Return of Wipeout and Tekken takes us back to the heady world of 90s Friday night gaming

Games once felt connected to the hedonism of pubs, clubs and music - something we'd do well to remember in our age of being constantly plugged in at home

In the autumn of 1995 I joined the video game magazine Edge as a staff writer. It was my first job in journalism and came at the start of Future Publishing's glory years, its range of specialist gaming mags - Games Master, SuperPlay and the Official PlayStation Magazine - reaching their absolute pomp. We were based in Bath, in a collection of buildings throughout the picturesque city centre, and Edge was on the first floor of a converted pub, down a backstreet behind Queens Square. The editor was Jason Brookes, a Japanese-gaming obsessive and enthusiastic clubber, whose taste in dance music (Paul Oakenfold, William Orbit, BT) dominated the Edge hi-fi. We played games, we listened to music, we went clubbing, we played more games. This was my life for several glorious years.

This week two of the most important games of that era - Tekken and Wipeout - are both, by some coincidence, making returns. Tekken 7 is the latest instalment in the long-running fighting game series, while Wipeout Omega Collection is a compilation of WipEout HD, WipEout HD Fury and WipEout 2048. These new releases both modernise their respective brands while also harking back to those days, 20 years ago, when they helped revolutionise the identity of gaming. They also remind us how much the role of games has changed in culture in the last two decades.