I had it on the ZX Spectrum, where it was still absolutely vicious but not all that colourful! Seven year old me never completed it, even after I got it on Amiga, but I might just give it another go on seeing this. …I can still hear the theme tune…!

Soundtracks filled front-to-back with bangers that have stuck with me over the years:

Sonic Mayhem’s Quake 2 – and, of course, Trent Reznor’s Quake. 植松 伸夫 – Final Fantasy 7. Grant Kirkhope/Graeme Norgate’s GoldenEye 64. Max Lichtenstein’s Pax Imperia 2. Richard Joseph’s Chaos Engine. Just about anything Mick Gordon touches. …aaaaand just about every Mario, Metroid, Sonic, DOOM (Heretic included), Command and Conquer, Advance Wars…

Honestly my backlog has still somewhat grown at a steady pace, but I’ve kept my Steam Deck mostly roguelikes for killing time and one or two ‘main’ games which helps keep focus. The steady stream of disappointing 2023 releases has certainly helped too…! It’ll be interesting to see stats if Valve do another Steam Replay; 2022 on Deck for me was Vampire Survivors, Rogue Legacy 2, Horizon, Hitman 3, and Elden Ring.

I also still alternate between the Deck and my main machine, playing more controller-focused stuff on Deck. My main machine is more FPS and driving-sim focused – although it would be amusing to play a sim on Deck hooked up to my racing rig…!

After religiously following the order number tracking efforts on the Steam Deck subreddit (finally got mine May '22) it’s been my ‘clearing the backlog whilst sitting with the significant other’ device…heavily punctuated with Vampire Survivors and, lately, Diablo 4. It’s a great little roguelike device – stuff like Cult of the Lamb, Spelunky 2, and Rogue Legacy 2 – that I can just play for a few minutes wherever the Heck I’d like.

I still find it like holding black magic. I’m a software engineer, and I understand how it works, but playing a Windows port of a PS4 game (like Horizon) in Linux in my hands is something I don’t think I’ll ever not be impressed by!