Why Nerd Games Matter

I was born in the opposite of a crossfire hurricane. My home town, New Brighton, lies at the end of a peninsula, and in the 1980s it felt like the end in every respect - the road to nowhere, literal and figurative. You may be familiar with Morrissey's song, 'Every day is like Sunday'? This is what it felt like to grow up where I grew up having been born in 1981:

Trudging slowly over wet sand 

Back to the bench where your clothes were stolen 

This is the coastal town 

That they forgot to close down 

Armageddon, come Armageddon 

Come, Armageddon, come

Things have revived now, as is the way of things, and the old place has become something of a hipster boomtown, full of AirBnBs and microbreweries. But back then it was just pubs, houses, and the faded trappings of a near-derelict resort town gone past tawdriness and into sadness. 

The photographer Martin Parr famously captured the New Brighton of that era in a book called The Last Resort. To look at its contents is almost unbearably nostalgic for me, now - this almost literally is my childhood. But at the same time, the nostalgia is leavened by memories of how small and tough life felt back then. The world was warmer, because it was a world of community and togetherness - a world of 'popping in for a cuppa', a world of neighbours chatting over back garden fences, a world of people sitting on their front doorsteps watching life go by, a world of whistled tunes and flirting and shared jokes with strangers - and things have got gradually colder in the time since. But horizons were narrow and aspiration and inspiration were hard to come by:

That world felt as though there was nothing really in it except us.

To an imaginative kid growing up in that world, books mattered. My family had nothing back then, but there was a library not far away, and the library had things in it there were not from my world. They were from different galaxies. They had pictures on them of things like dragons, swords, and mountains. And they told stories about things like empires, jungles, volcanoes, and epic journey. And to somebody like me, reading them didn't feel like escape - it felt like release. It felt like being given license to imagine that there was more. Not just more physically (more than litter, fish and chip shops, football and the promenade), but more emotionally and even spiritually: adventure was a thing - adventure was something that you could do.

The best of these books were Fighting Fantasy books, because they were not just books; they made you the adventurer, and the experience of reading them was more visceral than any novel. To a 45 year old writing in 2026 the flaws are visible everywhere, but to a 9 year old in 1990 they were a super-drug far more potent even than The Lord of the Rings. You were not just watching but partaking, and in the partaking you were learning, almost through praxis, that you could reach above, and beyond, and outwards. D&D of course, when that became an option, only concentrated and focused that feeling, 

Fans of Fighting Fantasy and other nerd games may enjoy some YouTube video series I've recently been enjoying, in which the series is reviewed.

This guy has been working his way through the Fighting Fantasy books, and the bulk of his reviews are of those, but he has reviewed some Lone Wolf volumes and others, too. His videos are pleasingly understated and genuine, with a very natural, conversational style.

This guy, on the other hand, is more polished and slick, and makes great use of visual aids; the downside is that he is taking his time getting from book to book, and has only so far covered the first half-dozen or so.

This guy, meanwhile, is short and to the point. English readers familiar with Match of the Day will see something of Martin Keown in him - he's intense, no-nonsense, makes everything sound important. Watching these videos is a bit like getting into a conversation with a passionate enthusiast in a pub. 

I sense kindred spirits in these fellas and give them plaudits and kudos. Maybe they were from places like New Brighton too.