That’s your mum that is

May 16th 2008 at 10:31 by Ben Parfitt

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My parents are old. Very, very old. You know that feeling you get when you try and comprehend the infinite nature of the universe and your head goes all fuzzy? (or is that just me?) Well, that’s how my head feels when I think about the actual number of years my parents have been alive and pottering about on this planet.

As a result, they’ve never really been into gaming. They’re familiar with it – after all, they had to put up with me and my obsession for years. But it’s not something they typically engage with.

There have been brief periods when they’ve flirted with the hobby. My first exposure to gaming was when they bought an Atari 2600. Though it seems highly implausible now they’ve reached the age of colostomy bags and partial dementia, back then they would actually stay up later playing Pac-Man. I used to remember my dad getting irate when he’d have to wait the best part of an hour for mum to finish her turn, only for him to die within a couple of minutes and hand the controls back to her.

Mum also went through a fairly lengthy Tetris phase when she inherited my old Game Boy Pocket. I’ve also got a great picture of my dad trying to play Donkey Konga.

In recent years, though, there has been little signs of interest from the pair. Dad, out of fatherly love I suppose, will occasionally pick out a topic from the latest MCV to discuss with me – “So, the PS3 is doing better then?” or even the dreaded “so what exactly is casual gaming then?” But even the Wii, which officially appeals to every single person on the whole planet no matter their age, sexual orientation, preferred Star Wars film or political stance, hasn’t garnered any appeal.

So imagine my surprise when my mum turned round to me last week and asked for a DS! It was as if she actually knew what she was talking about, as if the years of mental decay had been reversed. It’s Brain Training that appeals to her, apparently. Just goes to show that great product, prolonged marketing and huge High Street visibility really can work when executed correctly.

It’s hard to say at the moment whether this is a genuine interest or just another passing whim. Every now and then she parps up about wanting a new mobile phone, even though she can barely make a call or send a text message as it is. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve phoned her to be greeted with the sound of fumbling hands struggling to understand the high-tech gadgetry beeping at her incessantly, the sounds of confused exclamations barely audible in the background (“it’s making a noise, Alan. What does it all mean?”). And her insistence on signing off her text messages with her name, even though I’ve told her dozens of times that my phone already tells me who the message is from – well, it drives me to despair.

Still, it all goes to show that this casual gaming malarkey really is something very different from what we’ve become accustomed to. The amount of friends I know that normally show no interest in gaming but who either gave or received a Wii or DS last Christmas was astonishing. It seems that everyone knows what a Wii is. It’s as synonymous as the word ‘computer’ nowadays – something that certainly can’t said of ‘PlayStation’ or ‘Xbox’.

There’s one truth we can’t lose sight of, though – I’m skint, so mum isn’t getting a DS. Unless she wants to lend me £90…