From Aztec to Toshinden: in praise of forgotten video games

When I was very young, most of the computer games I played on my Commodore 64 were not very good. They weren't the classics we all remember; they mostly weren't Impossible Mission or Way of the Exploding Fist (though I did play those too, I wasn't a barbarian). Every week my mum would take me to Wythenshawe library in South Manchester where you could rent games for 10p each. The best ones were constantly unavailable, so I'd grab what I could – weird titles no one else wanted. This is how I discovered the roguelike adventures such as Aztec and Sword of Fargoal with their strange glitchy visuals and endlessly changing tombs.