Part One

1984. ‘Rita’s Café’. Fishponds, Bristol. A pretty grotty greasy-spoon full of “salt of the earth” types. I remember walking past on a Saturday, and peering through the steamed up windows and seeing flashing neon and faint electronic noises. I was drawn to it. This is how it all started for me.

Over time, I blended in with the eclectic characters you find in these sorts of places:

Peter.
Big fat jovial proprietor. Always walked around with a huge wadge of 10ps in his pocket, big Greek gut bulging dangerously over his trousers.

Ricky.
Six-foot Rastafarian. Unemployed. Always smoking pot. Had a neverending supply of uncashed Giros for some reason. Lived above the café. I think he used to be a doctor as he was always talking about “Blood Claaaats”.

Mwahaaaaahohohohoh. See? We made you salivate. We are in control.

Dave & John.
Local builders. Apparently not very successful, as they were always in the café drinking cups of tea with seven sugars, picking bits of plaster and paint off their fingers and playing the machines.

Debbie.
My first crush. God, she was gorgeous. Probably now to be seen pushing a twin buggy, with a three-year-old in tow. All by different fathers. Bless her.

Roger Buckland.
Ladies’ man. Looked like a cross between Mel Gibson and that dart player twat ‘The Adonis’. Entered his high-score initials as ‘BUK’. He came in his pants when Moon Cresta came in, because he could enter his full alter ego in all its glory on the twelve-character-enabled high score table (‘BUKROGERS’). And for additional comedy value, on occasion he’d enter it as ‘ROGBUKERS’. Do you see what he did there? What a guy. The rest of us would deliberately get a score lower than his so we could put in ‘SMELLS’ or other witticisms.

Keith.
Long dead I should think. Sixty a day. Simply known as “Keith No Teeth”.


Steve Beaton. ‘Adonis’. Also, cock.

After they came to understand that not all fourteen-year-old schoolboys were irritating pricks, they grew to like me and I grew to like them. Sort of. The thing that bound us together? Videogames.

Peter always had a good selection in – Frogger, Moon Cresta, a Gorgar pinball, and the imposing, full upright Missile Command – my nemesis. I had to beat it. I was probably unhealthily obsessed with it. At first I was quite average. The odd decent score: 20k maybe 30k. Reaching the blue screens of ‘5X Bonus’ was a real achievement in the first three months. I’d go home at night and think about how to get better at it. I’d lie in bed and see missiles coming down the inside of my eyelids. There were no strategy guides or Internet sites to read up on how to get better – it was man against machine, and this machine was different. Hell, every game was different. Relentless streams of missiles, smart bombs, planes, noises, sirens – all coming at you in random patterns. And the way the closing screen of Armageddon screamed ‘THE END’ sent shivers down my spine. In 1984, I lived in constant fear of the world ending at any moment anyway, so this only added to the curiosity.

High Score Tables: childishness.

I spent pretty much all of my spare time at Rita’s and I started to get more and more respect from the regulars as my Missile Command skills improved. During the early summer holiday, 50k soon became 100k. 100k became 200k and beyond. We’d spend hours sitting on rickety stools with ripped vinyl, in the hot smoky environment, pumping 10ps into those machines, watching, learning, shouting, and advising each other. But I was in a league of my own with Missile Command – it became clear that I was the one who had to conquer the machine. It was collectively decided that the only way to do this, would be to clock it. Yep, only a score of one million points, resetting the score to ‘0’, would satisfy me and my cohorts.

I’d developed a technique where I’d keep just one city protected (middle left) and sacrifice every other one. This proved pretty effective in racking up a high score – and, I’d decided, was the only way to clock the game, and – maybe - impress Debbie. Bollocks to the notoriety and adulation. She might let me see her tits.

The last week of the summer holidays was when ‘it’ happened. Things were clicking into place and I was in the zone. Something was happening, and Peter, Ricky, Debbie, the builder brothers, and Keith had silently pulled up stools behind me and were watching in complete silence. I can only liken my mental state as akin to the last scene in ‘The Matrix’ where Neo is defending himself in slow motion – in a trance, almost bored, hitting every shot with deadly accuracy.

The score grew. 500k… 600k… 800k. Reagan could have pushed the button at that moment for all I cared - the world could have ended around me and I would have barely flinched.

Ronnie: Loose Cannon.

And then…

At 820,000, the machine awarded me a full compliment of bonus cities. I jumped. Something was wrong. Shaken out of my deep state of hypnosis. “Huh?” was the only profound thing I could say. “Blood claaat maaaachine!” said Ricky. I’d never seen Peter run so fast. He darted over to the wall and switched off the power with a loud smack. I was left staring at a white dot in the middle of the screen, still assuming the position of a man possessed on Missile Command. “The machine can’t handle it! Fuck me, Tone, you’ve bust the bast!” said Peter, pushing me out of the way whilst he opened up the coin door and looked inside, smelling for burning or something.

Ten minutes later, Peter switched the machine back on (flinching as he did, the ponce). It burst into life – all was well. After much debate, we came to the conclusion that it was bugged. Indeed, it turns out that all Missile Commands award 128 Bonus Cities at 820,000 points – in addition to the usual one Bonus City every 10,000 points. A bug.

Slow, descending missiles. Fast zappers. How hard can it be?

I was gutted. I still am. Sure, I’ve clocked it since – many times. My technique and skill got better. I have a high score of 14,000,000 (an all-day session). But the challenge dies after 820,000. There appears to be no fix to this bug. I could always look cool, by nonchalantly walking away from a machine, leaving it running for one of the crowd to take over in whatever arcade I happened to be in. But it wasn’t the same.

So, over time I worked out a new challenge – the ‘perfect’ game of Missile Command. A game where every single missile, smart bomb, and plane is intercepted and hit by the player? No cities lost and no missile silos lost right up to one million points. As far as I knew, no-one had ever done this.

I had that Missile Command Bug and I was determined to crack it.

AEROFLOTT, March 2004.

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