When I was a kid, one of the video games I played a lot was Need For Speed II.
Actually, it wasn't even the full game. It was a demo version
that came on a free CD with a monthly computer magazine.
ANNOUNCER: "Three! Two! One!"
The demo only had one car and one track,
but I played that one track a lot, in the way that kids do.
Or at least, the way that kids did back before
the internet gave them massively multiplayer and regularly-updated games for free.
I knew how to take every turn,
I could make it all the way through the big downhill section near the end
without having to take my foot off the gas.
Or my finger off the up arrow.
And I knew all the short cuts and secrets.
The graphics seemed better back then,
although that's maybe just because they were on a slightly fuzzy CRT monitor.
And having spent so much time playing that one track,
as a kid, I wanted to somehow explore the world,
I wanted to park up, get out of the car and have a close look at, say,
the totem pole next to the car park.
It turns out the developers of Need for Speed II were based here in Vancouver, Canada.
That track was Vancouver and the area around it,
or at least, a very simplified version of it.
But I didn't put two and two together until the first time that I was right here
and realised that I've sort-of seen this before.
And now, I can do exactly what that young version of me wanted to do.
I can drive bits of that track, but more importantly,
I can get out and explore.
So I rented a car, and I drove roads that I sort-of recognised.
Admittedly in a sensible SUV, not a Ford GT,
and I can't actually cut a corner past Stanley Park's totem poles in real life,
but: it's a very strange experience.
After Stanley Park, the track goes on to Lions Gate Bridge.
And I remember thinking that a 270° right turn straight off a bridge would be ridiculous
but there it was.
The second half of the track is up the Sea-to-Sky Highway
and then back downhill at ludicrous speeds,
and then down Terminal Avenue, with the Skytrain speeding past and Science World on the left.
I didn't know what the names of those things were when I was a kid,
I just knew that I wanted to be in this seemingly-futuristic city
and go for a ride on that train.
Decades later, I did.
And then there was the section in the middle.
A long straight along a seawall, with a lighthouse at the end.
And I really wanted the option to look at the ocean view from there.
I thought that it would probably be spectacular.
And, yeah. It is.
I do have a point to all this nostalgia.
The designers of that track,
the artists from Vancouver who created that simplified, low-polygon version of their city,
I'm willing to bet that they never thought that, nearly a quarter-century later,
they'd have this sort of effect on anyone.
And I'm almost certainly not the only person who's played that game
and then stumbled across the real version, and found that
they have an odd connection to this place.
All the things that we create,
whether you have a big audience or
whether you're just making stuff for the folks close to you,
sure, maybe those things you make will be forgotten.
Or maybe the things that you create will get laid down as someone's long-term memory,
and affect them a lot later in their life.
So: make nice things.
Try to give people something they'll be nostalgic about,
not something they'll flash back to.
You never know what impressions you might be making for the future.
ANNOUNCER: "Best lap!"
GPS: "Turn left onto Stanley Park Drive."
I really just want to do 100, 150 round here.