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Wallowing It was Christmas 1983 that I bought Grandstand's Firefox with a year's worth of pocket money, and in so doing, came into the proud possession of my first sh'mup. Twelve months on and I added Caveman to that little collection and more importantly a ZX Speccy with Match Day, Hyper Sports and Tomahawk. I can still vividly picture my bros and I sitting under the Christmas tree, trying to figure out the bizarre joystick adaptor (the one where you had to plug circuits corresponding to the joystick inputs into slots that matched a keyboard) while the sound processor beeped out the theme tune from Match of the Day. Fast forward 18 years and the Kentish clan are gathered around the tree once more (in truth, we never really left it) and my bros have dipped into their pockets and forked out to buy me a PS2. I was humbled in a way I will never forget. This time the game was Grand Theft Auto 3, and I like to think there was a tear of pride as ma and pa watched us play happily together, merrily murdering any number of innocent Liberty City commuters. Laughed? We almost died of heart attacks. And then there is you lot, my mischief of Rodents. Last Christmas ushered broadband into the home I share with my beloved Just Jax, and with it came a portal to a new world (Xbox Live, Gears of War and, most importantly, The Game of the Be-atching Year, Ridge Racer 6!) and a return to this happy site after three years away. Gaming has never felt or looked so good, and thanks to this year's astonishing AAA range of titles, never been so expensive.It still makes me smile at how similar all of us are. My bro Des in foreground playing a generic 'Space Invaders' game, behind him I can just be seen playing some other led game, I can't remember what that was. It was probably shit though
On that sideboard, at the left of the picture.... see those minature 'lager' cans? They were the cheapo batteries my nan would buy from the bric-a-brac shop down the road. About 50 of the bastards for a pound. NAN THEY NEVER HAD ANY FUCKING CHARGE IN!!! Mum would bring her own down, and sneak them into our toys so they actually worked for more than 3-4 seconds. Hahahahahahahaha....... nans are/were fucking ace! My nan was a crazy Madonna fan, even bought that book in which Madonna was showing her nancy. Nan.... whats this metal covered book? 'Go on.... have a look!' In 1983 I got my ZX Spectrum for Christmas, but my parents couldn’t afford the 48k version, in fact they must have stretched themselves to get me my 16k. I didn’t care, I was so bloody glad I had one. A whole year goes by, and all my mates have the 48k and all I want for Christmas is the 32k expansion pack. I went around to a mate’s house the day we broke up for the holidays and he lent me his copy of Manic Miner, just so I had something to play if I got it. When I got home I went straight upstairs, turned the Speccy on, put the tape in and pressed play, just to see what happened. What could go wrong?! Well, it loaded up! Oh my god, my machine was 48k not 16, holy shit !! I went running down the stairs in hysterics shouting "Mum I’ve already got a 48k machine you don’t have to get me the expansion pack". She burst out crying and shouting "You knew we’d already done it didn’t you, that’s it your banned from using it until Christmas Day". Turns out that the week before when I was at my Nan’s my parents had taken the Speccy into town and had the extra memory already added to the machine. And worst of all I had to spend the longest week in history before I could play it. Gutted. "DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD WE WANT SONIC 2 FOR CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" We didn't get that though - we got Streets of Rage, Road Rash, Kid Chameleon and Fifa. He's a canny lad, me dad. We spent ages filling out the codes in that Road Rash book up until the point you had to be superhuman to react quickly enough to win a race. And Kid Chameleon fascinated me as it had a seemingly never ending supply of levels. Streets of Rage was pure class and Fifa started the sporting rivalry with my brother that continues to this day. The Speccy had some incredible Christmases. I think, i will have to check the old World of Spectrum website to confirm, but 1988 saw Op Wolf, Cabal, Afterburner, R-Type, Thunderblade, Robocop and Batman Caped Crusader. 1990 was similarly vintage, with Chase HQ, Op Thunderbolt, Batman the Movie, Savage. And of course, without a regular income, this was the only real time you got to have a splurge so to speak, drawing up a list of games from parents, grandparents, brothers etc. Man, we used to lock ourselves in the games room/study on Boxing Day and emerge some time around Spring. Christmas has always been about SSX in our house. Even if there's not a new SSX to play we would drag out the old ones and snowboard our Christmas dinners off. Me and Rosy and Issy would create holiday dens of duvets, cushions and support our camps with provisions of Quality Street, mince pies, strips of left-over ham and turkey with cranberry jelly and fizzy pop and tea. And we'd play SSX together, with SSX Tricky being the firm favorite - the atmosphere, Christmas snow--punctuated by neons and dusk--inside our telly, would convince as fully as snow on the road outside. Tricky was little Issy's first real videogaming: through the accidental play mechanic where there is no time-out for the last kid on the mountain and in which pretend gravity forced perpetual progress, she was able to button-mash her way to lots of fun and points and sarcastic commentary from Raaz-el the DJ. Insanely Issy would often rack-up massive combo points by holding the stick permanently to far left and hitting the jump button every second - even better she would unlock dozens of secret short-cuts and bonus areas in doing so, areas we would all have otherwise blindly raced past. At the same time, Tricky provided Rosy, seven years older than her sister, with her early wins against me, her Dad. From then on we've been able to trade high-scores across dozens of titles and to find a shared language in videogames. For that alone SSX Tricky at Christmas will long provide me with the very broadest of smiles and the very happiest of memories.
