So, where did it all begin?

Well, it would be called that if there was anything interesting to write on the subject. In reality, it all started with a Tandy Pong-a-like, which I affectionately labelled "the Tandy Green Screen", as, obviously, the screen was green.

It had two paddles, an alleged motorcycle throttle, and a light-gun, and was decorated in a comforting 70's shade of "none more brown". The paddle games were your average type: Pong, squash (Pong against one wall), Football (Pong with two bats per player), etc etc.

The next curious arrangement was the Motorcycle throttle doodah, which came with a "jump-the-buses" style game. Obviously, this would have been fantastic if it were possible, but unfortunately there seemed to be a fault with the system which made it refuse to work after about four buses. Or at least, that's what I thought, in reality I was just really, really bad. And about four.

Curious to this type of game, though, was that the throttle involved GEARS. That's right, there were four gears to ascend through on each wave of buses, as you rode over the top two lines displayed on the screen the challenge was to accellerate to third or fourth gear (achieved by giving yourself leprosy of the wrist by rotating the knob (fnarr) really fast three times, or indeed four) and then try to control your speed so you'll land after the downwards ramp, on your back wheel. Bear in mind that when in third or fourth gear the speed was totally obscene, many many times did I go flying off the end of the screen, in what seemed like the funniest thing ever.

When you landed, the unit appeared to try and play a tune of some sort, but I think the loft had affected it slightly, and it just spewed delicious electronic noise instead, in short staccato bursts.

Finally came the light-gun… my mum never liked me to use this, she always thought it was going to transform me into some sort of murderer. Suffice to say, I haven't murdered anybody yet, so obviously her plan must have worked. Ahem.

This gun was a curious thing, like an old crappy version of the Sega Menacer Gun, which locked together in three parts to make a rifley thing. It consisted of the base unit, which was quite like a smallish rifle, bigger than a hand-gun. Second was the sight, which didn’t have any way of locking into the front, which quite often meant that you ended up with a wonky sight, and your aim ended up well off… And this time it wasn't me! The third and final part was the gun butt, which was about a foot long and made of plastic, although my older brother had convinced me that it was wood and a whole tree had gone into it, and we were damaging the environment. Lovely.

Unfortunately this never worked after the first time I used it, I think it may have been purposefully broken to stop me from using it. There were two modes, anyway, Target, where a white blinking thing fluttered around the screen, bouncing off the edges, and Skeet, where the white blinking thing went from one end of the screen to the other, disappearing at the end, a bit like clay pidgeon shooting.

I remember putting a little dent in the telly with that when I was trying to find out why it wasn't working… I put the barrel right next to the screen, and followed the marker around, hammering the trigger like mad, before *doosh*, tripping over the actual unit, and *krack* leaving my mark. The front guard bit was soon replaced, though, and the unit was thrown away because it was completely broken, apparently. Which it wasn't, as I tried it just before it was taken out with the rubbish, and it worked just as well as always.

This would have been around 1990, I reckon, and videogames had just left my life for the first time. During this time, I was often seen playing with toy cars. And not much else, really.

Until that one day, when my brother invited me into his bedroom to show me the new thing he'd bought. Not having a clue what it was, I trudged upstairs (whenever he got new stuff it was always excellent, but he lived in the loft conversion, which was a pain in the arse for a little squirt like me) only to see a grey slab, accompanied by a black-with-dabs-of-yellow box, hooked up to the telly, playing the most hideously colourful and - get this - MUSICAL game…

Rainbow Islands.

Of course, he'd gone and bought an Atari ST (520 STFM, if I remember rightly), and a Zipstik (anyone know who made these? Think I've got six now). Alongside this was a bunch of copied Automation, FOF, etc disks, with games such as Stunt Car Racer, Bubble Bobble, Gauntlet II, and hundreds of others, but suffice to say, the one that kept me coming back time after time was Rainbow Islands, constantly getting my arse kicked by the Vampire Boss by the time I was about seven years old, I don't think I ever did beat him on the ST. One day though, he only went and beat it.

"Insert Disk 2. Press Space to continue"

Disk 2? There was no disk 2! There was a general sinking feeling in the room when that happened, pirate software maybe wasn't the way forward. But then, our house wasn't THAT big, so there really wasn't the space for all the fucking huge boxes that you could easily house a family of chipmunks in EACH ONE.

But still, it made no odds to me, because I never beat the vampire. I was content with the first 12 levels. And no chipmunks.

Soon enough though, brother got pissed off at this moppy-haired idiot of a kid constantly playing on his ST, listening to Iron Maiden and invading his room to play whenever he and his girlfriend wanted some time alone (goodness knows what for). Not long after that, my brother and mother clubbed together to get me a Sega Megadrive and Sonic the Hedgehog, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Just like the moppy-hair, which really did look bollocks.

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