RIP Atari

Sure enough I’d taken a huge leap forward in term of graphics, heck I could now wank to real porn and the werewolves looked liked actual werewolves in Barbarian and not some Legofied mutant from the graphic hands of a 2 year old, but the sound, yeah the sound was pap, indeed even the old 64 could knock my Atari ST into a cocked hat when it came to sound.

Remember me?

2 years previous, Courtesy of Compunet, the Adam and Eve of the net, I was lucky enough to acquire both Mighty Bogg albums. These fuckin blew my head off; this was the first commercial, computer-generated music I’d heard. They were good enough to warrant playing while I relaxed on the bed reading the latest issue of Zzap, such was the quality. For the record, I defy anyone to listen, in the dark, to a piece by Bogg called ‘Death’ and NOT say it made the hairs on your neck stand up!! My favourite piece and still to this day IMO the best-computerised version of ‘Axel F’, I mean it doesn’t just sound like ‘Axel F’ it fuckin is ‘Axel F’!! This was the real deal and yet 2 years on this £350 ‘beast I’d acquired with an Atari logo stuck to it just couldn’t pull it off. In comparison, its version was a plinky plonky mish mash of shite.

I wasn’t happy, yeah, the graphics were all very nice with real arcade style effects but the sound was just crap. I never could figure how it could generate some nice sounding samples in games and you could listen to ‘Thriller’ on multiple disks yet its attempt at a tune was pitiful. Something had to be done.

Fred Harris had special powers and still works Sunday's as a carnival magician

That ‘done’, become apparent when Fred Harris and Ms Judd lifted the bed sheet from the mystery computer during an episode of Micro Live, here it was - the dream machine, the piece de resistance, the Real Madrid of computers – the Amiga. Only one issue, the fucker came in at a grand. That would prove to be a problem.

I stuck with the ST for a while but, as well as being unhappy with the rubbish sound, I steadily became disillusioned with its rushed, lack lustre coin op conversions.

Things were to change shortly after…

I was scouring one of the boring computer mags, PCW or something; Ian always bought those intellectual PC mags. I didn’t really give a fuck about the latest Citizen dot-matrix printer or just how powerful the latest military computer was, I wanted games reviews and nothing else, but at the back of said mag was a series of ads, one of which grabbed me: ‘We now stock the long awaited powerful Amiga 500, easily affordable at £450’ (or thereabouts) ‘Trade-ins available.’ I re-read that last bit and had Ian verify it.

The next Saturday Ian and I made our way into Portobello (a sort of sea-side resort on the outskirts of Edinburgh) to the funnily-enough-named ‘Portobello Computer Centre’. We always copied each other with computers – we were both in the scene at the same time and had the same passion for games and technology, although he tinkered with midi shit, and we were going to copy each other yet again.

It's certainly a dream I've had, and you?

Once inside we felt like Sickboy, Renton, Spud and Begbie about to make our first drugs deal with Mr Big: “SO you’re interested in the Amiga then, hmmm nice machine indeed… and how are you going to pay?”
“Err I was wondering if you would take my Atari 520 as part payment… oh and the floppy disk drive?”
After mucho scrutiny the deal was struck: £350 quid plus my ST and drive in exchange for one lovely, shiny, Amiga 500!! Ian closed the same deal and we left, foot to the metal, eager to investigate our new technology.

First impressions weren’t good; the old hand holding a disk was a bit shitely drawn and looked a tad rough. The first few days were spent ‘discovering’ Workbench and the joys of CLI. This machine was acquired long before the days of ‘Game packs’, so no free games here, not even a Deluxe Paint in sight.

Contact was soon made with our version of Mr Big, the child godfather who dealt in games. He was 13, obnoxious, spoiled, very irritating and demanding but he ruled when games were concerned. He had ‘contacts’; a group he was careful to keep me from but heck I didn’t care, I’d win his friendship with an occasional game of pool and that was enough.

I always felt slightly un-easy visiting him, here was I 20 years old chapping on the door of a 13 year old. However his bedroom was heaven; he had games that were in the shops, he had the games that were only just previewed, and he had games that weren’t even fuckin written. The hardest part was choosing what I didn’t want, I had only 10 disks and he had 100 games!!

I remember I could never get away from Mr Big’s quick enough; slamming the door of the car, engine on, clutching my recently proffered gaming candy.

Watching the pages turn as the story was revealed ‘Faery Tale Adventure’ drew me in, and I was mesmerised with the music. It was a seemingly endless world that begged to be discovered. As on-screen darkness fell, my heart would pound, and as the music picked up out of the edge of the screen appeared four demons of the night. I felled a couple but legged it before finding sanctuary in a church graveyard. As dawn rose, I continued on my quest to rid the land once and for all of the evil.

On the Amiga Marble Madness was ‘the real thing’. The arcade graphics blended perfectly with the sound effects; it meant at last I could at last retire my 64 memories - here was a machine that had just moved the goal posts, with sound.

Months past, games collection grew and so did the music demos. Cant recall the name, but one was special, it had a red devil and a lot of dancing orbs and some of the most haunting sounds this side of any Trance.

My mate Brian had a PC. Sure enough he had 3D tennis and a 3D game set in a castle, the object being to defeat Hitler but when he heard my ‘Jesus on E’s’ demo, he was floored. I even copied this onto an audiocassette.

Many a love affair began right here

This computer, my Amiga, was to change my expectations of sound. Today it’s all too real, sound is fantastic and is taken for granted. Somehow though, being there at the forefront that was the infancy of computer games was the best time of my life, everything was new, unexplored and induced many a ‘whoop’ and ‘fuck will you check out that’…

These days are gone but the memory lives on forever.

MAMEMEISTER, October 2003

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