The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is quite simply my favourite video game of all time. It's a game that has deeply affected me and has even made me cry.

It's also the game that I've played for the longest period of time. My Nintendo Switch currently says that I've played it for ‘160 hours or more’. So how far does this amount of time get you in this huge game?

In part 1 of my countdown of the 10 videogames that have shaped me as a gamer I focussed on titles from earlier platforms, including the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the NES. In part 2 I turn to those games I’ve encountered more recently, beginning with those that appeared on the N64 through to those I now play on my Nintendo Switch.

This year marks one hundred years since the French author Marcel Proust won Le Prix Goncourt for his book À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, the second part of his famous novel sequence À la recherche du temps perdu. On a more personal note, it’s also ten years since I was hard at work on my own engagement with Proust’s work – In Search of Vinteuil: Music, Literature and a Self Regained (Sussex Academic Press, 2010).

To celebrate these anniversaries, I’ll be posting a series of blog posts on Proust in the coming weeks. I begin with…

Why You Shouldn’t Read Proust!

I’ve recently been thinking about all the different videogames that I’ve played over the years. I’ve been thinking especially about the games that have shaped me as a gamer and nerd.

The result of all this thinking was a list of 10 games that have been important to me, which I posted to Twitter. It struck me that the list formed something like my gaming autobiography. I thought it would be fun to go into a little more detail about each of my picks here.

What follows, then, is part 1 of my top 10 videogames that have shaped me as a gamer.