How Disney’s Dreamlight Valley Made Me Feel Like A Kid Again

techradar.com:

Each time I play a new video game I find myself trying to capture that feeling I had playing them when I was younger. That feeling where you find yourself staring up at the screen and nothing else around you matters.

After years of trying to recapture that magic, I finally found it when I picked up Disney's Dreamlight Valley(opens in new tab). Growing up, I was an only child who lived with a single parent who worked full-time, this made me very familiar with feeling lonely. I often found myself looking to the media around me for some form of comfort and as it was the 1990s, that media had something to do with Disney. Disney was everywhere at the time, from the Saturday morning cartoons I watched, the clothes I’d wear, the film’s I’d go see in the cinema, and the video games I played.

One of my earliest gaming memories is of playing Capcom’s Aladdin on the SNES(opens in new tab). The film the game was adapted from was the first movie I ever saw in a cinema. I was obsessed, down to the Genie backpack I’d proudly take to school every day.

This obsession led to the video game becoming my favorite at the time alongside being my main source of comfort. I would spend hours upon hours hurling apples at foes and swinging from platform to platform as Aladdin while listening to the lovely 16-bit renditions of the film’s catchy musical numbers.

During the summer, while my school friends would visit Mickey Mouse and friends in person at Disneyland, I spent my holidays visiting my favorite characters through the video games I’d play.

I’d stay with my Grandparents every summer, and be fixated on my Grandad’s Packard Bell PC, playing games like Disney’s Magic Artist(opens in new tab) and Disney’s Storybook: 101 Dalmatians(opens in new tab).