (or manure-y) air and just walk. It’s great isn’t it? Walking in the country is good. Now LOOK AT THE SHRUBBERY, JUST LOOK AT IT. Woohoo. Shrubbery.

I likes me some brutalist structures, I like watching cities evolve, I’m not one of those but there’s no freedom there, just the ever encroaching creep of the city, the brutality of capitalism on every corner. Videogames are a bit like that, aren’t they? Capitalism: Cash Harder at every turn, the machine wants your money, give us your money and then when you’ve given us your money give us some more money because we like your money and there will be no respite.

Proteus is the respite. It’s the walk. It’s the trip to the country against the car park of monolithic companies asking you to pay as you go. The car park rots, unclean, dirty until the only thing left to do is to knock it down. We can build better things than havens for clampers, we can put some shrubbery there. A tree as a testament to beauty instead of a hotel and a gym.

Let Proteus be that tree. Let it blossom, let it grow.

Then let’s all run into some shrubbery and pluck twigs from each others hair. A bit like in the Wicker Man.

Visit Proteus.

PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH

Tempting as it is to pick Gridrunner which is the best Gridrunner since Gridrunner++ was the best Gridrunner and the point where all of Jeff’s iOS-isms come together, it’s like historyofvideogames:thevideogame at times and it’s a truly fabulous thing and one of the few games to get filed under Great Lost Arcade Games That Never Were and that’s really really great but oh, Deflex. I fucking love Deflex.

Whereas the rest of Jeff’s catalogue is tailoring (very well for the most part) the arcade to iOS, Deflex is Jeff Minter:The iOS Game. It’s filled with all the things you take for granted in a Jeff game, animals, shaders, big text, more animals and some animals and so far so Jeff but yeah, not quite so by the numbers here.

Drop mirrors onto the board to bounce a ball to collect items to clear the level. Tap the left side for mirrors facing one way, tap the right side for mirrors facing the other. That’s it for the controls, beautifully simple stuff. But as usual, it’s the rest of the stuff that separates Deflex from your usual iOS fare. You can imagine many other games trying to do this sort of thing, fuck they’d probably do it ok as well but you know they’d have to throw in a cartoon beaver called Deefles who lives in the land of mirrors and must collect all the lost coins of Lex and PS buy more coins please, that’ll be £69.99 for 20,000 and it’d all be drawn in that slick but soulless EA-does-mobile kind of style and yes, yes, it’d be playable but god, just kill me now.

Instead, we have videogames through the Minter filter. There’s no cartoon graphics here, just slightly freaky 8 bit styled graphics ran through a weirdy shader and L.Ron Hubbard gawping out at you behind the glass. Fucking L.Ron Hubbard staring out of your iphone. Shit. Don’t do that, it’s scary. And the sound! None of the usual arcade sfx or blips and blops here just the tinkling of an Eno-esque ambient piano and the whispered voice of a little girl. It’s sort of calming in a way. Calming in that “oh no, I’m not going to fall asleep, you won’t make me, I don’t know what you’ll do to me whilst I rest” kind of way. And that, that’s the extra bits that tip over an already fantastic game into the realms of genius.

And that’s why you should go and grab Deflex sort of right about now because it’s fantastic and creepy and relaxing and feels like the kind of game that’s existed forever and will exist forever more because that’s what Jeff does and that’s what makes his stuff so very special.

This is Deflex.

Three letters that define my teenage years outside of videogames. Sadly not SEX but if you could all pretend anyway and I’ll feel a bit better about how much more shagging I probably should have been doing instead of watching films, going to concerts and playing videogames. Actually, I did alright now I think about it, scratch that.

Anyway, yes, VHS. Three letters. The eighties, the nineties. So much of my formative years defined by VHS. From the pre-video nasty gambles (“whoops, wrong Snow White”), to how many times can one kid humanly watch Krull even though it’s a bit rubbish, to the idents to the days off sick from school with a mound of concerts taped off the television and a copy of Day Of The Daleks to the like-Big-Hollywood-Movie-but-crapper straight to video market to really, is this what Charles Bronson has become? to Brian Dennehey in another true and emotional story to can we stop putting Eric Roberts in movies please he’s not very good to an eventual nervous breakdown.

Outside of videogames I can’t help but look back and tie so many moments with something VHS. More than videogames, more than music, those fucking clunky bastard tapes defined parts of me.

And then one day, they didn’t. One day we had DVD and that’s another story.

But if it isn’t VHS, it’s videogames. So a set of videogames that combine video schlock, old hardware and the cut and paste everything attitude? OK then.

Imagine every eighties type in gone wrong via the medium of VHS and you’re probably close. Probably.

Play them.