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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Dominik Diamond

Through depression, illness and a heck of a birthday party, video games have been our family’s glue

Games have been a refuge from life’s brickbats.
Games have been a refuge from life’s brickbats. Photograph: Interfoto/Alamy Stock Photo

I have moved house. Again. There are now new, different rooms to fill with all the things and machines that keep a family functioning.

Some of them, as ever, are games consoles. I wrote recently about the place that the ZX Spectrum occupied in our council house in Arbroath in the 80s. But we had a machine before that. A bizarre arcade box that came with a black and white TV and an assortment of Pong knockoffs. It bonded us, but once Sir Clive’s chocolate bar came along it was consigned to the loft, where it grew bitter and revengeful and later auditioned for the role of one of Ultron’s drones in that Avengers movie.

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