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Woo! We're on the telly! That was the general mood among gamers on Saturday night when Channel 4 broadcast Charlie Brooker's feature-length documentary on the importance of video games. This mood probably had a little more resonance for the likes of our own Ellie Gibson, who really was on the telly as one of the many expert and celebrity talking heads, but gaming is so rarely given coverage on TV, and so rarely is it covered well, that it was hard not to feel like we were all along for the ride.In terms of format, the show stays true to the proven Channel 4 countdown template (not to be confused with the Countdown template) which seems a little obvious, but actually works in the film's favour when you consider that the ultimate goal was not just to entertain existing gamers, but to introduce non-gamers to the key texts in our beloved medium. In that context, the mixture of chronological history lesson and Top 25 list actually dovetails rather neatly.
As an ancient retro gamer who can remember far too many of the games included from the first time around, I found the documentary at its strongest in the early stages as it chronicles the birth of the arcade, video and computer game industry. The games chosen - Pong, Space Invaders and Pac-Man - are all indisputable classics, but the advances from year to year were so vast in those early days that the case for each is easy to make. From Pong's primal simplicity, a game anyone can look at and intuitively understand, to the stark dread of Space Invaders' metronomic descent and the rudimentary AI of Pac-Man's ghostly pursuers, it makes for a delightful potted history of a familiar but always enjoyable story.
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