My kids are magicians and wizards when it comes to online games like Minecraft and Warcraft. At times I wonder if the eldest was born clutching a mouse and I didn’t notice that because I was busy trying to work out how to text my mother. Their crowns slipped a little recently when, in the museum area of the National Videogame Arcade in Nottingham, I blasted them into another galaxy. But I was also blasted right back into the past..
Two player game
Five times eleven, creep and descend.
Octopus alien world without end
on an orange and lime green cellophane screen.
My laser beam seeks out sudden flier;
I seize my chance, take aim and fire.
You are the age that I was then,
and I am thirteen once again.
In seventies Cornwall; drizzled with rain.
I top a boy on the high score list,
my initials almost touching his.
A pixel caress. A potential kiss?
Muscles tensed with chances missed,
his fingers, sticky from warm flat coke,
send random canons towards the glow;
an eight bit hit! But a romance? No.
You try to train your fingertips
on a crude space bar but again they miss,
your Minecraft training no good for this;
you can’t get a hold on this 2D world
where the young space raider lost the girl.
I once again claim supremacy,
of this upright cabinet galaxy.
Retro blaster from the past
holds tight and fast, until Pacman calls
and we both move on to snaffling balls.
