We went to Urbis today to see the “Videogame Nation” exhibition, basically a history of British gaming with loads of old and new consoles and stuff to play on. I’ve very little interest in this sort of thing these days but Michael loves it and I certainly spent an unhealthy amount of time in my early teens sitting on my arse waggling a joystick.

Even though I thought Jet Set Willy, Jetpack, Outrun, etc, were all ace years ago, they’re pretty crap nowadays (Sensible Soccer is still great though) – the award for the Most Pathetic Gaming Experience has to go to Daley Thompson’s Decathlon though. What a load of shite. Since when does anyone take a run up in the shot put? If you remember, you had to smack 2 buttons or waggle your stick from side to side really quickly to get the guy to run as well, which inevitably led to your joystick or keyboard breaking.

The weirdest things about the whole exhibition though were the obvious omissions. Not one Playstation 2. No Atari consoles. No Commodore 64’s or Amigas. Very strange (or lazy). It’s ok though, there’s loads of modern and very impressive technology there for visitors to waste hours on plus you can go and look at the other exhibitions on the other floors, such as the New York art and ‘Underground Manchester’ stuff.

No riding today. Woke up this morning coughing up phlegm and had a sore throat. Great. Summer and I’m still getting infected with bugs. Hopefully it’ll be gone by the morning when I’m going for my second 10k run this week…