In fact, right from the time his father first came home with a Sinclair ZX81, he was obsessed with them. Born in the south-central French town of Brive-la-Gaillarde in 1966, Raynal was part of the first generation of European youths to have access to personal computers. Aren’t we all from time to time?Īny story of how this shockingly innovative game came to be must begin with that of Frédérick Raynal, its mastermind. Despite its supernatural elements, this game’s scenario felt more disconcertingly close to real life than that of any of those other games. It was just you and your wits, trapped in a haunted house full of creatures that were stronger than you and badly wanted to kill you. It cast you as a painfully ordinary, near-powerless individual adrift in a scary world, with no surefire panaceas in the form of experience points, gold, or portable rocket launchers to look forward to. But during that year there came a well-nigh revolutionary game out of France that upended all of these traditional notions about what the medium of videogames can do and be. That dynamic held true in 1992 just as much as it usually does today.

Life, these games tell us, is or ought to be one unadulterated ride up the escalator of success a setback just means you haven’t yet risen high enough. If you can’t get past any given monster, the solution is to go kill some other monsters, then come back when you’re yet more powerful and slay the big beast at last. Obstacles aren’t things to go around they’re things you go through. You spend your time getting ever stronger, ever tougher, ever more formidable as you accumulate experience points, gold, and equipment. Most videogame stories are power fantasies.

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