I could play video games until after midnight

[EngLearner]

Suppose John is 8 years old. He says to someone:

Hi, I'm John, and I'm 8 years old. My parents allow me to do things that other kids normally aren't allowed to do. I can play video games until after midnight, but I never do because I have to get up early for school in the morning.

Later, when he's forty, he says the following:

Hi, my name is John. When I was a kid, my parents allowed me to do things that other kids normally weren't allowed to do. I could play video games until after midnight, but I never did because I had to get up early for school in the morning.

I made up the above examples. Does "could play" work as the past tense of "can play", or is it incorrect, and should "could have played" be used instead?

 

[emsr2d2]

"Could" is correct and is the best choice. However, the present perfect wouldn't be incorrect.

For info, I think most native speakers would choose "I was allowed to play video games ...". In order to avoid all the repetition of "allow", we might change the previous sentence to "When I was a kid, my parents let me do things that other kids normally couldn't [do]".

 

[EngLearner]

I have a follow-up question:

In the example in post #1, the sentence describes a pattern that occurred regularly in the past. Now, if we're talking about a one-off event rather than a regular pattern:

I went to Peter's yesterday, and we played video games. His parents allowed us to, so we could have played until after midnight, but we didn't because we had to get up early for school the next morning.

Unlike the example in post #1, "could play" can't be used in this case. "Could have played" is the only correct choice. Is that correct?

 

[emsr2d2]

Yes.

 

[jutfrank]

should "could have played" be used instead?

No, that's incorrect.

 

[EngLearner]

@jutfrank You mean that "could have played" is incorrect in the sense that it's not the past tense form of "can play," but you don't mean that it can't be used in my example in post #1. "Could play" means "was allowed to play," while "could have played" is counterfactual and emphasizes that the speaker didn't actually play.

Right?

 

[jutfrank]

@jutfrank You mean that "could have played" is incorrect in the sense that it's not the past tense form of "can play,"

Yes.

but you don't mean that it can't be used in my example in post #1.

I do mean that it can't be used in your example.

"Could play" means "was allowed to play," while "could have played" is counterfactual and emphasizes that the speaker didn't actually play.

Right?

Yes, right.