What do politics and video games have in common? Besides the fact that some debates during an election period can be compared to part of
Street fighter, there are not any. These are nevertheless two worlds that David Hecq, the deposed mayor of Anzin-Saint-Aubin, a small town in Pas-de-Calais, rubs shoulders with. Dispossessed of his seat in the last municipal elections, the forty-something now assumes his passion for gaming in broad daylight. He also published, last August, The Gunhed TV Chronicles, the first volume in a series on cursed video game consoles.
On June 28, at the end of the second round of municipal elections, David Hecq lost the seat of mayor of Anzin-Saint-Aubin, which he had held since 2008, “with 60 votes”, he recalls. A bad blow that does not, however, remain through the throat of this 48-year-old territorial official. “I became an opposition city councilor, but it also allowed me to return to my second passion after politics: video games,” admits David Hecq.
“We are often only interested in successes”
A passion that goes back all the same to his childhood, when the chosen one was part of the “virgins or pimply”, as he affectionately calls the gamers of the 1980s. A time, between 1994 and 1997, he even had some did his job when he ran a video game store in Arras. Even in politics, he kept a link with this universe, in particular by obtaining the post of vice-president of the urban community of Arras in charge of digital. And it was when he was already mayor that he launched his YouTube retrogaming channel which now has 11,000 subscribers. “It was in 2016 on the advice of my son. I took my gamer nickname, Gunhed, so as not to shock voters, ”he jokes.
In videos in improbable format, between 1 and 3 hours, he develops without even realizing it a frame around the cursed video game consoles. “We are often only interested in successes, but failures, consoles that did not work or those that did not see the light of day for sometimes incredible reasons have been forgotten. Yet it is largely thanks to these unfortunate creators who dared to launch out that the successes we know have existed ”, insists David Hecq.
Exciting chess stories, like the prototype of the Konix Multi System, an arcade console mounted with a jacks seat that never got out due to international arms trafficking. Or how the famous NES was born by being inspired, not to say by copying, the Coleco, forgotten by all. It is all these adventures, from the 1970s to the 2000s, that David Hecq, alias Gunhed, will tell in the series The Chronicles of Gunhed TV. Volume 1, released in August, is available on Amazon. The second should be published in October.