With video-games (and the generations who grew up with them) getting older, nostalgia is becoming an ever more powerful tool. Old games are being sold back to us with new coats of paint, ‘retro’ is a broader term than ever before and people are pulling in web hits by filming themselves screaming at Super Mario Bros. Now another, perhaps more elegant approach to the idea has made landfall, a game called Pixel Rift.
Developed for the Occulus Rift (as the title suggests) by Ana Rebeiro, a woman so dedicated to the project that she gave up her comfortable life in Brazil and came to London to pursue it, the game takes you on a tour though a girl’s childhood as it is mapped and defined by gaming. If that sounds like it might have a hint of the autobiographical about it, that’s because it is, Ribeiro based the game on her own life experiences and transferred them into a VR experience that celebrates the evolution of gaming.
There’s a challenge element to it as well, while the games that you play ‘within the game’ so to speak are inconsequential, the outside world presents its own obstacles. In the ‘1989’ level you sit in a classroom attempting to play a Super Mario counterpart on an old Game Boy without the teacher noticing, a game I (and many others) played regularly in real school. As interesting as it is as a wistful trip through memory lane, Inception style for the older gamers, it presents perhaps an even more significant experience for the younger ones. The game will allow them to see the history of video games though the eyes of someone who was there to witness it, so by its very nature it will only become more valuable as time goes by.
An alpha demo for Pixel Rift is currently available on the official website.
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