Video game levels and areas that require you to go underwater, but are coupled with an inability to remain underwater for as long as you like, have played an integral role in shaping who I am as a person. I know I'm not the only gamer in their 30s who has a healthy fear of video game water. I don't want to send too many shivers down your spines of if you're my age, partly because our backs have sadly already reached a point where they inexplicably hurt all the time, but if you still wake up in a cold sweat having dreamt you were back in Ocarina of Time's water temple, you're not alone.

Having the fear of the video game gods strike me at the mere sight of virtual water extends back beyond the Nintendo 64. Having no idea how to progress past the first area of Ecco the Dolphin, effectively leaving me trapped in a giant rock pool, bothers me to this day. It's the original Sonic games that have to shoulder most of the blame, though. The music that plays when the blue blur has just five seconds of oxygen left, leaving you searching for an air bubble or the surface so frantically that even if one or the other was right in front of you, you probably wouldn't see it until it was too late.

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I'm told I didn't have an issue with real water when I was very small, but my first memories of going to swimming pools and the beach revolve around me having meltdowns at the mere thought of stepping into the cool blue surf. It's only now that I'm making the connection between those moments and the ones I spent watching Sonic drown. There's no way of knowing whether those two things are connected for sure, but it seems likely.

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That has made me incredibly conscious of how I react when playing video games with my son. He watched me as I reached Labyrinth Zone while playing Sonic Origins recently, the leading reason for my fear of video game water as a child. I managed to suppress an “ah ****” and the urge to play something else as I don't want him to start screaming every time I take him swimming, nor do I want him saying **** whenever he sees Sonic. I soldiered on, and even though I could feel myself breaking out into a cold sweat every time the ominous music started to play, I kept my cool, and my three-year-old appeared to be completely unaffected by the whole experience. Clearly he's made of sterner stuff than I am.

Fast forward 30 years and while chasing the eel around the sunken shipwreck in Super Mario 64 as I watch the plumber's oxygen deplete still has me gripping my Joy-Con so tightly I might reverse its drift, my relationship with video game water has evolved. Certain present-day games are visually stunning, and I have very little understanding of how developers do what they do. However, no matter what I see, nothing impresses me more than some good-looking water.

tchia swimming underwater
via Awaceb

Tchia is the latest in a long line of examples where I have marveled at its water throughout my entire playthrough. I've included a screenshot I took during a stop-off between islands because honestly, with it currently free to play on PlayStation Plus, Tchia is worth your time for the water alone. Crystal clear, you can see all the way to the bottom and even go diving for pearls. Yes, there's a meter similar to the Mario one, but it's so beautiful down there that I don't feel the same paralyzing fear that I do when I'm playing underwater in older games.

Modern-day Nintendo water deserves its own special shoutout too. I was admiring a lake in Breath of the Wild last night when I got struck by lightning. Shockingly an entirely separate time to the water appreciation you can see in the screenshot below. It's not the first time my fear-turned-obsession with bodies of water has led to my demise either. Shortly after Fortnite received its significant graphical update last year, I stopped to call in my partner so she could come and see how good the water looked. By the time I returned, the water was gone and so was I, eliminated and back in limbo waiting for the battle bus.

link looking at water in breath of the wild
via Nintendo

It seems somewhere between cowering when the music played in Sonic and diving for pearls in Tchia, I overcame my fear. Perhaps learning to swim when I was eight helped. It's a good job I had moved past picking up fresh examples of video game water fear by the time GTA Vice City consumed my life. One of the first questions many ask when playing an open-world game that includes bodies of water is whether your character can swim. In Vice City, that's a big fat no. Rather than struggle when he lands in the water, Tommy immediately curls up and dies. If I had been shown that before shaking my dislike of swimming pools and the sea, my fear may never have become a healthy and respectful admiration. Then again, I probably shouldn't have been playing GTA games back then anyway. Maybe that's where my fear of being unceremoniously dragged out of my car by a guy in a Hawaiian shirt comes from.

NEXT: 25 Years Later, Wave Race 64's Water Is Still Undefeated