Great Gaming Moments - #1: Those Pesky Spiders!

Every Monday billions of people pop over to The Gnome's place (when he's around) to revel in the glorious Museum Monday. Across the galaxy The Gnome's weekly column snatches people up from the depressive start of another working week and basks them in the glowing halo of what The Gnome dragged up from the dusty shelves of yesteryear. Yes, The Gnome should be elevated to Saint Hood for what he has done to save countless people from another mind-numbingly depressing day in the office. How does his bandwidth survive such a torrent of Gnome-worshiping peons? That, my friends, is a miracle of life.

But what, may I inquire; does the average gamer do on a Sunday afternoon as they wait for the goodness that will spout onto the internet on Monday? Well, they could always go outside and get some fresh air, but since it happens to be Winter they may want to stake their tents here and wait it out for the new column that promises to last longer than the short birth pangs of a fallen Retro Review. Yup, Great Gaming Moments has arrived to take the world by storm - or at least get a faintly amusing comment from The Elderly Gamer!

This week we go back to the days where Sony could actually ship enough units to, you know, get people to play their console, the glory days of the Playstation (Or PsOne for all you modern types).

One early game for the Playstation was a game that will be remembered in the gaming annuals for eternity, a game that sparked off a series of games that officially put Capcom in front of people's eyes and held them open with tiny sticks (although the last said about the movies is for the better). Resident Evil could be accused of stealing Alone in the Darks survival horror formula but, ya know, if you don't get it mainstream then it's no-ones fault but your own.

Resident Evil was a good indicator of the power of the Playstation, making the mainstream take notice that a video game could really scare the shit out of you. Every time Resident Evil is discussed, however, it's either the first time a zombie turns around and stuns you with the Playstation's graphics (Run away and watch that fat bastard Barry blow his head apart) or the moment where a bunch of zombie dogs smash through the windows and shows you that the real-acting video at the beginning of the game was basically a cheesy piece of crap, this is the moment that scares the living daylight out of you though. For me, though although it was in the same place, it's something else that made me pause the game in a sweat and wonder what the hell I was doing playing this game.

SPIDERS! BIG FUCKING GIGANTIC HAIRY TARANTULA'S! Like the majority of Earth's population I'm not too fond of spiders, especially not when they crawl across the wall with a horrible scuttling sound, and just happen to be three times the size of you. The set cameras on Resident Evil (I think the free camera on Resident Evil 4 took some of the suspense away from the series) meant that you could always hear your enemy coming but it entered your screen. When the enemy just happened to be a gigantic spider you couldn't help but do anything other than stand rooted on the spot in fear, or at least that was your onscreen avatar. Outside of the game you jumped off your chair in fear, fumbling with the pad to hit the pause button in order to take a breather. When you'd finally composed yourself you jumped back into the game you quickly tried to pull out your weapon and shoot randomly at the spider before it jumped down off the roof and tried to bite you with fangs bigger than Chris Moyles' ego. When you eventually killed them you realised it wasn't that hard but that didn't stop you cringing whenever one had the balls to grace your screen.

Fuck dogs, gigantic spiders make me shit my pants.

Tom remembers sitting in his boxers playing games every Sunday on No Signal Input.