The Batman

"...But you cry when you think of all the battles you've fought and lost..."

Jackets used to come with ticket pockets stitched inside the lining for the safe storage of your omnibus ticket, or your Saturday Matinee "Admit One" stub. The pocket is mostly gone now, but the rascally ticket has evolved so a pocket isn't even needed in the first place.
I'm admitted to the venue with a piece of plastic press-studded around my wrist, like a hospital armband. We are all voluntary inmates here, each with the same addiction. This is day one of EGX, London, a popular video game trade show. Everybody has the bug.

The chap in front is dressed as an Assassin, except I've managed to sneak up on him.

There's a queue, but it moves quickly, and soon enough I'm inside. Almost immediately the new Batman game for next year looms before me. It is a marvel. A dark, realistic 3D city punctuated with steam and neon. Batman leaps from a high vantage point and soars over the roofs below. The effect is dizzying. But despite the technical wizardry, I find myself left slightly cold.

Science recently discovered, once and for all, that the best Batman and the only one worth your time is Adam West's charmingly playful 1960s incarnation. A single photograph of a young boy, coincidentally - myself, delightedly holding his West-era Batman doll aloft on Christmas morning thirty-odd years ago, was offered as definitive, final proof. Unnumbered man-hours were wasted as Science searched for a similar contemporary image of a modern child smilingly holding aloft a Christian Bale era Batman toy - with his harsh-cornered metal armour, cartoon dog voice and unlimited weaponry:
No such image could be found.

Later, away from the shock of the newest and greatest games, hidden in the retro section, I stumble across an old love: A ZX Spectrum computer loaded with 1989's Batman The Movie game. I haven't played this game in twenty-five years. I run my fingers across the keyboard. Ah, nostalgia. There is no 3D here. No jumping. No 3D city to explore. Batman slides across the flat factory background, scarcely even animated and in only two colours. 

"All Our Yesterdays" 2014 Edition

Two lost-looking boys approach, and look at me and the Spectrum.
"That's a Commodore 64!" points one boy, proudly and wrongly. "My Dad used to have one ages ago."
He looks at me as I prod the keyboard - Am I going to play the game, or just parp-parp around like an absurd brass robot?
It may not be Adam West, but it's close enough. I will show these boys how we used to do things - prove the value in old stuff.  Somewhere deep within, a boiler whistle blows. My arms fill with steam. My brass face reddens. The old engine rattles into life.
Long ago I could do all this from memory. But the mind is a strange place, and as I start the game I'm amazed to discover the old patterns are still remembered. The layout of the game level is still jammed in there from a hundred Sunday afternoons long ago. Batman stalks the Axis Chemical Plant once more.
I swing onto platforms I can't even see - I already know they're there. I throw Batarangs that clobber assailants the second they walk on screen - I know their tricks - there is no place to hide. It is as though I've never been gone. A quarter of a century melts away, and finally, POW! BIFF! WHACK! 8-Bit Jack Nicholson tumbles into a vat of pixel acid.
Finished. Barely a scratch.
I turn to look at the two boys, and raise an eyebrow. Pretty good, eh?

"Cor, Mister!" says one, chuckling. "You're pretty good at this old, shit Batman game!"

The worst thing is he's right.
It is old, and by any sensible modern standard it's shit too. What am I even doing in the Retro Section, hiding away from everything that's shiny and new, playing games I already own? It's as though I've wandered into Aladdin's Cave, and just spent my time there excitedly cooing about things I happened to have in my pockets when I arrived. I realise that this is where I feel most at home. I'm an odd fit out there with the latest technology. I'm obsolete - like an empty ticket pocket stitched into a jacket.

One boy taps his mate on the arm.
"Come on. Let's go and look at something good."
And then they're off, back into the main hall, hoisting their bags back up on their shoulders as they go.
I take a last look at the Spectrum and then I slink away too, looking for a bar to commiserate in. New has beaten old once again.
But it doesn't really matter - because Science has already proved it:
Old is best.