Dreaming of Virtual Reality in 1992
Plus: Six months on Substack!
In the comments to my piece last week about the questions people always ask about having triplets, my daughter, Alex, reminded me that one question I missed out was: “Who came first?”
I’m a middle child and very much a “don’t mind me” peacemaker. But even if you’re born minutes apart, it turns out people still project older/middle/youngest birth-order qualities onto you, which children then internalise.
Alex said,
“Olivia was the ‘leader’ in my mind and Becky was somehow the ‘younger one’ even by only 10 minutes or so. I was always the middle one in my head, even if by a tiny margin …
“In games of Sonic, Becky was usually default Tails, while Olivia and I would alternate Sonic and Knuckles. Unless we definitely wanted to swap (because Tails is still very cool) and then Becky might finally get a turn as the main character. So unfair!”
I remembered how caught up they were in the world of Sonic the Hedgehog, circa 1992, because Ian would wind down after work by playing video games. The three girls would sit alongside him on the sofa, watching Sonic try to dodge fire, or avoid drowning, or some other awful death, and then try and try again to defeat Doctor Robotnik in the finale.
All three of our daughters’ infants’ school news books at that time (aged five) were full of drawings of Sonic in danger, and I worried about what their teachers thought of our parenting.
Meanwhile, I decompressed by playing Tetris. As Taron Egerton (playing Henk Rogers) says in Tetris, the 2023 movie (a brilliant dramatised history of how the game came into being): “It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen … I played for five minutes, I still see falling blocks in my dreams.”
I wrote about my, um, enthusiasm for Tetris, and how it was a gateway to other video games – including newly-launched virtual reality games1, which were making their way into games arcades – for The Independent newspaper in April 1992. A month later, my article was reprinted in the more niche Amusement Business magazine.
This was pre-internet (I didn’t even hear about the existence of the internet until early 1994). Here it is:
Guns and cold coffee after dark
The best Wendy Varley can hope for is to keep her addiction secret from her children
(First published in The Independent, 15 April 1992, p16)
I never thought it would happen to me. When I got my personal computer four years ago, video games were the domain of acned adolescents, so if I had known that one day I would be trekking down to the amusement arcade to join them, and filling my monitor with crudely-animated aliens, I would have slung out the PC and reverted to the typewriter instantly. I just wasn’t the type to be attracted to war games and their accompanying pings, bings and bangs. Give this mother of three and freelance journalist books, conversation and a smattering of television any day.
But then I found Tetris, a computer game that instantly felt familiar. Putting together geometric shapes as they tumbled down the screen – a bit like an animated jigsaw – proved soothing at first. Three hours later my shoulders were frozen, my brain was numb and my lightning reactions had chugged to a standstill, but I was still reluctant to quit.
I spent that night dreaming about coloured building blocks drifting together to make neat rows, and woke exhausted. But I was told that I’d sleep normally once I got used to the game, so I played again, got a best score and was hooked. It was that simple: all it took was patience, persistence and concentration – pretty useful qualities, on the face of it.
I played whenever I could. I’d sneak away while the children were stuck into their Lego; I’d play at night; I’d play when I should have been working. The game proved to be such a distraction that I eventually asked my boyfriend to rename the file so I wouldn’t know where to find it (I couldn’t bear to delete it completely).
That should have been the end of it, but one evening I confessed my former addiction to a friend in the computer industry. She had exactly the same problem. “My highest score is 18,000. I can’t beat it, but that doesn’t stop me trying,” she confided.
“Eighteen? I’ve never got beyond 10,000.”
“Start at level seven, then you score more from the beginning,” she suggested.
So after thinking I’d kicked the habit, home I went to a new challenge, only slightly reassured to know that I wasn’t the only female addict over 30.
In fact, anyone can be drawn in. My most recent converts are my boyfriend’s parents, who spent each evening of a recent visit playing computer golf. Neither has worked with a keyboard or mouse before, but they know all about chipping, putting and wind speeds and got the hang of it immediately.
Suddenly I’d lost two of my greatest allies. Instead of rushing to help put their little treasures to bed, these doting grandparents were blasting out of a simulated bunker, leaving me doing everything single-handed. Yes, computer games affect the quality of family life all right, and in our household it’s the grown-ups you have to watch. We carefully steer the children towards educational computer reading games and art packages, then once they’re in bed we do battle, linking up two computers for “one quick game” of Spectre, a blast-each-other-to-bits war game that leaves the loser desperate for revenge, so we play again… and again…
In the comfort of my own home I revel in being ruthless and dastardly, but in an amusement arcade all my girlie inhibitions resurface. My motivation for visiting Piccadilly’s Trocadero centre recently wasn’t to go shopping but to try out the new virtual reality game I’d spotted there. On previous occasions I’d glanced at it furtively, the way I glance into sex shops: not wanting anyone to know I’m really curious. But this time I took a deep breath, paid my £2 and joined the queue for Heavy Metal2, where four players each get to be a robot that looks like a headless rooster. The aim is to stomp around the minimalist landscape shooting other members of the flock (no surprise there).
