Rising Star Blog

As this is my first blog, I thought I would give you a little insight into who I am and what I'm about... seeing as, well, most of you will never have heard of me before. So, to condense it down to a sentence: I am a girl, my name is Alex, I look like a Wotsit, I used to be a model but now I review video games for a living for various media outlets which, you know, placates my inner fanboy to the nth degree. See, before all the modeling nonsense came along, there was games. And Japan. Sometimes even Japanese games, but that's really pushing it out there. Whoa.

As a girl, I know there are those of you out there who may think I'm a plant sent from planet robot, to you know, pretend I like games and stuff. Everybody know that girls don't like games and have seen the COD-related divorce figures to prove it. Girls like shopping, and Jordan, and Sex and the City, and many other sick-inducing activities which thankfully I do not. I do like Hello Kitty though, and farm-based strategy games, so I'm not completely immune to girlitis. Anyway, it got me thinking - when did this video game obsession start?

Insert fade to flashback here... ooh, it's like a movie.

Okay, so I was a somewhat technologically precocious child, both of my parents worked in computers and while we may not have had the most money in the world, we always had the latest in consumer electronics. This was probably due to my Dad. He worked as a computer salesman for Apple in the eighties when their first home computer came out. I remember him bringing one home on loan when I was like an amoeba and marveling at the smiley icons like it was something sent down from space. After that, my Dad would be first with anything new and technological. I was the first kid on my block - maybe even my town - to get the internet, which prompted an unhealthy interest among me and my friends, as they all crowded round my home PC, in ‘rate my dog poo' sites. I guess that was all there was in those days... or we were just weird. One or the other.

My first console was a dog-eared ZX Spectrum that I think we got second-hand. My favourite game was called Heartland, which was some random game where you went round collecting books or pages or something. It sounds boring now, and the graphics were blockier than a pile of stickle bricks, but I seem to remember playing it a lot. Then we got a SEGA Mega Drive and my gaming life began. You couldn't prize me off the thing for love. money, or chocolate. Especially if I was playing Shining in the Darkness. Man, was that game a personality killer - I think it even made me mute at one point as I sat drawing out the non-existent in-game maps, by hand, on graph paper. Now that's dedication to the cause.

While from the start I had a predilection for RPGs, with brief flirtations (via various consoles) with Mario, Golden Eye, Street Fighter, and Ecco the Dolphin, nothing compared to Sonic. Sonic was just the best thing ever. I used to beg my family for anything Sonic (or Tails) related until one year when I got a Sonic the Hedgehog birthday cake which made my erm... how do I put this... *poop* turn blue for a week. After that I stopped asking for Sonic things.

This was around about the same time that my Japan obsession started. It must have started, quite innocuously, with Hello Kitty. To this day I still have a Hello Kitty / Rillakumma obsession that verges on the ridiculous and I wouldn't be surprised if I had a Hello Kitty butt scratcher such is the level of my collection of useless kitty decorated objects.

There used to be a 'Japan Centre' up the road from me, in Cricklewood, where I got taken to on special occasions to eat okonomiyaki complete with specially imported fish flakes that used to crackle on the top of what I can only describe as a really weird omelette that they cooked at our table. Afterwards, we'd go to the Japanese supermarket downstairs to buy Daikon, pickled enoki mushrooms, and black sesame crackers, which combined together as little canapes is something else. It was at the Japan Centre that I heard the rumours of a forthcoming ‘Sega World' which made me actually cry a bit with excitement.

You wouldn't know it to look at it now, but the Trocadero used to be amazing. The opening of Sega World in the barren wasteland that it has become was probably one of the most exciting moments of my life. Going up the massive escalator I felt like I was ascending into some mental blue-hued heaven full of pure gamer joy. There were so many floors to explore, full of rides and arcades and the biggest Sonic the Hedgehogs I had ever seen in my life. Nowadays, the Trocadero should be defined in the dictionary as ‘the visual embodiment of death'. There is literally nothing there apart from the whiff of dead childhood dreams, some muggers, and a few fat kids in kigurumi on the dance machines. Having said that, their Silent Hill arcade machine is pretty buff.

Ah, Silent Hill. That's another blog right there, which I shall save for another time as I am sure you are growing tired of my slightly exhaustive personal history of gaming. There's plenty more little anecdotes where they came from though, which I'm sure will pop up in future blogs. Hopefully they'll not be as poop-related as this one... this is a family blog, after all.

Sim x

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