Tech-Jutsu I went to secondary school between 1985-1990, and back then, I still had a Commodore VIC-20, which my dad bought me, probably as some kind of guilt-gift, for my 7th birthday. At the time I started secondary school, I didn't play on that VIC-20 that much anymore, as it had outlived it's ability to entertain. During the first year or so, I started to see that some of the kids at my school either had ZX Spectrum's or Commodore 64's, and I started to lust after a Commodore 64; mainly because it wasn't four colour graphics and had better sound than a Spectrum: for me it was a no-brainer. Previous to getting the machine, I started buying Zzap!64, which just so happened to have a review or a feature article of The Last Ninja in the first issue I bought. This was the game I wanted, and I must have read that article several times, poring over the graphics, and seeing how detailed they were compared to any VIC-20 game. I must have been about 12 years old when I finally got my own C64 using hard earnt pocket-money, including a copy of The Last Ninja, and it was worth every day i'd had to wait. I thought that game was amazing, and I eventually finished the game.
My friends at school during those first years were Ian Cunningham--a big lad with receding golden blond hair and bright blue eyes; Anthony Feather--A skinny lad with mouse brown hair; and to a lesser degree, Jonathan Hall (Noddy), simply because he was in form 1A with us three, and had an interest in computers, albeit not the Commodore 64. Ian had a Commodore 64 and was heavily into sports games so in this way I was introduced to World Games, Winter Games and Summer Games, as well as Leaderboard Golf. I thought golf was boring at the time, but it grew on me a bit due to the good mechanics and the relaxed play style.
I used to visit Ian's house regularly (but never Anthony's) and sometimes slept over, so we could have marathon sessions on his C64. I remember his mum, Mary, being quite quaint and old-fashioned, with a strict but friendly father.
I used to love playing games on my C64, and spent the majority of my childhood school years either playing games, watching tv, reading books or riding around the area where I lived on my BMX, and later my mountain bike. 1986-1992 were the golden years of gaming for me, not just on the home computer systems of the day, but also the arcades, which we visited perhaps once or twice a year on Blackpool's Pleasure Beach. Some memorable (for me) titles on my C64 were Elite--I got the penultimate ranking of "Dangerous" before I eventually stopped playing it; F-19 Stealth Fighter by Microprose--I once got the Congressional Medal of Honor for one mission, but my rating was only 22% and i'd read that if you got low ratings, you were unlikely to advance to Brigadier General, so I didn't save that particular game. This lead to Insta-Regret, and after that mission I never played the game again. I played Way Of The Exploding Fist, Mission Impossible, Bubble Bobble, Buggy Boy (my first 5 1/4" diskette game! Using a 1541-II disc drive I bought from a lad from school that was heavily into Michael Jackson); California Games--I used to sometimes play that until 2am in the mornings. Laser Squad with Mark Ashworth, who always beat me every single mission; Platoon--after seeing the movie; and Wizball, which I once played for several hours straight on 1 credit (known in the industry as 1CC or 1 Credit Clear) and _almost_ finished the game, but died very near the end. I never played that game again either, and on that day I skipped Ju-jutsu because I felt a bit sick after having played it for so long.
Eventually, I spilt my cornflakes over the keyboard one morning before school playing F-19, as I had the bowl on my lap and it tipped up onto the keyboard, spilling the majority of the milk and many cornflakes straight onto the keyboard. Some of the keys were a bit sticky after that despite my best attempts and cleaning it all up, so I ended up selling it to my mums friend Janet (another Regret) and got a reasonable price for it, whilst hiding the fact that a few keys were a bit sticky.
In Autumn 1989 (was it so late?), the Batman Pack Amiga 500 came out on the market, and I had wished for it for Christmas. Sure enough I got it and in late November, I knew that it was hidden away in the top of my dad's wardrobe. So, when my parents went out for the night, i'd get it out, unpack it, play Batman for 20 minutes then pack it all away and pop it back in the wardrobe. At the time, I subscribed to the SAS sentiment, or 11th Commandment, of "Thou Shalt Not Get Caught". I only did this three or four times, but it was great fun. I really enjoyed the Batman game, and the 16-bit architecture was leaps and bounds ahead of the aging Commodore 64.
However, despite some truly excellent games on the Amiga 500, it failed to really capture that childhood excitement I had felt with the C64. Maybe I just hit the C64 at the right age to be spellbound by it. Another thing that makes the C64 special is SID tunes. Admittedly, 16-bit sound was technically superior in every way, but the character and originality never quite matched the Commodore 64's special SID chip, with tunes like Delta, Commando, The Last Ninja, Driller and Auf Wiedersehen Monty being forever imprinted on my mind.
Games like Shadow of the Beast, Cannon Fodder, Monkey Island, Populous, UFO: Enemy Unknown, Lotus Turbo Challenge, Sensible Soccer, Speedball 2, Lemmings, Eye Of The Beholder 2 and IK+ made this system more in-depth, with strategy, role-playing and puzzle games really driving game concepts far beyond what had been available on the C64. The Amiga really was the golden age of computer gaming, with near-arcade quality graphics and excellent sound capabilities. The PC at the time with EGA/CGA graphics was simply no comparison. The promising Atari ST, initially leading the Amiga, soon fell way behind the cutting edge development that was happening on the Commodore owned system.