I never got Commando either. Cunta Claus. Ahh memories - waking up to one of these:
These were my Christmas handhelds
I had one of these
chewed batteries like a bugger as well, but the buttons were like little opal fruits so that was cool. Took some Googling, but I found the first LED game I owned (from Christmas 1979). I present Missile Invader:
One 'Invader' and one 'UFO'. If I'd come across RexxFiend and his Space Invader handheld, I would have been jealous as fuck. Lucky bugger. We were borasic lint when I was a nipper, so I was denied any handheld goodness. The one I really really wanted was the Cosmic Scramble listed above - a kid from the other side of the tracks had one and would occasionaly bring it in to school on the last day of term. I did eventually manange to convince dear old mum to get me a 16k Spectrum on the never never from the Catalogue. This moment of Mum's weakness happened in September. The deal was that I could have it straight away, but forget anything else for Christmas. She was true to her word, bless her. Come Christmas morning the sum total of my presents were (and I remember this well) a 4 pack of Falcon lager, 20 Regal King Size, and a Donkey jacket off the market. I also remember walking to school on the first day back after Christmas and being asked by my peers what presents I'd had. I pointed to the Donkey jacket, and replied: `you're loooking at it'. Happy days. Yes 1980, Atari had been out for a few years and with skillful and persistent pressure my brother and I, we had convinced Santa that this was the year we'd get one to call our own. Sure we had our sister in on the persuasion, but she really just wanted an Easy Bake oven (which made phenomenal, yet doughy brownies). It was your classic "hide the big gift 'til all the other gifts were open" Christmas morning, with us all happy to get gifts, but a bit dejected there was no Atari, once again. My dad casually got up and walk around behind the sofa and pulled out a large beautifully wrapped box, with two smaller boxes and laid them at our feet. My brother and I tore into the Atari knowing exactly what it was and had the thing hooked up to our tiny 12" color portable TV in the kitchen. Target Fun (Air/Sea Battle) was the pack in game, and the two others were Atari Basketball and Baseball. Quickly we had Basketball set up as we played for hours, until a family friend had come over. To say Don was a very competitive person would be an under-statement, as I could attest to this by his constant swearing at the tennis club over the years. Dad had brought him over to check out the game and soon enough old Don wanted a try. It wasn't that I cleaned his clock so badly that I recall, but how Don would constantly make excuses that the controller was not moving the way he had wanted. Trying to be accommodating, we switched controllers, which obviously had no real effect on the outcome of the second game. Don left that morning, red faced and pretty pissed off. Was a pretty good Christmas for me :) Anyone else go to their local Newsagents 5 straight days leading up to Christmas to see if the January 1986 issue of C&VG had come in? Well me and mate did, and the reason, free cassette with the Outrun Soundtrack on one side and Music and Sound effects fropm 720 on the other. It wasn't even a game FFS! (still have the tape mind). Christmas 1990 I think it was, used my Christmas money to boost the money I'd been saving up to buy a GameBoy, after envying my mate's for months. Only had Tetris for it, but I absolutely loved it. My sister was in hospital over that christmas, in a pretty bad way at the time (staphlococustracheobronchitis - can still remember that) and we went to visit the day after I bought it, of course I took it with me and was playing while we were there, she asks if she could borrow it... As she was in such a bad way and bored stiff in hospital, I left it with her out of pity. That next 24 hours til we visited again seemed a lot longer! I got bollocked by my parents when I threw a paddy when we went the next day and it turned out she hadn't played on it as she'd not really felt up to it... Picture it approaching Xmas 1988. Snow falling, children singing, lots of fun and laughter. My brother and I could be devious little beggars when we were younger, and this is proof of that. One evening we ran across by accident where our parents had hidden one of my presents. This happened to be Microprose Soccer for the C64. Being impatient little oiks as well, we threw caution to the wind, sneaked the game into my room, loaded it up (and returned it to its hiding place) and played on it. Repeat for the next few nights. Sadly of course we ended up being caught, and got one hell of a bollocking for it. Ah well, it was worth it really :p My mother still remembers that incident too as I happened to hint at it a couple of nights back in reference to something else and she gave a knowing smile to what I was talking about... I remember getting a ZX Xpectrum +2 for Christmas, after years of pestering. "Help with homework", etc., was the real selling point to my mum/santa, I think. And to be honest, as much I used it for games, I think it did spark that interest in coding that now pays my bills. Anyway, said speccy came with the Curry's value pack of 10 games, that included such gems as Nifty Lifty, Millionaire, Missile Defence and a load of other generic gubbins. The cassette inlays didn't exactly whet my gaming appetite either:
And on that note we shall leave you with your own Christmas memories. Whatever you are doing, wherever you are doing it, have a great Christmas. And maybe, make it a memorable one for someone you love. January 2008
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