['My Perfect Game' is a new irregular feature, where we ask 'interesting people' what their perfect video game would be like. The first instalment is from Jason Scott, who runs Textfiles.com, directed the BBS Documentary, and is currently working on both text adventure doc Get Lamp, and Arcade: The Documentary.]

"I'm luckier than most, I guess; I have already bumped into my perfect video game. I've done it multiple times, and with it likely to happen again. Maybe my standards are just low. But I think it's more that my perfect game isn't a specific DESIGN, but an APPROACH.

Coming up through the early video games (where you needed a whole quarter to play), I was more intrigued by the games where you could advance as you accomplished more, cascading into an ever-changing set of levels and sights until finally your faced an end against a horrifying creature and then broke through to a credit screen. Since my experiences could be measured in minutes, this was perfectly fine.

But once I started to play games where you entered greater and greater spaces, added 3-D, and played at home, this ever-changing set of unique levels lost the fun for me. You always ended up with a feeling, at the end, that you'd just walked a long distance, haphazardly, having nothing to show for it but a set of ticks on the right side of the screen, or some arbitrary number.

Maybe it was just me getting older, but I have found the perfect games for me are ones like Hexen, Super Mario 64, Mario Sunshine, Zelda: Wind Waker... games where you start out in a place, and over time you return to the same places, but changes have occured in you and your skillset and now you can achieve things that you couldn't before. Or the location has tweaked ever so slightly and you can make out new avenues to travel. Or maybe there's just a lot more cool stuff where there wasn't before.

If a game has that sense of regarding old locations and events with a new eye and using skills you've acquired within the game, that's as perfect as it gets for me."

[If you think you fit our random arbitrary definition of an 'interesting person' and would like to contribute, please mail us at editors@gamesetwatch.com to check, and you can write about your perfect game, too. Otherwise - don't call us, we'll call you!]