Nostalgia: It Ain't What It Used To Be.

Memory is a funny old thing. A cherished recollection can disappear for decades, seemingly buried under ever-increasing layers of memories about that time you went to that thing with that girl who might, at this point, possibly be dead, so long has it been since you communicated with her. Buried and gone until, one day, something pokes at it and a memory from pre-pubescence emerges, blinking in the harsh, annoying light of your late twenties. Such a thing happened to me today in regards to the Commodore 64 game Creatures.

As an eleven year old I wanted this game bad. I yearned for it. Commodore Format rated it high and parped on about it at every opportunity: for me, this was as cast-iron a recommendation as could be found. I loved CF and dreamed of one day working for them - almost made it too, but that's another story. I shelled out fifteen quid - an impossibly huge amount of money, given that my weekly pocket money at the time was the princely sum of 2 pounds, 50p of which was earmarked for my weekly 2000AD. But I scrimped and saved and the precious game was couriered to my house, possibly on the wings of chesty, nekkid angels. And do you know what? It was shit.

SHIT.

It was a platformer of sorts, interspersed with puzzle sections where the object was to foil a Mousetrap/Heath Robinson style machine that was on the verge of hilariously mudering one of your fellow grey furry creatures. Fail and the unfortunate creature would be chainsawed, dropped in acid, beheaded or generally killed to the accompaniment of lots of cartoonish blood. I liked cartoon blood, and indeed still do to this day, which was just as well because I saw a lot of it due my chronic ineptitude. This, remember, was the good old days when videogames saw absolutely no reason to let you win, or to make life easier for the player in any way; being frustratingly difficult was considered a legitimate way to increase a game's lifespan. I also have a vague memory of the controls being sticky and lumpen, the music being annoying and the titular creatures being pretty unloveable. After a reasonable (for an eleven year old) amount of perseverance I abandoned the game in disgust and went off to discover masturbation.

Heartwarming stuff. When I was scouring the net for information about this hellish piece of software I stumbled on to the inevitable fansite which purports to be the only one of its kind anywhere on the whole wide web, something I have no trouble believing. The retro games scene as a whole has a reputation for being a haven for the more... unconventional type of chap (let's face it - we're talking about males only here. I can't imagine that there's too many ladies out there maintaining regularly updated sites dedicated to Horace Goes Skiing. Harry Potter slash fiction, on the other hand...) and the Creatures site is a perfect and shining example of the form. In the 'about' section the author deviates wildly from his theme and launches into a spittle-flecked rant about how modern games are nothing but soulless pap, shat out by a cynical industry obsessed by the acqusition of filthy lucre. True enough, I suppose, but it's not like Ocean was a non-hierarchichal anarchist collective now was it?

The author states his intention to play C64 games regularly and often, for as long as he is able. Forever, if possible. Nothing that Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo do will budge him from his belief that Commodore put together the ultimate, unbeatable gaming platform, never bettered in any subsequent generation. That, in a medium obsessed with pushing boundaries and breaking new ground (at least in the departments of tits and shiny graphics) is quite a statement. And... it's bollocks. As much as I would hugely enjoy an hour with an old Amiga and a copy of Cannon Fodder an hour is all it would be. A brief flirtation with a happy childhood memory. Then I would pack the Amiga away and go back to wanting to play the new Call of Duty, because new games are, by and large, quantifiably superior to old ones. I would rather play GTA 4 than Magicland Dizzy because, misty-eyed nostalgia aside, GTA is better. It looks better, is more involved, has a better soundtrack, is more rewarding, and contains more hours of gameplay without having to resort to being viagra boner hard.

I'm waffling so I'll cut to the chase: nostalgia, as practiced by the retro gaming community, is not healthy. Admit it - games are better these days. Tekken 6 is heaps better than Tekken. Mario Galaxy pisses all over Super Mario 2. And Creatures was shit. Shit. What you're doing is being nostalgic, not for a game, but for a time when things were simpler. When all you had to worry about was stopping the furry grey blob being dropped into the acid, as opposed to now, when you have to grapple with your crippling credit card debt, or how you're going to cover your fucking rent, or why no girl seems to want to put her hand on your wiener no matter how much you whinge and plead. It's no good. Put the C64 away and get to grips with the present. It might be scary, but at least you get to amuse yourself with this.

For some unknown reason, in Creatures YOUR MOM ran the weapon shop.