Blog/2024-03-16/Video Games

From Rest of What I Know

It's been absolutely ages since I played video games. The difference between the number of hours I spent playing them when I was younger and had crappy hardware and now that I can afford good hardware for them is crazy.

I recently ended up on a Youtube video remixing the Unreal Tournament soundtrack[1] and it brought up a whole bunch of memories, mostly of playing two-player split-screen games with my younger brother.

This means that Alexander Brandon was effectively one of my favourite musicians. The Unreal Soundtrack above is one of his, as is the Tubelectric Remix from Jazz Jackrabbit 2[2], and A Cold Day in Heck from that same game. Music is unbelievable at bringing back fond memories from that time: making levels for my brother and me to play in, beating the campaign in two-player, complaining about who got what power-ups.

Anyway, that led me down a very small rabbit-hole that ended in discovering that Alexander Brandon has a Twitter account and that there's a new remake of a classic Contra that has local co-op and it's available on a PS5. Time to convince Julie to play a side-scrolling shooter with me.