Is your childhood home where most of your favourite gaming memories are found? What a strange feeling it is when it’s no longer yours

I don’t think of myself as being overly sentimental. I do seem to remember a lot more than other people, though – small things that when I bring up to those involved, I’m looked at as if I’ve fabricated the world’s most mundane story. “I had a really wonderful brownie there,” I’ll say to my wife as we pass a restaurant we last visited 12 years ago. “I had lasagne and cheesy garlic bread,” I add as she looks at me in a way that is clearly questioning if we’ve even set foot in the building before. It appears that I’m like this with games, too, a landslide of the past hitting me as I learned my mum’s house, my childhood home, is going on the market this week.

We all look back, hopefully with fond memories of games we’ve played over the years, but perhaps rather foolishly I’d not really considered how where I played these games and who I was with is just as important. My memories, in fact, are less about the games themselves (what I thought of them, key events, etc), but more the moments in time and place. We all remember what we were doing during huge world events, but where were you when you booted Super Mario 64 for the first time… and who were you playing with?

My first gaming memory, I’m pretty sure, is of the Amstrad CPC 464, the one that came with a green-screen monitor. I can’t have been very old, but I remember a game about stunt driving that I’ve come to learn is called Super Stunt Man. The most bizarre part of this memory isn’t how terrible I was at the game, but that in my mind the whole thing is red, like an off-hue polaroid photo – all except the very green monitor screen. Strange. Have you ever tried explaining to anyone under the age of 10 what life was like before Netflix and YouTube? Imagine telling them about a screen that only displayed shades of one colour!

My mind is less red-tinged when I think about the C64, in reality more of a sideways step from the Amstrad than a massive upgrade, but I had it on a colour TV which made a huge difference. We bought a bumper package, the one with the amazing artwork of an owl on it (I must have stared at this box for hours in what I assume was the Woolworths or WHSmith catalogue), bundled with two joysticks and a second game collection that had 20+ games included. Amazing days, but again, aside from the odd specific game memory (I was big into Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, for my sins), my overriding feeling of the time is one of a puzzle.

In my first attempt at describing my memory of that time I used the term “cramped,” but it was unfair and not really true. I grew up in an ex-council house where I lived with my mum, brother, step-dad, nan, granddad, uncle, aunt, and cousin. It’s only as an adult that you look back and wonder how that was possible. As a child I didn’t feel cramped at all. It was just life, and we made things fit. There were rooms everywhere, people sleeping in what are now closets, and a garden then went on for miles. It’s funny. We all try to do what’s best for our family, our kids, but often it’s just that sense of belonging that matters. I had a place, I had my stuff, and I had people to enjoy those things with.

Unlike the Amstrad which had a built-in tape deck, the C64’s plugged in. How was everything going to fit in a small room I shared with my brother? It did, somehow, but the tape deck was definitely perched on something it shouldn’t have been and I remember at times balancing a joystick on top of the deck on my lap as we played, our bunkbed looming large over us. Kids definitely didn’t lord over the house back then, did they? On the plus side, at least it meant we could play pretty much whatever we wanted.

I remember having a small TV and a Master System (our first console, bought instead of a Mega Drive as we could afford more games for it) somehow tucked behind the door of the bigger bedroom we moved into when my aunt moved out, a hideaway of sorts where we’d spend hours trying to finish Chuck Rock and get faster times on Olympic Gold until we’d hear someone shout up the stairs to tell us to “stop that tapping.” The N64 we bought had to have its own stool to fit close enough to the TV in our room, and with so many people trying to get a look at it we ended up accidentally pulling the whole thing onto the floor. The console survived, thankfully! Super Mario 64 was something else, though, right. No one could believe their eyes.

My uncle plays a huge part in my gaming memories as he was at home a lot. He cleaned pubs in the early hours, so was always around when school was finished – as much a part of the “front room” as the sofas. One day we went into town and he put half the money towards buying a PlayStation and Time Crisis. We’d sold the PlayStation we previously owned to fund buying the N64, but he was obviously feeling flush and we weren’t going to argue with the deal being offered. The living room, a rare place to play games in a house this busy, became our arcade, a second PS controller on the floor acting as the game’s “cover” pedal. Incredible scenes – “Don’t trip over that cable, mum!” These days I’m being told to get out of the way of my son’s Fortnite sessions, but at least the controllers are wireless.

Later on we’d tag team Gran Turismo, my uncle grinding away at races during the day, me and my brother taking over after school so we could amass as many credits as possible. I don’t remember the racing at all, but I do remember the joy of coming home, my uncle handing us the controller and telling us we could afford to buy the next high performance car we’d been desperate for. It’s amazing how much time you seem to have as a child. Nothing seems impossible as you aren’t aware of time running out, but nothing lasts forever.

That’s something that can definitely be said about the black, red and silver deco me and my brother decided to have in our shared bedroom, aged 11. Aged 16 we wanted something altogether brighter and less like the inside of the Red Dwarf. Great stuff, but who decided to embark on a complete overhaul the same week the Dreamcast launched in the UK? We had sheets over everything in the room other than the TV and a brand-new Dreamcast, placed on top of a storage stool. Ready 2 Rumble Boxing and Hydro Thunder sessions while sat on tins of paint. Had to be done, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

SEGA was my true love, but the PlayStation won me over and the level of hype around the PS2 was unheard of. Having failed to pre-order a PS2 we took to the Friday-Ad (always picked one up from the Fish and Chip shop every week) and found someone selling a modded Japanese model for less than the UK price, ahead of the UK launch. The man arrived, we had the cash ready, but my mum insisted that the guy unpack it all in the living room, plug it in and show it working. I always felt so embarrassed when my mum would do things like this, insisting, for example, that the staff in Dixons let us demo a game in store before buying – Aladdin on the Mega Drive is the one I remember the most. I appreciate now that she was looking out for us and our hard-earned money (I remember working from about the age of 12).

Back to the PS2 man. In my mind he was dressed like a ninja. He probably wasn’t, but memories are funny things – half of what I’ve told you so far probably isn’t true even though I believe it to be. The PS2 worked, SSX was incredible. We handed over the money. Never looked back. Neither did the games industry. As an aside, it’s a strange thrill inviting a complete stranger into your house, isn’t it? Yes, you might be getting a bargain on a console, but who the hell is this person and why are you so trusting of them? On the phone he said his name was Dexter Morgan, so I’m sure it’ll be fine, right?

There are so many more moments: the imported GameCube arriving and being full of human hair, my mum reacting by just telling me not to leave “that disgusting hair” on the living room carpet; GTA (which my nan bought us!) on the family PC set up in the hallway by the front door, forever being told to move as me, my brother, and friends blocked the stairs for hours every day; the Xbox 360 failing to arrive on launch day so driving with my mum to the parcel depot to collect it instead, and her car getting pranged at a junction on the way home; playing Shadow of the Colossus in the small bedroom on my own, thinking how everyone downstairs was oblivious to just how incredible this game was.

Years later, long after I’d moved out, I moved back in for a period with my wife following the birth of my son. It’s at this house that he got his first taste for video games, sitting on our bed as we looked at Farming Simulator together and he attempted to say “combine harvester” and point at the chickens. The games I played there, the hundreds of magazines I read, the early game reviews I wrote, were a huge part of making me who I am today. I’ll miss it when it’s gone, but I’ll never forget where I came from and what I played in that magically massive house.