I sat at the controls and waited for the hi-tech roustabout to plonk the necessary helmet and visor on my head and give me an unintelligible tour of the controls.
My first impressions were that the helmet felt clammy and that in the virtual world I badly needed glasses; everything was blurred. I knew that when I moved my head, my view of the landscape would change as if I was really in it, so I glanced down and was only mildly surprised to find that my feet were orange squares.
I had to focus on my opponents in order to snuff them out, so I raised my head, pressed the forward pedal and clumped off to find them. You can refer to an aerial map, but I didn’t get on to that since I was having enough trouble working out how to steer myself around this strange world of primary-coloured tower blocks. Just when I thought I’d cracked it, I was blown to smithereens by a green rooster in the distance. A split second later I was reborn and being dropped into a different part of the arena. I had several lives, but each time I sought out the enemy I got shot first. A frustrating initiation, as usual.
The main amusement arcade upstairs was packed with young men from all backgrounds. As a woman, I was in a minority of one.
Self-conscious? Of course I was, painfully. The noise got to me, too; like the whirring and clicking of a dysfunctioning engine-room. At home I like to alternate war games with more peaceful pursuits (I could swear there’s an untapped market for games that would appeal specifically to women), but here there was a distinct bias towards death and destruction. In the computer-game version of The Simpsons, even the mild-mannered Marge is trying to knock the daylights out of her family, wielding her Hoover as a weapon.
I left, desperate to be back home where nobody peers derisively over your shoulder when you get obliterated for the umpteenth time. True, the moments of triumph come in the depths of the night when you’re alone with a cup of cold coffee you haven’t dared drink for fear that a pause would break your concentration, but that’s OK by me. My scores will always be piffling, because I don’t have that one extra quality you need to be really good: fast reactions. But that’s the beauty of computer games: no rankings, no national leagues, no coaching necessary; it’s strictly between you and the machine.
Writing that article in 1992 made me confront what a time-sapper video games were and I resolved to go cold turkey. I wiped Tetris from my computer once and for all, stopped playing Spectre and refused to be drawn into Sonic or Ecco the Dolphin (another of Ian’s and my daughters’ favourites).
A few weeks later, I got a call from a news researcher at BBC Radio 4 who had read my article and was preparing an item on women and video games. She asked if I’d go on the programme to talk about it, as a frequent user. I had to confess that I’d beaten the habit. She sounded disappointed, but I was relieved.
Thirty-two years on, Ian still regularly plays video games, often with our adult son. I haven’t gone back to them, unless you count a flirtation with interactive exercise on the Wii Fit in 2008.
I wrote a few weeks ago about the influence of virtual voice assistants in my piece, Hey Google: Cats, and wondered how the youngest generation – Gen Alpha – will adapt.
Maybe we’re hardwired to lap up whatever virtual reality is put in front of us. In the 1960s my dad would wind down after his early shift at work by vegging in front of the black and white TV watching old Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton silent movies, or Tom and Jerry cartoons, chuckling away to himself until I joined him after school. Then we’d switch over and I’d watch children’s TV.
And though I’ve long-since kicked my addiction to video games, I am very proud of my 3102 day streak on Duolingo. The owl wins!
Please do comment below if you have any thoughts on birth order, what video games were/are hardest to resist – if you have ever fallen into a habit! – or indeed anything else that occurs to you after reading Wendy’s World this week. I’m always pleased to hear from readers. Commenting, sharing and/or clicking the heart will all help other people to find my writing.
Speaking of which… (sound fanfare)… I’m celebrating
Six months of sharing my writing on Substack!
Well, that’s gone by in a flash! I wasn’t quite sure when I started my newsletter back in June what I’d write or whether I’d be able to write weekly. But I’ve loved every minute and have a “Drafts” file that grows longer by the day, so roll on 2025!
Thanks to everyone who’s jumped on board along the way: 500+ subscribers now!
Particular mention to my nine paid subscribers, including six who are not even related to me!
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Until next time.
© Wendy Varley 2024
The name of the VR system was Virtuality. Heavy Metal was one of the games.
When I was on teaching practice in the mid-1980s, I was baffled when a child asked how to spell "egg" and, after a while, "jog", words that I thought were well within his abilities. All was revealed when I read his diary entry: " I went to Tom's house and we played Sonic the Egg Jog."
Wendy, You have only been on Substack for six months? My goodness - I consider you my Substack guru and I know you have helped many others do well on this platform. Thank you.
I look forward to your posts. Filled with humour, positivity and joy, and I usually learn something too!