Trigger Happy
14
don’t replace the old. Film did not replace theater. The
Internet did not replace the book. Videogames have
been around for thirty years, and they’re not going
away.
When I was ten years old, my parents bought me a
home computer. It was a ZX Spectrum, brainchild of
the celebrated British inventor Sir Clive Sinclair (this
was before he went on to create the savagely
unsuccessful electric tricycle called the C5). The entire
computer, which was a contemporary of the American
Commodore Vic-20, was about half the size of a
modern PC keyboard, and it plugged into a normal
television. It was black, with little gray squidgy keys
and a rainbow stripe over one corner. Tiny blocky
characters would move around blocky landscapes
lavishly painted in eight colors, while the black box
beeped and burped. It was pure witchcraft. But the
magic wasn’t simply done to me; it was a spell I could
dive into. I could swim happily in this world, at once
mysterious and utterly logical, of insubstantial light.
Doubtless my parents imagined the Spectrum
would be educational. In a way it was, for very soon I
was an expert at setting exactly the right recording
levels on hi-fi equipment to ensure a perfect copy of a
hot new game. (In those days, videogames came on
