I would love to tell you that I was first introduced to dance music in underground Berlin clubs, where mysterious resident DJs blew my teenage mind performing indescribable magic with beats and synth lines. But that would be a lie. My first introduction to dance music came in the form of a futuristic 90s racing game called WipEout. Playing obsessively at a friend's house, I was introduced to the Chemical Brothers and Orbital, who both graced the soundtrack; not long after, the admirably chaotic sim Crazy Taxi introduced me to the Offspring, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater had me grinding around to Bad Religion. I first heard Garbage on the soundtrack of an obscure PlayStation 2 DJ game, 2003's Amplitude, made by a Boston developer called Harmonix – the same developer that would later go on to create the insanely popular Guitar Hero series.

There was a sense of fundamental cultural change in the air – or that's how I remember it. Nineteen ninety-five was the year I started out in video game journalism, as a writer for Edge magazine, the most forward-looking gaming publication in the world at the time. My introduction to the industry was booting up a brand new PlayStation and scorching through the UK launch titles. The machine had been available for several months in Japan, and Edge staff had played all the key games in their original NTSC format. They wanted me to catch up.