Part Two

Last time, you may recall I wrote about my experiences with the Arcade Machine Missile Command (MC).

If you’ve forgotten or can’t be arsed to read the article, in summary, I had my ambition of properly ‘clocking’ the game thwarted by a little-known bug in the Atari 8-bit code, which awarded the player a huge rack of bonus cities at 820,000 points – 180,000 points short of the magic million.

This made the feat of clocking over one-million points rather easy, and frankly, it just wasn’t bloody good enough. I was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy at the gates of Hell, purchasing a one-way ticket to Answersville and I wanted Justice..

In this inane ramble, I’m going to continue my experiences in the mid ‘80s in Rita’s Café – with Peter, Ricky, Keith ‘No Teeth’, Rog Buckley (‘BUK’ to his mates), and Debbie (a lovely girl, just misguided) and the continual chase for the elusive ‘perfect game’ of Missile Command – one where every single point available is scored, with every missile, plane and smart bomb hit and no lost cities right up to the million…

Once my score was regularly hitting 820,000, I would give up on the machine – either by switching it off at the wall and starting a new game, or if I wanted to be particularly cool, by walking away and leaving the machine to play itself out. Option two, of course, only done when there was a big crowd watching – hey, at fourteen, you take whatever heroic opportunities you can get.

Christianity – give up yer Sunday mornings, listen to Cliff Richard...
Rastafarianism – smoke dope a lot, listen to Bob Marley, Burning Spear and
Lee Perry. Tough one…

This went on for some time. I was crafting my art, getting better and better, so that one day, I would crack the perfect game. What made it particularly enjoyable, was the frustration of ‘BUKROGERS’ – Roger couldn’t get anywhere near my scores and frankly, it pissed him off. I liked this a lot, and so did everyone else. I can hear Ricky the Rastafarian now:

“Rog, Maaaaan… tssssskkkkkkk… mebwoooy Tony keep whipping yo white ass ya blooood claaaat”. Ricky had really taken me under his wing, which I quite liked – no one fucked with him. This sort of banter continued for another six months or so.

Other stuff happened during that time, including witnessing Debbie on her knees, doing the optics – but not my ‘optic’, unfortunately. And if the Rodent brand police would let me, this article would be well over 3000 words and would read something like a letter to Escort Magazine (‘Debbie Does Bristol’). But, I digress…

Can I get sued for saying stuff like this?

But then, it happened.

I fell victim to every ‘80s arcade gamer’s nightmare: The ‘Changeout’.

Walking to the café one evening, I was greeted at the door by the owner, Peter. His permanent Builder’s Arse staring up at me, sweat pouring off his face.

“Alright, Peter?”.

He was on his knees patching up some torn lino. He just looked at me, smiled, and pointed like a new proud father in the direction of where my beloved Missile Command had once been.

“Eeeeeeeet’s atime-a for da change, Tony” he said.

I looked at the other glum faces in the café – Debbie couldn’t look me in the eye, Ricky was sat, smoking something and staring at me. To my horror, Missile Command was nowhere to be seen, and in its place was a Track & Field. Not just any Track and Field, but a Defender that had been badly converted with a bootleg board, a drill, new buttons and a large pot of B&Q’s finest black gloss. ‘BUK’ was on it, already, pounding the control panel with both hands like a demented wanker, his moustache twitching.

I could’ve cried. It was criminal. I think Peter felt quite guilty, but: “Beeesnis is beeesnis”… The MC wasn’t taking money, and it was time for a new crowd-puller. The fat man had cast the stone with his stumpy, egg-encrusted hands, and that was that. So, the hunt was on…

“Pull me over and search my boot, Officer Dibble”.

I can’t remember how it came about, but I recall just after this time, four of us going to Weston Super Mare to play the machines on the pier. We went in Ricky’s car – a white, old, rusty, 5-series BMW with blacked-out windows, trademark Jamaican flag hanging from the rear-view mirror, no tax, probably no insurance, and a stereo worth more than the car itself. Debbie rode in front, sharing a smoke with Ricky, and I was sat in the back with ‘No Teeth’ Keith.

Reflect on that for a moment. Here I was – fourteen, maybe fifteen, being driven at the best part of 90 mph along the A370 out of Bristol by a six-foot, dreadlocked Rastafarian, with two other people who I didn’t really know, and with Bob Marley pounding out of the rear speakers. I couldn’t hear a thing – which was no bad thing, as Keith was a man of few words. He shouted something about hoping they had ‘Nudge Up Double Deluxe’ in Weston – he knew that fruity like the back of his hand. His trademark was putting in another coin just before his last credit went, so the machine thought you weren’t going to walk away (yes – that old chestnut). I was there because I just wanted to play Missile Command, and that was more important than the potential grief I’d get from my mum if she found out the sort of company I was keeping.

Weston – the last resort. Or is that Rhyl?

We arrived at Weston and scoured the arcades, leaving the pier till last. We walked into the main hall, and there it was – right in front of us in the prime spot…

…a Missile Command cockpit – or ‘Enviro-Cab’, as it was known. This was like finding a pound at the ice skating rink, for fuck’s sake! The cockpit was a fully enclosed machine with a 28-inch monitor, a massive sub-woofer under the seat and a tinted viewing screen behind your head so that people could watch your game.

Ricky gave me a nod, and I was in there. 10p was dropped (not pushed) in and I was off… The sound was nothing short of fucking awesome. The whole pier must’ve thought the four-minute warning had arrived. I was enclosed in this glorious black cocoon, my face lit up by missiles streaming down the screen in front of me. The crowd around the machine slowly grew – families, security guards, the puffy jacket brigade… they all stood and watched as the score racked up and up. I was going for it – 350,000 points before I lost my first city – cries of “Ahhh!” from the crowd made me feel better about smacking the machine with my fist.

Enviro-Cab goodness. Geddin!

My first million came after about forty minutes. An hour and a half later, Ricky, Debbie and Keith were nowhere to be seen. People came and went, the crowd changed every ten minutes or so. The manager of the pier must have sussed what was going on – and he was up for it, which was really nice (he even got me a Quattro and a Texan bar). He was a real fan of videogames and was talking to me as I was doing my thing. One of the others would pop back every hour or so to check up on me and offer encouragement – I was their ‘boy’… there to show Weston how to play a “Mo-fo Miss-hile Command-bwoy” as Ricky put it.

So, what happened? I was dragged off the machine at 9.30pm (closing time), with a score of fourteen-million – the machine was still running. I had sat there for eight hours straight with no break, just playing the machine intensely. Ricky and Debbie looked really pleased with themselves for some reason (dirty bastards - they probably did it in the public loos or something – I mean, I loved her for Chrissakes), and Keith with ‘fag on’ (B&H Goldie, long wad of ash hanging off the end of it), walking back to the car looking like some twisted character from It’s A Knockout, his trouser and breast pockets bulging with bags full of 10ps and tokens from the various fruit machines he’d mastered.

It was just the perfect day – the day I scored big on MC. Its no world record – Twin Galaxies shows an alleged high score of sixty-million (which for the record, I don’t believe fro one second).

I don’t think I could repeat the feat now – physically, it would mess me up, and besides, the missus would never speak to me again.

Fourteen-million was good, but it still wasn’t the perfect game. That was yet to come...

AEROFLOTT, April 2004.

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