I programme computers for a living, it's what I always wanted to do, well it was once i had tried my hand on the venerable Dragon 32.

To be honest though I was a lazy programmer, whilst other friends where getting down to the nitty gritty of Assembler and Machine Code I was still getting by with Microsoft's BASIC for the Welsh beast and never finishing anything, not that most of it was worth finishing as it was for the most part crap. I remember spending most of a Sunday afternoon hunched over the thing writing a little program that would draw a 1960s Formula One Car on the screen using the commands LINE and CIRCLE in 2 colours, Black and, yup White Was there any point to this piece of code, could it be used for something more useful ?? No. But I didn't care, I had drawn a Formula 1 car on the screen by myself at the age of 12, how cool is that !!

The thing about being 'not very good' at programming back then was that when there was a type-in-listing in say, 'Your Computer' and it didn't run you were stuck. No amount of staring at the screen and changing bits of code willy nilly would make a game work, it was trial and error at its worse and after hours of trying to get the thing to work you went outside and played football instead. One particular game for me was a rip off of the arcade game Stunt Cycle. A lovely little game that had you controlling a Motorbike and attempting to jump over Double Decker buses Eddie Kidd style. I spend ages typing this programme into the Dragon, and of course making sure to save it before running for the first time just in case the whole thing when bang. Many other programmes were never entered again when this occurred !! Anyway I ran the game, it draw the screen I could see the buses, I could see the Motorbike, I could move the Motorbike, I could jump the Buses.$&^* Error, Green Screen, text 'program aborted at line 123, command doesn't fancy performing today, sorry', WTF !! Right lets have a look at line 123, seems okay, lets look at the Magazine Page, yup it's the same. Run the game again, nope, same problem. Ah bugger it, reset the Dragon, and reload from WhSmiths C15 Cassette. Run game for the 3rd time, error again, enough, out the house to Paul my neighbours house, play football This was Easter Holidays 1983 or 1984 I think.

The next day I tried again. I loaded the programme, and decided to look at Mr. 'I'm not Running, ever' Line 123 and his nestled buddies above and below. I must've spent a good 2 hours checking and rechecking the code, ticking off each line, each character against the Your Computer Listing. It was right, I had not made a mistake, it must run, it will run today, the Dragon has had all night to rest, he will be in a better mood today. I type in RUN and I press return, up comes the screen, up come the Buses, up comes the Motorbike, up comes the ERROR Message, arghhhhhhhhhh !!! Another 2 hours later, and another half dozen failed attempts later that was it. I gave my best, it didn't, I quit.

What really irks some 20odd years later is not that it didn't work, but that I no longer have the magazine. I chucked all my Your Computers out when I started getting C&VG in late 1984. The chance to try again to get the, probably awful Stunt Cycle Clone written in BASIC on a Dragon working fascinates me. The proud glow I would display as I played it would make up for those many hours of frustration I suffered way back when.

Another game that was typed in from a Your Computer Listing was called Maggots. This today is better know as 'Snake' on the Nokia mobile phones. This is a listing that worked fine first time, an amazing achievement given the disasterous result of Stunt Cycle. Of course that fact it worked first time rather took away from the expeirence, I mean where was the fun in that, it was a crap game, I wanted more of a challenge. I know, i'll fiddle about with the code and see what happens. First off the things to be eaten could be either 1,2,3 or 4 pixels in size, and this added to the score by the same value. 4 Pixels wasn't enough though was it, i changed it to 20. The result, errors, errors and more errors as the Dragon tried to plot outside of the barriers of the TV and onto the wall, a feature that for some reason wasn't available with this hardware Okay i'll fiddle with the code so the Maggot goes faster, oh, it's going as fast as it can already !! Oh well, Football again then...............

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