Chris Scullion has been talking up Dundee’s importance to the video games industry after writing a new book that spans every era of the sector.
Edinburgh-based Chris has been a gamer for more than 30 years.
He first fell in love with the Nintendo at the age of four and has now been writing about gaming in a professional capacity for more than 17 years.
Chris has forgotten more than most people know about gaming and his new book celebrates the history of platform video games, which goes back 40 years.
Dundee workers at the Timex Factory would play an important role in the birth of the industry by producing the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum, which became an instant hit.
Chris said: “Dundee is enormously important to video games past, present and future.
“The ZX Spectrum, one of the most groundbreaking computers, was manufactured in Dundee, in the now-closed Timex factory, and ended up influencing countless video game developers.
“You only need to look at some of the best Spectrum games, like Jet Set Willy, Atic Atac, Elite and Chuckie Egg; anyone old enough to remember those days will know the impact those games had on an impressionable youth.”
Two all-time classics made in Dundee
Timex was now producing a computer every four seconds and games like Manic Miner, Football Manager and Lords of Midnight kept them rolling off the production line.
Chris said: “In the 1980s and 1990s the most important studio in Dundee was DMA Design, which managed to come up with two all-time classics when most studios dream of managing one.
“First they created Lemmings, which became a worldwide success and was one of the greatest puzzle games ever, hence the statue of the Lemmings in Seabraes Park.
“Even better, after that it came up with Grand Theft Auto, which ended up becoming even more successful.
“DMA may have eventually moved to Edinburgh and become Rockstar North, but never forget that Grand Theft Auto, one of the most successful media franchises of all time, was born in Dundee.”
DMA Design was established in 1987 by Dave Jones, who hired former Dundee classmates Mike Dailly, Steve Hammond and Russell Kay to work alongside him.
Lemmings was one of the first superstar smashes to come out of Scotland but was DMA’s 1998 flop Body Harvest just as important in the story of gaming?
Chris said: “Body Harvest was a Nintendo 64 game released in 1998, a year after the first GTA.
“While the first two GTA games were viewed from above, Body Harvest used a third-person viewpoint, which meant the camera came right down to street level.
“The game had you running around, shooting aliens, but it also let you jump in and out of different cars and drive around freely.
“It’s clear that Body Harvest was DMA’s first attempt at making a free-roaming game with that viewpoint, and DMA managed it well enough to build on it for Grand Theft Auto III, which was when the series first went 3D and took off in an enormous way.”
Jumping For Joy: The History of Platform Video Games marks a fifth book in five years for Chris and begins in 1981 with the release of Nintendo’s Donkey Kong.
Chris said: “Personally, Nintendo’s systems will always be my favourites because those are the ones that ended up shaping my life and eventually my career.
“My first games journalism job was at the Official Nintendo Magazine.
“But every console over the years has been brilliant in its own way.
“My favourite game of all time will always be the original Super Mario Bros, because that made me fall in love with games for the first time ever.”
The first part of the book is a complete guide to every platform game starring Mario.
There are always two sides to every story, though, so the second part of the book focuses on every one of the 50-plus platformers starring Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario’s former rival.
After this it’s the book’s main course: a huge, 100-page section detailing 50 other iconic and notable platform games covering the entire history of gaming, from the days of the Atari 2600 and ZX Spectrum all the way up to the Nintendo Switch, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
So how enjoyable was the book to pull together?
Chris said: “I’ve been a video games journalist for the past 17 years and have always had a real love for retro games, especially now that today’s games are so complicated and always trying to make you get your credit card out.
“Platform games have always been one of the greatest genres because they don’t need a degree in physics to work out what to do – you run a bit, you jump a bit – and yet they’re still so flexible that even experts can be challenged by them.
“That’s one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed putting together Jumping for Joy, because I’ve come up with a list that should hopefully appeal to complete newcomers who want to know what all the fuss is, but will also interest die-hard game players who will hopefully treat the 50 games at the back as a bucket list of games to complete.”
Conversation