It sounds like a cliche, especially if you say it in a broad yorkshire accent, but "kids today have got it so easy". 50 televison channels, broadband internet, game consoles; I remember when there was just 3 television channels AND they used to go off air overnight! Nowhere more has this happened than in videogame and computer technology, a topic thats close to my (and hopefully your) heart. What?, you just load a disk into the PS2 and press the power button? but what about loading errors? What?, you can't program on it?!

And don't even get me started on the price of games.

Thats why I think computer users of a certain age and older eventually hear a tiny voice talking to them. If you strain to hear it, you just might...."go dust off that +20 year old computer". But why would anyone turn off the gamecube and turn on the C64? Is it more nostalgia than love of the machine?

All you really need.

Personally, I used to own a C64. Nothing flashy, just the C64, a tape drive, one kempston joytick and the obligatory 14 inch colour t.v. on an old coffee table in the back room. I'm sure most of you were following along there, substituting your own speccy/dragon/oric and basement/attic/bedroom into the equation, remembering long days of playing games, trading games, programming or whatever your digital poison was. Do I remember where I was when Daley Thompson won the decathalon? nope. Do I remember where I was when JR got shot? no, not really. Do I remember my first game of Uridium? yes, like it was yesterday.

Admittedly, retro gaming isn't an easy sell to people who just don't "get it". trying to convince today's teenager that somehow Manic Miner isn't just better than the majority of current platform games, but vastly superior will usually end with laughing, tears and maybe a punch up if you're lucky. Trying to convince your significant other that staying up until 5am trying to finish up Paradroid might work, or it might get you the cold shoulder for a few days or maybe a punch up if you're lucky (see a common thread here? maybe its just me).

Master of the broken joystick.

I think it's one of those "you had to be there" scenarios. If you haven't spent an entire summer holidays trying to blast all the meanies in Wizball or lost most of your pocket money by feeding 10p's into Defender, then you're a lost cause, end of story, goodbye.

And likewise with the usual platform flame-wars. Sure, these days owners of game consoles get into nice, civil debates about whose is better, on par with old women fighting with handbags, but its really nothing like the old days. Was the commie better than the Speccy? does anyone really care? I've seen fistfights happen over this question and we're still no closer to an answer.

Its easy for me now as an (normally) quite reasonable adult to give you the usual middle-of-the-road, parent-y "well, each is good in their own way" answer, but in our own minds our machine was better than any other, just due to the fact that it was OURS.

Those were the days.

Admit it, you can remember the small jolt of excitement you got when your finger first touched the keyboard. When you first tuned in your t.v. and got that "READY?" message with the flashing cursor next to it. When you typed in a program out of a magazine, typed "RUN" and it worked with no problem.

But you can also remember the day when you tried to turn on your computer and nothing happened, maybe a puff of smoke, maybe a bang. Or when you boxed up your computer to make way for "the new computer" (Amiga, Atari ST or PC in most cases). These things will always stay with you and have made you who you are today.

But you can be saved, oh yes, you can be saved. Just go and download an emulator ...don't worry, i'll wait......ok, go google for that game that used to drive you wild, that used to put the fire in your eyes, that used to make you speak in hushed tones to your mates at the back of your history/religious education classes. Got it? good now fire it all up.

How do you feel now? pretty good, huh? Ok, now all the zealots who are reading this, i'm not suggesting giving up current consoles, just remember your roots and how much fun games used to be when the biggest concern used to be gameplay, not how much FMV is in it or the quality of the cut scenes or how many polys it can spew out.

Thanks to communities like YakYak and authors like Jeff "Yak" Minter, the fun never has to end. No, never. And anyone who tells you otherwise is obviously a communist.

December 2005

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