Like so many other BRits of my age, my gaming journey began in the amusement arcades on my holidays to the seaside. I remember trying to play games like Pac Man and Star Wars really badly (some thing never seem to change), and loving them. The colours! The sounds! I wanted this at home.
Sadly, that would take a while. I did get to do some gaming at school though. Like many, my primary school had a couple of BBC computers, and one of the educational titles was the legendary “Grannys Garden”. Yes, my first real taste of videogames outside of an arcade was through an edutainment title (which holds a special place in the hearts of many a British gaming nerd of a certain age).
Not long after, I discovered that my best friend at school, who was also my next door neighbour (weird sidenote: me and my younger brother were the same ages as the kids next door), had an Atari 2600 his cousin had given him. It was on rainy afternoons playing at his that i discovered the joys of River Raid, Adventure, Pitfall, and plenty of others.
Eventually, I persuaded my parents (no doubt aided by my teachers extolling just how good i was with the schools computers) to buy me my own. And on a fondly remembered Christmas morning, I became the proud owner of a Commodore 16… Yes, that’s right, a C16, not a C64. I had that for a few years, and got a lot of mileage out of the relatively few games I owned (we were by no means a wealthy family): BMX Racers, Formula One Simulator, Galaxions, Steve Davis Snooker… Fun times.
I then moved on to the machine that would define me as a gamer: a ZX Spectrum +2a. Sure, by the time my parents bought me and my brother this the Amiga and Atari ST were the “new hotness”, but dammit, i loved my humble Speccy. The colour clash didn’t bother me. I suddenly had access to a myriad of games previously only playable at friends houses: Robocop, Saboteur, Ghosts & Goblins… the list went on and on! And the magazines! Your Sinclair became my bible (I never took to Crash for some reason), alongside Sinclair User. And I built up a mountain of covertapes, guaranteeing me new games every month. Yes, they were not always great (HKM was on a YS tape around this time, one of the worst 1 on 1 fighters ever coded.. Thanks, Tiertex!). But a change was just around the corner…
