Sometimes a film comes along that makes you feel like an enthusiast for the hand-cranked gramophone in a world of downloads. Mine was Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s self-congratulatory graphic novel adaptation Sin City, which I didn’t respond to at all on any level. (Occasionally it’s nice for the critic to be off-duty, to see a film about which one is not required to build an argument for or against or somewhere in-between, and to simply say, like Tom Hanks in Big, “I don’t get it.” Not having been required to write about Sin City, I was able in that instance to give the critical synapses the night off.)

I felt it to a lesser degree with the new 3D Disney animation Wreck-It Ralph [2], about a character in a 1980s-style arcade game who tires of his role as a baddie and starts to look around for opportunities to be a hero. The story itself is familiar enough, the standard Be True To Yourself message that is always being promoted by the largely conservative, lily-livered, risk-averse mainstream film industry. And the film is often a hoot, with some resounding and well-played emotional beats, not to mention a good movie role at last for the abrasive comic Sarah Silverman, even if it is in voice only. (Yes, she had her own concert film, Jesus Is Magic [3] but until now her film acting highlight has been her profane cameo at the start of Christopher McQuarrie’s The Way of the Gun [4].)

But I was keenly aware that the screenplay’s numerous videogame references and in-jokes were whooshing straight over my analogue head. It isn’t that I’m the wrong generation - Atari Tennis is my Proustian Madeleine. (Top tip: you can always tell those of us who have never read Recherche le temps perdu by our prodigious mentions of the only detail we have picked up from the text.) But I was never a videogame nut, unless you count the clunky, late-1980s game Gumshoe [5], which involved pointing an unwieldy plastic gun at the TV screen and pressing the trigger, thereby causing the squat detective hero to jump. Primitive isn’t the word. If memory serves, the image was comprised of around six pixels. Eight at a push.

I’ve been keeping in with Tetris. Well, you have to do your bit, don’t you? And one of my children downloaded Temple Run for me. It’s all go around here. But as if to prove that I’m still alive and able to ascend the stairs without pausing for breath more than three or four times, here are five videogame-related films that I admire - and, more to the point, that I can watch without having to resort to annotated notes from any nearby teenagers.

eXistenZ  [6]

David Cronenberg’s foray into the world of virtual reality gaming was anything but sterile: the fleshy consoles pulsed, jacks are plugged into human flesh and a gun is constructed from bone and gristle. One of his strongest and funniest movies.

The Last Starfighter  [7]

This charming 1984 adventure got trampled in the glut of cheapo Star Wars knock-offs, but it’s an altogether different and more delightful movie in which a boy’s success at a crummy arcade game serves as his inadvertent audition to join an intergalactic battle.

Ra.One [8]

Bollywood megastar Shahrukh Khan stars in this ambitious 3D fantasy about a virtual reality villain who breaks out of the game and into the real world to hunt down his adversary. The same plot was used much less effectively in Virtuosity [9], starring a pre-superstardom Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington.

Scott Pilgrim Vs the World  [10]

Edgar Wright’s musical-action-comedy [11] doesn’t feature much actual videogame action, but that’s because it all spills into the “real” lives of the twentysomething Canadian characters who’ve grown up on Zelda, Final Fantasy etc. The quest of Scott (Michael Cera) to vanquish his girlfriend’s seven evil ex-lovers is structured like an arcade game, while even the Universal imprint at the start of the film is remade in 8-bit, old-school, 1980s videogame style [12].

Tron [13]

You didn’t really think I’d leave this out did you? This may not be as good as you remember it, but its retro charm is something to be reckoned with, and it looks even better next to the travesty of its tardy sequel, Tron: Legacy [14].

"Wreck-It Ralph" is on release.