As a mere nipper, I’d heard of Ed Logg’s classic arcade dungeon hacker, but I’d never seen it in its natural habitat. So, you know, like many, I dabbled in the odd home version. But I’ll be honest – it just didn’t make sense. Playing it alone, it just seemed the most abusively unfair game you could choose to play – as your health constantly fell, you’d find yourself continuously surrounded by enemies you’d never manage to vanquish, spawning endlessly from generators you’d never reach – heading towards… Towards what?

Towards Blackpool, the late eighties. Like any other child of the time, the usual holiday was a trip down to a dismal beach resort that, nonetheless, I’d look forward to with a feverish anticipation – because I knew as soon as I got there, they’d give me a cup full of 10p pieces and set me loose in the amusements. And one day, wandering one of the many arcades that lined Blackpool’s seaside strip, my cash reserves dwindling, I finally found a live Gauntlet machine. 10 pence a go.

There was a teenager already playing it, faded rock t-shirt and torn leather jacket, a spotty giant, impossibly older and wiser than I. But someone who wouldn’t mind me playing, I hoped. I slipped my first 10p into the machine.

Watching, barely keeping up with this wizard in the game and at the controls, it all started to make sense. The player is running the gauntlet. It’s a race against time, it’s a race for survival, and the player must cut your swathe through the enemies to the exit as quickly, as efficiently, as possible. And it was fantastic.

Until, in one of the most maze-like, twisting levels, I found myself stuck on one side of a wall, and him on another. You see, Gauntlet, had to constrain the players by keeping them together on the same screen. If one got stuck, or left behind, the others couldn’t forge ahead. You had to work together. One for all, and all for one.

Unless you’re a teenager who, until this point, has been riding a machine on 10p all day, and it strikes you that screaming at an 9 year old to move to the LEFT, NO, WAIT, THE RIGHT, UP, NO, ARE YOU STUPID, is the way to go about things.