Like most arcades of the time, it was filled with classics and for a small arcade it had a good selection. It's funny because I really don't remember too much about the other arcade but the Kingfisher arcade I can remember quite clearly. There were about eight machines, which consisted of Pacman, Warlords, Lunar Rescue, Defender, Asteroids, and Astroblaster. There must have been at least one other one but I can't remember it.
LIFE IS BUT A GAME, THE EARLY YEARS
Hi Retro Kid here and I'm about to share with you the story of how I become so obsessed with retro games. This story has never been told before and the names have not been changed to protect the innocent.
Okay, it all started in 1980 when I moved to a little seaside village on the north norfolk coast called Walcott. Little did I know how much things were about the change, forever. As an 11yr old, I was turning my back on the toys of the past (action men, airfix kits, and Britains farm toys in my case). Coming from a farming family I had previously lived in small villages and my parents weren't really into technology. Then the 80's started.
Ah, 1980. The Jam were 'going underground', the Vapours were 'going japanese', and I was going down the local arcade. As much fun as the beach was, the novelty eventually wore off and I soon started to explore my new surroundings. Of course back in the 80's every coastal village and town had arcades. There were two in Walcott, one in The Kingfisher (this was a large building incorporating a gift shop, an arcade, a restaurant, and a chippy - where my mum used to work. The other one was part of a holiday camp just up the road from our house.
And so started my love affair with gaming and also my first favourite game, Astro Blaster. I used to watch the older kids play on it and was so envious of the high scores they would get. I'd sometimes get some change but even at 10p a play it was over so soon. I never really played the other machines much, I was totally hooked on Astro Blaster.
Next came the chance to get my hands on a home computer, the ZX81. I borrowed it from school over the summer break (thinking back it was a strange thing for them to do but at least it beat looking after the gerbils, which I had the summer before). I hooked it up to the black & white tv in the kitchen (that's the ZX81 not the gerbil!!!!) but soon found that I was missing something... ah, there was no tape deck so nothing to play. A friend of mine in the next village had some game listings so I collected them and got down to typing them in. Looking back I must have been mad (I couldn't save them!!). But it was fine and after hours of carefully typing, I had a white block moving around a maze, and then the power lead came out. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted and it must have impressed my parents as we soon had our first games console at home.
The Voltmace Database. It was no Atari VCS but it was cheap and that was the main reasonfor us
getting it. I remember playing a shooting game (with birds and things moving across the top of the screen) and a space invader clone. I would spend hours playing on it (as did my brothers). Having a games machine at home was the catalyst for my future interest in the subject, even if I didn't know it at the time. At the same time, I started to spend school holidays at my aunties. When she moved near Yarmouth I would get regular visits to the arcades during the summer. She also had a Commodore 64 but without any interesting games I never gave it much of a look.
I spent several fun years at Walcott but eventually we moved near to Norwich. You could say that this was the time that my gaming experience moved onto the next level. It was 1984, Madonna was on 'holiday', Frankie Goes To Hollywood was getting banned with 'relax', and Limahl was singing the 'never ending story' (which I think this is turning into), but it wasn't just the music that was getting interesting.
If there was one thing that could have changed the path I was about to follow, it was the fact that I had not been able to take computer studies until I moved to Norwich. And as it turned out I had an aptitude for the subject. Bearing in mind the year, I guess it shouldn't be too surprising to hear that the computers we used were the Commodore Pet. Lovely green screens with a tape deck to save your programs on. If you were really lucky you could use the 'upgraded' machine, which had 32k ram and a disk drive!! There was also a BBC model B in the maths room which we used to play early games like Frak! and Revs on. Compared to the poor old Pets, the BBC looked awesome.
