'Games Britannia: Joystick Generation PT 3' - my thoughts

And we're back with Benjamin Woolley with his third part of his series of 'Games Britannia'.

In this episode Benjamin talks about the latest consoles which has led to the development of today's games, starting from the 70's as video games started to become more popular and in the 80's people were able to play them in their living rooms at home.

I was really interested whilst watching this episode, I am really into how early consoles such as the ZX Spectrum and the BBC micro were invented and what games were available on their markets. One game worth noting on both consoles is the game 'Elite' which the player had to buy and sell goods by flying around space to different areas. What you bought and sold made the game easier or harder for the player.

There was one moment which stuck in my mind clearly which was the part on the game 'Carmageddon' which is where the player must run over pedestrians to gain points during a race against other opponents. The game sparked an outrage in social media due to the murdering of innocent people (and grannies especially, as they gave the player more points!) Eventually the developers changed the pedestrians to zombies which caused the outrage to simmer. However, I do remember playing the game when I was younger with the zombie version which was why I did smile when I saw this game come up.

Another very popular game which was mentioned was GTA which also involved driving around and (although not necessary) allowed you to run over pedestrians. 'Rockstar' (or 'DMA' as their old company was known as) who are the creators of GTA originally called the game 'Race and Chase' and had only the cops chasing the player through streets in 1995. Comparing that version with the latest version which is GTA V shows how much development has gone through into making this franchise. To start with, GTA V actually hired prisoners to voice some of the characters to make the game more realistic and before it was released for the latest console of Xbox One and PlayStation 4, the amount of copies sold made it reach the 6th spot of the most sold copies of games whilst holding 7 world records. (Mentioned on Top10Memes YouTube video on GTA V facts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwIhn9Ljeqo )

In all, this episode of Games Britannia is definitely worth watching as there were many more games mentioned and lots of info to take in from only watching it once.