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When C90s ruled us all. Piracy. Its not big and it certainly aint clever – but it’s in my blood, always has been. So how did this start? For the answer We have to take a journey back in time, way back to 1983. The C64 still stank of polystyrene and the joystick hadn’t even been broken in. Interceptor Software were the first to get my readies for their quite frankly god awful Kong clone (imaginatively named ‘Crazy Kong’). Frogger 64, my other purchase, was at least playable. I had commandeered the upstairs telly as I wanted to see the C64 in its resplendant colour. My mother was quite content to knit and nod in agreement that this was indeed amazing. But I was soon relegated back to my 14” black and white telly in the bedroom with my two games. But I craved more. Pay was approx 10 quid a week for my 2 shifts in Woolco. Off that came the 2 quid I paid weekly towards my hire purchased C64. Zzap would consume another quid and a few quid was spent on sweets. After all that, my weekly net income was about 4 quid - I was effectively looking at a couple of week’s wages before I could use the Interceptor shit as audio tapes.
This was all to change after a chance meeting with one Brian Lockhart in Woolco. He was moved from the foodhall one night to help me and Toe with the trolleys. We instantly recognised one another as being a mutual mate of Robert who had left school and was now earning a dizzying 100-quid a week – cunt! We got onto the subject of computers and he boasted he had about 60 games for his C64. What the fuck! How could this be? He admitted that most he had were copies and offered to do me a few too - we agreed to meet up on Thursday. That night I lay in bed dreaming of having access to this plethora of games, Thursday couldn’t come around quick enough. Come the day, sure enough he turned up polythene bag in hand. Formalities were exchanged, coffee made, we settled down to some ‘Howard Jones’ and a look inside the bag. He’d brought his 60 games along but instead of oodles of original tapes he produced two C90 tapes?
He proceeded to show me his bountiful sack of digital splendour. Hundreds of pounds worth of games on a single C90. And then, having shown me a glimpse of heaven, he shattered my dreams when he said he couldn’t stay long and we wouldn’t have enough time to let me copy his tape. I was gutted. He said I could go up to his bit the week after and get some then, the dream would have to wait. As he left he loaded up ‘Kong 64’ by Anirog, this game was awesome, killer graphics and looked just like the Coleco versh I played in the Woolco Electrical dept on Saturday lunchtimes. As my parents bid me goodnight some hours later, I sat transfixed by this digital porn on my telly. As the birds chirped their morning call I called it a night but the C64 stayed on. School dragged on as I longed to be home once again to play my arcade heaven. That night, I figured leaving my C64 for over 24 hours wasn’t gonna do it any good so I made the decision to switch her off. And so Frogger 64 was pulled out of the drawer and given another chance to distract me.
I guess this was effectively my first chance encounter with the evil they call piracy. I never duplicated the game but running a game for 24 hours which I never owned could technically constitute piracy. Back then there was no such thing as having to keep your tape in the deck. Next week soon arrived and a lift was kindly offered by my Dad to take me to Brian’s. As I as entered I had to plough thru the formalities of meeting his parents etc. At this point I just wanted to get the games and get out; mind you as we climbed the stairs his sister past and I recall she had a lovely bum. Mind you not even a firm girl’s butt was gonna distract me from the treasure that lay in his room. As I entered my eyes wept at the tech delights that lay before me, a colour telly, a C64, racks and racks of Boots C15 tapes, 2 boxes chocca of disks and only a fuckin 1541 Drive! I’d only seen one of these in a picture!
As the night wore one, he would enter some wizardry on the C64 and within seconds game after game would appear on the screen. Gameplay was limited to a mere 30 seconds each followed by a “Yeah, I’ll have that”, or “Nah I’ll not bother” off which there weren’t many. The eventual list ran to tens of games and I was soon disappointed to see my list whittled down to ten or so given he’d have to copy them to my clutch of C15s I’d brought along.. As he disappeared to copy them he left me with ‘Castle Wolfenstein’ running. Here was a game with minimalist graphics, dodgy movement, atrocious scrolling and digital speech!! I mean talk about putting a fucking turbo charged engine into a Lada. On his return he informed me to forget it as it was disk only – bah… It was later to become mine - Oh yes! My relationship with Brian was restricted to copying games and soon ran its course, although not until I’d gotten every game, disks and all, off him Well, it wasn’t all games – Brian had the biggest Hi-Fi system I’d ever seen with speakers the size of dolls houses. He asked me to watch as he lifted one of the speakers up to the window and balance it on the window sill. He stuck ‘2 Tribes’ by Frankie Goes to Hollywood’ onto the deck, crank the volume up to eleven, lifted the needle and asked me to watch. Suddenly the wailing siren kicked in followed by the advice of the Barrett bloke to take cover along with your family in the event of a nuclear war. At that point kids various people going about there business suddenly became agitated and probably thinking ‘Shit, is this it?”
Brian is now married with a 3 kids and is still involved with computers. He was to, prior to our friendship fizzling out, introduce me to Hugh. Hugh was to later introduce me to the Inveralmond Computer Club on a Wednesday which has been documented elsewhere. (Hugh later won a competition ran by Texas Instruments in which he devised a system to enable an Oscilloscope reading to be saved to disk. The prize? 10 grand and a job in Texas. I’ve heard through his mother that he is now a Board Director so he’s not done too badly) C64 games - and the sharing of them - made and cemented many friendships, several of which are still burning brightly today. Thanks, Brian. April 2005
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