My Dad hated Castle Brainwave.
‘Digital dissolute rubbish,’ was his often used phrase.
I tried to explain that the game was educational. That Castle Brainwave was healing rather than warping my mind. That the shadow of the Minotaur was nothing to fear.
My argument made him kick a house plant. He explained again how computer games melted synapses. How crucial it was to spend the evenings exercising, rather than staring at a screen. He disregarded my point about the Minotaur.
In the end he always sighed, zipped up his sports bag, and headed for a game of squash.
I then delved into the word of Castle Brainwave.
The architecture was a hodgepodge of the Normans all the way to the Stuarts. Turrets and gargoyles sat next to follies and stained glass. Static but colourful graphics revealed a world of banqueting halls, armories and dungeons. A jaunty MIDI tune of flutes and hurdy gurdies played under every click you made.
At the bottom of each room was a sapphire text box, containing a randomly generated trivia question. You might need to know the capital of Paraguay, or the planet closest to the sun. Get your question right, and you headed through a door to greet a jester on a spiral staircase, or converse with a squire in the kitchen. Get your answer wrong, and the horned shadow of the Minotaur appeared in the bottom right. Then you knew death was two questions away.
In retrospect this was a strange mix of mythologies. And with enough practice, those questions were not so random. I soon mastered victory in under half an hour. But the calm of those nights lost in Castle Brainwave was timeless perfection.
After Dad’s funeral I had to clear the house. My eyes watered more than I expected, and not from the dust.
That old PC sat in the far corner of the roof. God knows why he kept it. Two wrapped up plugs sat next to a mouse, keyboard and beige monitor. A strange blue powder covered the plastic shell, but a quick dusting resolved this one complaint.
The keys were gone tomorrow. One more playthrough was essential. I sat on the floor, and plugged in everything at the spot where our desk had stood.
I expected silence, or the blue error screen of failure. But with an ambient hum my old desktop popped up, a castle shaped shortcut in the top right hand corner. I quivered with excitement, and clicked on my old friend.
The soundtrack was the broken warble of a snapped lute. Ivy covered the castle walls, and a jester’s hat lay next to a skeleton on shattered cobble stones. A young squire hugged a broken doorway, pixelated blood frozen on his forehead. Mucky hoof prints ran across a battered drawbridge.
'What took you so long?' A sapphire text box declared.
The answer evaded me, and three guesses was not enough. The shadow of the Minotaur would soon appear.
Line: That the shadow of the Minotaur was nothing to fear.
