Let me tell you a story...

Once upon a time... All good stories have to begin with that don't they? Once upon a time the best games in the world weren't available in your living room. Once upon a time games weren't measured in terms of polygon counts. Once upon a time games didn't rely on tenuous licensing deals. Once upon a time...

Before the Game Cube, before the Playstation, before even the VCS or the Vectrex, my first exposure to video gaming was in my Mum's social club bar, and then in the chip shops, fairgrounds, ice rinks and other places where these new machines sprang up seemingly overnight.

It was love at first sight.

And, as Rod Stewart once said, the first cut is the deepest.

I wasn't faithful, the temptation was too strong - of course I strayed. I've lusted after or owned almost every machine capable of playing games since. Colecovision, VCS, Vectrex, Sinclair Spectrum, Dragon 32, Commodore 64, NES, Playstation, Dreamcast, Jaguar - even relative failures like MSX, Nuon, Wonderswan and Neo Geo have caught my eye over the years.

But my heart has always belonged in a seedy arcade or a dark corner of a pub, pockets bulging with 10p coins. And the first port of call whenever I buy a new system has been the arcade conversions.

"Arcade perfect gameplay!" shout the boxes, "Relive the exciting arcade hit in your front room!" it says. And I buy the game, I plug it in and play it. I enjoy it, but it's not the same. Something is always missing - whether it's the too fat graphics on the Colecovision, or the odd feeling of playing Arkanoid with a mouse or the too tinny sounds issuing from my PC speaker. Something is always slightly wrong...

And then there was MAME.

Here. Finally was something that promised to completely and accurately reproduce arcade games on the PC. And it was fab - for a while...

But the graphics were too crisp.
But using a keyboard was just plain wrong.
But...

It wasn't the same.

So finally, 20 years after first encountering them in the wild, I decide that I need to own an original table top arcade machine and so an obsession is born...

Cheers
Chris

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