On FileFront, there's an article with many comments discussing what turned particular people into gamers. It's articles like this that find me lost in memories of a better time when I was younger and just developing facial hair, locked in my room playing computer games and not even considering that there are girls outside my own personal Vault.
I was first introduced to home video games when I was given a Pong clone that I could hook up to my TV. It was made by a company called Grandstand and allowed me to play Pong, Tennis and a couple of other games. I was around 8 years old at the time, and it got a lot of play. A few months later, my aunt borrowed an Atari 2600 games console from my local neighborhood doctor (who was a Christian and would often pop around all the neighbors to check in with them and have a cup of tea every couple of weeks - a really nice guy), and we played it for a week before we had to give it back. At that point I wasn't really hooked.
That was until my uncle brought over his Sinclair Spectrum 48k and the first two games that would seal my gaming doom: Manic Miner and Chuckie Egg. The year was 1983, and I hadn't yet turned 10 years old. I was bitten. Hard. Chuckie Egg hooked me, and Manic Miner sealed the deal. I couldn't get enough of playing these games, and would often pester my uncle to come and visit with his Spectrum so that I could play it. I'd visit my Gran and him (they lived together) and pester them to play. I guess enough was enough for my mum and dad as it led up to Christmas; there was a local store in town called John Menzies that sold a lot of home computer systems, including the Sinclair Spectrum, Dragon 32, Acorn Electron and others. I'd often lead them into the store when we went shopping and then visit a couple of other stores that were selling home computers. I think my parents clicked as to what to get me for Christmas that year.
The Saturday before Christmas Day which was Christmas Eve that year, my mum and dad sat me down and told me that because I had shown so much interest in the Spectrum and computers that they wanted to get me one. I think my brain melted at that point and I couldn't contain myself as we went to the store to buy one. When we got to the store, I couldn't decide between getting the Sinclair Spectrum 48k or the Acorn Electron. The Acorn was the baby brother of the BBC Micro computers that my school had in their computing lab (like many UK schools at the time). My best friend at the time had a BBC Micro B due to his dad working for Apple and in computing in general, and we knew that the Electron and BBC Micro were mostly compatible. I was also keen to start programming.
I managed to convince my parents to buy me an Acorn Electron, which was double the price of the Sinclair Spectrum and had less games and programs, with the promise that I would be programming. It was wrapped up and placed under the tree. The next morning they watched as I opened it up, hands shaking, and my dad and I connected it to the television. They also bought me Chuckie Egg and Hunchback to play, but the Chuckie Egg tape was damaged (as happened with a lot of tapes in those days), so we played a lot of Hunchback and one of the other games on the intro tape which was a a two player game called Dodgems. The next day I took the damaged Chuckie Egg tape and the receipt for it to John Menzies and received an exchange.
The John Menzies store closed a few years later, but it would be where I'd go for years to buy my gaming magazines and games for multiple platforms, including my Acorn Electron (which I kept until I was 16 years old), my Atari ST and my first PC computer. I got out of computer gaming from the ages of 16 to 19 as I developed interests in other hobbies, namely roleplaying games, dance and theater, but eventually came back when I was bought a luggable PC with 7" green LCD screen so that I could write. I'll come back to that in another post I think.
Technorati Tags: acorn electron, bagder, sinclair spectrum, video games
Tags: Maudlin by Teh Bagder
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