Having a 3 1/2" diskette system was like living in the space age compared to cassette tapes and 5 1/4" discs. Unfortunately, that is when piracy really took off, in no small part thanks to X-Copy, with the unfortunate side effect that I could buy twenty games for a few quid from a guy my dad knew at Michelin, and I therefore forfeited that special feeling you get when you buy an actual game. That willingness to invest time into a game doesn't exist when you've just received twenty games at once. I regret having done that and think that I would have played some classic games much more if i'd have bought them.
I can't beleive that time went so fast at this point. I know that the Batman Pack came out in 1989, and that is definitely the year I received it, but soon after I left college June '92: It must have been 1993 or the beginning of 1994, I had sold my Amiga 1200 and then around '95-'96 helped my parents buy their first PC (for their business of course!). Trying to figure out in my mind when, exactly, I bought my A1200 is impossible, but I had bought an A1200, a 4MB trapdoor upgrade, and 80MB hard disc that I installed Workbench 3.1 onto, and a Philips 14" monitor before I eventually sold it all! That has to be one of my life's regrets: Selling all that kit in pristine condition, for a fraction of what it was worth because I had discovered beer, pubs and the opposite sex, and in my mind, owning a computer like that was just too geeky for my newfound 'lad' image. The middle-aged balding guy that answered the advert looked like he had hit jackpot when he saw the condition everything was in, with original boxes, a whole stack of Amiga Format magazines in mint condition, a couple of hundred discs with copied games and several big box originals. I think greed got the better of his emotions, because Byson, our Ridgeback/pitbull cross-breed, tried to go for him in the bedroom when he was taking all the stuff out. I even helped him take it all out! Which was another Instant Regret thing. Like, why did I help him, when I was basically giving it away!
I must have sold my A500 to finance the A1200, but cannot remember who I sold it to. I also had some other peripherls for the A1200 that I cannot remember. One thing I know, is that gaming was never the same again. But the PC...and Doom, Duke Nukem, Shadow Warrior, Heretic--that was next level stuff. I got Doom from a workmate at Time Computer Systems, who had downloaded the freeware from a BBS on his super fast 14K baud rate modem (geek). Then came Quake 2 and Voodoo graphics cards, and by that point, the Amiga just couldn't keep up with technology. First person shooters took over the world then. Doom started it and Id continued advancing the market, but by the mid 90's I started to get sick to death of absolutely everything being a first person shoot-em-up. Then came Diablo, and my faith was restored in gaming! Then came more FPS, with Half-Life, then Counter Strike as a mod for Half-Life, which eventually became it's own game. Now, Oliver buys games and they're either FPS games or Diablo-esque. There just isn't the variety or originality that there once was on the C64 & Amiga 500 with regards to game concepts. Plus at the time, all those concepts were brand new in the minds of consumers. The Amiga really did have it's own character of God games, platformers, Shoot-em-ups and RPG's, that differentiated it from the earlier C64 aura of arcade style games (for the most part). I miss those days.
The C64 and Amiga may not have been the first home computer systems, like the Atari 2600 or BBC Electron were, but I would say that home computer gaming really took off with the C64 and ZX Spectrum, and I was there in the beginning when it happened. I may not have had a C64 upon release, but by the time I bought it, it was starting to see it's golden age, with high quality games getting released. I'm like the O.G. retro--not like the kids today that call the Xbox 360 "retro".
Another strong part of my gaming childhood was Arcades. I think the first arcade I played must have been a cocktail arcade version of either Space Invaders or Pacman whilst on holiday, probably in Malta. But I was too young then to get really excited about it in the same way that 11 year old me got when I played Kung-Fu Master whilst on holiday in Morroco. I played that every single night and thought it was fantastic. Bruce Lee and other 70's kung fu films were a massive part of our childhoods (me, Mark and Paul), so a fighting game was the icing on the cake. After that, going to Blackpool pleasure beach was like being in heaven, and many 10p pieces were spent on arcade machines. It's difficult to remember which ones were around then that I actually played, but apart from the three already mentioned, they must have been the likes of Space Harrier, Star Wars in that fantastic cabinet, Hang-On, Gauntlet (my god, I once spent all my pocket money on that thing with Adam when we were down south on holiday with Auntie Carole and Glynn, and I had to go without food until 7pm at night when they came back to the hotel. I've never been so hungry before). Then there was Renegade and Out Run and Galaga. Too many to count really.
Arcades weren't a big thing in Burnley at the time, so it wasn't a part of my daily life. That's why we all had home computers. Arcades were the thing of holidays or one-off trips to Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
I loved my childhood occupation with home computers, and have very fond memories of that period of my life. I had friends with similar interests, then I got new friends in 4th year when I was 14 years old, and started hanging out with Mark Ashworth (the self-proclaimed 'Ash'), who used to hold mini-tournaments on his C64 with tables, scores, and the whole shebang, along with Chris Taylor (Taz), Paul Croasdale, and myself ('Arry). Then eventually we hung out with Chris Oldfield and his older brother Phil (filth), and Sherif Meneisy (Beef) and Jonathan Hall (Noddy), and those were the friends who I went to the cinema with and who we drove around with to different pubs etc, and who I went on holiday with starting with magaluf in Spain when I was 18. No wonder then, that I look back on that happy, content, care-free, obligation and responsibility-free period of my life with such fondness, and with a desire to re-live some of that in the form of a new-found interest of retro gaming. With some old games on Steam, and emulators on Linux, as well as my MiSTer box with perfect replicas of original games, and Niklas' original Amiga 500 that he gave me as a Christmas present, I am keen to re-kindle that happiness and contentedness again.