Steamdeck

Ahhh games.

One of my oldest friends makes computer games for a living. He always has. He’s extremely good at it.

When I met him I was playing games on my BBC Master System. It was 128k, which is NOTHING. Still, some games managed to give a sense of depth. Twin Kingdom Valley. Repton 3. Thrust. Stryker’s Run. We started to care about how these games were made, even as we literally couldn’t afford any of them at the asking price and had to either occasionally watch someone else play them occasionally, hear someone talk about them, or… or …

“All you need to do is tape over the gap in the disc.” “This crack will generate the correct passcode…” One whole generation of us got adept at ripping off games and basic hacking. We still paid premium when we knew it was good and we could afford it. But by 1990 every kid with a computer knew that you could spend as much as £30 on a game that was virtually completely pointless. We all had discs in our library that had cost loads and would never be booted up again as the game was just terrible. Sometimes, out of desperation, one or the other of us would get excellent at an obscure or badly conceived game. They were expensive, copies were hard to get right, trainers were not an exact science. Commodore 64 and then Amiga. Paradroid and The Last Ninja through to Turrican. One sick weekend I got extremely good an obscure Frankie Goes to Hollywood game on C64. I still feel affectionate towards the learning curve it took me on.

One of the maintenance staff at my posh school set himself up selling hacked Amiga games. He would have been fine if he hadn’t made himself too visible to the lawful evil people in my year. He lost his job but not before my close friends and I had been given access to most of the big titles in this growing industry. Monkey Island 2. Supercars 2. Speedball 2. Alien Breed. Epic. Xenon 2. FF7. Lots of great sequels. Lots of people working out how to do it well.

I was gaming pretty thoroughly until drama school, and then I found I needed to work and be creative… I tried to keep up with the big big titles but it became more and more involved to log into a device that took forever to boot up. I tried a gaming laptop but the fan was crazy and if I played it in bed it would overheat in no time. It all got too complicated as the graphical requirements got too involved. I stopped for good in about 2007, but my STEAM account was very full, and my wishlist was such that, when a game I wanted was reduced to £2.00 I bought it against a rainy day.

Lou is on tour. I’m working evenings.

I bought a Steamdeck and it is the best thing in the world.

It is £500 handheld device that lets me play my whole back catalogue. It is portable. It loads up quickly, doesn’t overheat or weigh a ton, and is absolutely perfect for touring.

I’m using it to catch up. One game at a time. This machine is capable of running Baldur’s Gate 3, the latest big talk game that I own, but I’m currently most of the way through playing GTA4 from 2008. The first big title I missed. Nico Bellic, morally ambiguous, in a grey and depressing simplification of New York City and I’m running around in it murdering and stealing with no compunction whatsoever and it is joyful. I’m late enough in the game already that I can steal incredible cars. I’m horrified and fascinated by the storyline. But people made it and cared. I’ve got such a backlog of games to try that I’ll never get up to date, but I never thought I would have the patience to catch up on these old school benchmarks so far. I’m thinking of working through things chronologically.

You couldn’t make GTA4 now. You play a proper baddie. I just went to the funeral of a guy I shot with sniper rifle, and his sister asked me to take her out for a burger. It’s fascinating and janky to play. I can only give it a short burst daily as my gaming stamina will never match my reading stamina. Still, the Steamdeck? Perfect placebo for an old school gamer who honestly can’t be bothered to keep up with all the latest tech anymore.