As the old Voltmace had been going for a few years now, it was beginning to get worn out. I managed to persuade my parents to buy me a home computer (for all the normal reasons). I'm not sure why, but I ended up with the Mattel Aquarius. We got it from ASDA and at the time it seemed like a good idea. I absolutely loved it and would play around on it a lot. Unfortunately I didn't have a tape deck so could never actually save any programs. I also realised that it was not easy to get games for and apart from ASDA, the only other place that I remember finding the games was John Menzies on Gentleman's Walk. As a 14yr old I would get excited looking at the game cartridges and thinking how good the games sounded. The only problem was that game cartridges were amazingly expensive so I only ever had the two games, Astrosmash (below) and Tron Deadly Disks. As you can probably imagine they got a lot of play!!
Although the Aquarius was a lot of fun, I did grow out of it pretty quickly. In fact, I think I only had it about 18 months before my parents persuaded me to sell it (on live radio!!). It was terrible trying to speak knowing that thousands of people were listening, but it did the job and the Aquarius was sold soon after. I wasn't really sorry to see the back of it as my school friends had things like the Texas TI-99, Commodore 64, and BBC Model B. I needed a better computer and this time I was going to get a tape deck!!
And so began my love affair with Atari Computers.
It was 1985 and the Pet Shop Boys were storming the charts with 'west end girls', Talking Heads were on the 'road to nowhere', and Simple Minds were 'alive and kicking'. I wasn't doing too bad either, now being the proud owner of an Atari 800XL and tape deck (at last!!). Unfortunately (or maybe ironically), I was about to find out that the Atari 1010 tape deck had a little problem. It appeared that the buttons were a little 'sensitive' and the one that caused the most trouble was the record button. We must have taken it back to Brainwave at least three times and then my Dad decided enough was enough. I will never forgot that day, my poor Dad started making a big scene in front of everybody but at least he got it sorted. It's funny looking back on it, that I would one day be working in Brainwave myself (sorry Alan!!).
One of the coolest things about the Atari was the fact that the tape deck could hold data and audio on different tracks. This was used on the introduction tapes that came with it, so you would get the audio instructions and then the program would load (this trick was also used to fool some rather gullible people in Brainwave once, the programmer of Warhawk had brought in a demo of the game and loaded it on the Atari. After the game loaded it then played a Jean Michael Jarre track, which they thought was the in-game music).
Anyway, after making my parents feel happier about their purchase by learning how to use it, I soon got into games. The first game I got was Gridrunner by Llamasoft, but as soon as it had loaded I realised I needed a joystick to play it, doh!! Luckily I managed to persuade my parents to take me down to the local electrical shop and splash out £8.99 on a Quickshot 2 joystick. At last, I was really gaming!! The next game I got was Capt. Stickys Gold, which was an English Software game with a rather jolly theme tune. My poor aunty got a little confused at Christmas, thinking she had bought me Pacman for my new 'computer thingy', it turned out to be the VCS version. I wouldn't have minded but she was adamant I should try and make it fit!!
There is one last story about my trusty old Atari. As the computers at school were rather 'lacking' in capabilities, I was really struggling to design a project for my 'O' Level Computer Studies exam. Eventually I managed to get my tutor to agree to let me do it on my Atari as long as I supplied a print-out to show the program. So I started work on a program called 'irata quiz', which was basically a multi-choice quiz based on general knowledge. It was nothing flash but not bad for a first attempt. There was just one problem, I didn't have a printer. My parents suggested I try calling the computer stores in Norwich to see if they could help. Most couldn't but the Norwich Camera Centre came to my rescue. They were based at Back of the Inns at the time and took me upstairs where they had a dot-matrix that they could link up to my Atari. The print-out was extremely long as it contained the data for the all questions, but they never charged me for it (just asked me to put in a good word for them). The program impressed the tutor, it was much more complex that anything the students had managed on the Pet's (hehehe).
Well that is basically it for this first section. As I left school I had decided that I wanted to start a career in computers but some rather bad luck meant I had lost my place at Norwich City College. Unfortunately things weren't looking good.. stayed tuned for the next installment of 'Life Is But A Game'
Article by Retro Kid, April 2006.
Thanks to www.commodore.ca
for the above image.