...(Brief pause, while I wait for you to think ‘So What?’)

This has had two (and two half) significant effects on me: the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I hear 70,000 people sing ‘Land Of My Fathers’ and so when it comes to rugby I’m a Welshman; and it caused almost all my memories of great arcade games and probably started me off in my career.

Gwlad, Gwlad, pleidiol wyf I'm gwlad…

Most of the first 18 years of my life were punctuated by a couple of weeks in the Rhondda Valleys, visiting the Taffia. (At the time, I didn’t know them as that, but my Dad has persistently referred to my Welsh relatives that way for so long that it’s become the easiest way to say, “A not specified set of grandmother, aunt, uncle and cousins”).

Occasionally these trips would be further punctuated by a week-long excursion down to the beaches of Porthcawl and a static caravan, on a truly massive site. Which I’m pretty sure is still there; at least, I was 20,000 feet over something that looked terribly like it a year ago. Great place – beaches, sand, water, waves, everything a seven-year-old needs.

“Ouch! Ow! Ow! Ah! Ouch! Mum! Carry me!”

But on the second trip, I remember a real revelation: the café a couple of rows up from our caravan had something new inside. It was called Frogger.

By ‘eck! What fun! It was better than that Phoenix thing built into that table in the pub Dad took us to for lunch sometimes.

Mmmmmmm… Unhealthy.

And so, when a couple of years after that, we went back, I was initially disappointed to find we’d got a caravan quite a way away from the café. I went up to the camp centre with me Mum to do the shopping… Hang on. What’s this big place full of things that go ‘beep’?

BRILLIANT!!!!

Sure, there were lots of fruit machines. But that was a plus point. Grandma liked those and when she had a big win she would always give some of the winnings to us. Peppered amongst the aisles of bandits were Defender, Joust, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Lunar Lander (Bachman Turner Overdrive handle ‘n all), Asteroids.

So, the following year we went back with no complaints at all from me. And this became regular, just about every year for the next eight. By the following year we’d found three more arcades, two right beside each other in the next bay that had flagship machines and one halfway in between that clearly found good games and hung onto them.

Rock. Made by Satan, from children’s bones.

I was introduced to almost all the arcade loves of my life. Pole Position. Star Wars. Spyhunter. Tron (found late, around the headland in a different café, but close to the caravan and so played to death). Track & Field, Dragon’s Lair, Gauntlet – oh, Gauntlet. Fun for all the family (literally, since me, Rob and cousins made four).

And then, Nemesis – before which I still bow down and respect the Gods. I came back to the caravan that night and promptly started working out how I could program it, and I knew that day that I wanted to write computer games.

One year introduced two new excitements to the flash arcade: a sit-down Space Harrier – what joy, the moving cab! – and 720 Degrees. Which I played twice and didn’t get into at all. I was probably too busy still shoving 10p into the Spy Hunter machine in the corner. Crikey, I can still remember exactly where all my favourite machines were…

Past the Pit of Doom, duck the Blades of Decapitiation…
I’m sure that Pac-Land machine was in here somewhere…

Back the next year, it was a different story. I’d seen 720 Degrees on that bloody stupid teenage gameshow with ex-Miss-Great-Britain Debbie Whatshername ( Greenwood, First Class – Ed) and it looked great. But the one in the arcade didn’t work properly. The spin controller wasn’t aligned right – about 90 degrees out of phase. It was impossible to play. Arse. Oh well, there was an R-Type over there…

The next year I went back to it again. Still there, same corner of the same arcade. And… still shafted! I was astonished. I went to ask if they knew it was broken, and the meathead in the change booth just looked confused.

Fine. OK. Hop on the TNMT machine directly behind me and all four of us could play, or Vulcan Venture across the road... But I couldn’t understand. It’s broken. It’s been broken for at least a year? (I can’t remember for certain but maybe it was broken for another year even after that). Surely it can’t be hard to fix? I WANT TO PLAY IT!

“OK, let’s break the bastard properly…”

For yonks I wondered why it was busted so long. Older and wiser, I can see that the reason is because the guys who ran the arcades couldn’t give a monkey’s about the actual games, just about how much cash was shovelled in. I would have thought that keeping a knackered machine surely must reduce the take, but perhaps at a transitory arcade at the seaside it didn’t matter. It would still sucker the 10p (or was it 20p by then?) out of any fool that came along. Maybe more, if they didn’t realise it was actually busted and thought it was supposed to be that difficult...

Well, eventually, the Porthcawl trips ended. We were getting too old to go on summer family holidays, for sure. But if you ask me, the real reason was that I wasn’t that interested because there weren’t any fun arcade games any more.

To kind of underline this, the last trip had one significant addition: we brought a Megadrive with us. My brother moped as he’d been separated from his girlfriend, while I had a great time, completed Phantasy Star III and finally made friends with my baby cousin who previously had liked Rob a lot more (but he wasn’t any fun that week).

It was great – but not the same.

DIO, August 2004.

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