The shop opposite the bowling hall was closing. The good people of Coventry evidently prefer bowling and beers to late night toy shopping. Weeks from now, its place would be taken by another. This coincided with a rare event - a full hour-long lunch break. Time to check out the clearance sale.

"20% OFF!" exclaimed the rows of half-empty shelves, hinting at what was left of last year's unwanted potential Christmas presents. Toys for the niece, cheap pens for work, and a casual perusal of the DVDs…

Which is when I found it.

Ninety-two sheets! ‘Retro’ gaming at comedy-future prices.

The name on the spine of the DVD case was odd. It could have been a cold war-era Hungarian love story ordered by mistake by the girl who worked on Saturdays. But this was a videogame – a thing I hadn't bought in a while. My weekends in with the Saturn were long lost to the realities of working life, and though a PS2 lived under my TV it was nothing more than a token black box in amongst a load of silver ones.

A few tiny pictures on the back of the case reminded me of sleepless nights as a 2D star-pilot, but the name alone confirmed the purchase. Anything as unpronounceable as Soukyugurentai had to have something about it.

That night, I played. It was just as I remembered a shooter to be. My normally docile flatmate walked in, and a fire that once burned within him was again awakened at first sight.

Vaguely lo-fi Saturn shootylovelies.

Between us, we finished the game in a few hours. Half past midnight, and sweating. For all of our efforts, nothing more than end credits.

"There must be some more options," he said. “We need to save our score." So we opened the instructions, and found out how to get to the option screen. Moments later, we realised something.

You could rotate the screen.

Which meant that we had to rotate the screen. But we couldn’t flip the TV. We were already in trouble with the girls for entangling the living room in cables. So, off to the garage, to get the old TV. Bought by my parents before my time in education began, and salvaged from the skip by me, decades later. Surprisingly it still worked. The damp hadn’t got to it too badly, and it didn’t start burning.

Ancient, stinky telly – fashionably burned-in.

It didn’t all work, though. The sound was either off or, a firm bash later, on. At full volume. The picture was tolerable, but invariably bright and potentially seizure-inducing. The others were out, so the noise was merely the concern of the neighbours, and sunglasses that hadn’t been worn since that week in June acted as epileptic prophylaxis.

2AM the next day. The option to continue had, rightly, long since been turned off. A ritual begun long ago with the Atari 2600 and Yar’s Revenge was re-enacted… This game would submit totally, as Yar’s had before it. It wasn’t enough to complete it. It had to be done with one credit. And then one life. Two-million space points simply would not do when four-million was possible. The sunglass-enforced tunnel vision brought about a level of concentrated focus reminiscent of Linford at the races, and the deafening sound blocked out all others.

Linford Christie in the short-lived boomerang relay.

Days later, I found that the buzz multiplier could be increased by making the ship spin. Buzz was given for flying close to an enemy bullet, increasing the score. Spinning made the ship slower, but gained a higher score. A simple system, balanced to perfection, and revealing another level of depth in which to submerge myself.

And all because of a shop closing down. Though hundreds are out of work, eBay auctions around the country are coming to an end in my favour, and with it my videogame life has gained another credit.

March, 2005

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