Dear Future Gamer,

Thanks for a great read every Thursday night. I particularly enjoyed the recent nostalgic ramblings of some of your more experienced gamers. I myself have been mesmerised since the first time I saw, and within months owned, a ZX81 18 years ago. I was 10 years old and a lifetime of gaming addiction started there.

Magazines used to list programs that you could type in yourself (for eager young kids with nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon). They rarely worked, though this did not stop us. The concept of programs stored on ordinary cassettes blew my head off the first time I encountered it. And you could get about 30-odd Spectrum games on one 90 minute tape.

I think what keeps us all glued is the constant evolution of the whole scene. Every now and then, typically about every two years, something comes out of nowhere and makes us go "wow" all over again. I went from the ZX81 to the Spectrum, to the C64, then to the Amiga 500. I spent weeks of my life on Xenon 2 and Stunt Car Racer (not to mention Elite and Civilization). Of course it all looks crap now.

The last time I had a major 'wow', was my first experience of Wipeout on the PlayStation. I couldn't stop grinning. Up until that point I had become bored with all things computer-gamey and probably thought I had grown up. Wrong! The PS re-ignited the old pixel passion (steady on) and I rushed out and bought one. Link cables added a new dimension and introduced more people to multiplayer experiences (even though some of us had linked Amigas before).

I have since sold my PlayStation because three months ago a friend showed me some PC games running with Voodoo2 acceleration. Wow indeed. And here I am today, loving every minute of it and (usually) quietly content in the knowledge that I have been here since the dawn. I've see it all - from the first crappy tennis game with rotary paddles, through the queues around the first Space Invaders machine in the Youth Club, past the solitude of 3am Civ, and forward into multiplayer heaven.

The future? Who knows? Who cares? We'll lap it up like the starving dogs we are.

Alan Thompson

PS My favourite arcade game of all time was a thing called Prehistoric Isle. I played it to death in the Student Union bar. As far as I know this game (a scrolling shoot 'em up with bi-planes and dinosaurs and fantastic gameplay including funky directional power-up thingies) was never ported to another system. The game is about 10 years old by now. If there is a PC conversion out there, I would love to hear about it. It probably wouldn't seem as cool now but, well, I think you probably understand. Thanks.

FG: Think of all those hours, all that frustration, all that elation. And I bet you thought you'd seen it all when Defender of the Crown came out on the Amiga didn't you? Now you've joined the PC gaming public though, your upgrade nightmares are about to begin…