50 Reasons Why You Know You’re The Original Fuckin’ Sad Gaming Nerd (all true, by the way).

1. The 17-year-old from accounts stands and talks to you about computer games rather than guys from his own age group.

2. You drew Atari Space Invaders on your telly with a marker pen ‘cos your Mum and Dad couldn’t afford the real thing – and pretended to play it.

3. At 18 years old, on pay day you ‘rush’ to the computer shop before it closes to pick up ‘Beach Head’.

Beach Head. This is ACTUALLY what it was like in that war from ages ago.

4. You look back on a diary you kept in 1985 and there isn’t a single day where you didn’t spend at least 4 hours playing on your C64.

5. You hear from a mate you’ve not seen for 15 years via e-mail, and the first thing he asks is: “Are you still into your computer games?”

6. You spend New Year’s Eve in 1987 alone playing ‘Gauntlet’ on your C64.

7. Your Dad thinks you’re gay ‘cos you show no interest in girls and spend “all your time playing stupid computer games”.

8. Your marriage goes horribly wrong, and part of the reason is apportioned to your “gaming obsession”.

9. If you lose your new missus in Asda she will always find you, all happy, at the computer mag section.

10. You hang about on a forum and discuss games from 1983.

11. You spend Saturday nights playing International Soccer rather than being in discos pulling birds.

12. You know that ‘Blaby Software’ wrote ‘Barmy Burgers’.

13. You still to this day have a dying sound effect embedded in your memory from some shitty, third-rate platformer on the C64 called ‘Ghouls’.

Guide the Ghoulish Pac-Man Man to the popcorn, or prolapse trying.

14, You go dewy-eyed and wish you were 18 again when the names Clive Sinclair, Jack Tramiel and Jay Miner are mentioned.

15. You know that Atom, Game Genie, Sord, Texas T1994a, Jupiter Ace, Lynx and Atmos were all names of computers.

16. You wish you hadn’t binned your Zzap, Games Machine, C&VG, The Home Computer Course and Ace mag collections.

17. You paid 100 quid for a machine made in 1983 called Vectrex.

18. Your mate loads a game on your C64 in 1983 and you leave it switched on for 3 full days so you don’t lose your place.

19. You wish for a bigger house - solely so you can have a room dedicated to every console and computer every made.

20. You walk past all the XBox and PS2 games in ‘GAME’ and head straight to the ‘Retro’ section.

21. You surf the Net and listen to the ‘Monty On The Run’ score-table theme instead of a proper CD.

22. You realise that EVERY mate you ever made and still have was met through the common interest of owning a computer.

23. You buy an XBox and spend most of the time playing emulators on it.

24. You shell out 100 quid on an ‘X-Arcade’ joystick – for that ‘authentic’ gaming feel.

X-Arcade. Waggle on, brothers.

25. In MAME, you attempt to play a shitey, cassette-based golf game you remember from the chippy in Craigshill. Just because you can.

26. You can still ‘see’ the ‘Donkey Kong’ machine in the Taxi office in the mall.

27. You hung about the ‘Electronic’ section in Woolco at lunchtime playing their Colecovision Donkey Kong.

28. You would stand for ages and watch the Spectrum and C64 games running in John Menzies shop window-front.

29. You remember that you bought ‘Jammin’ from Taskset in John Lewis in Glasgow… Bruce Lee, Summer Games and Beach Head from Ray’s shop, got a copy of ‘Mr Mephisto’ from Sharon Crosby in 5th year Computer Studies, copied ‘Taipan’ for the ST in Ray’s shop while he was out the back.

30. You prefer the old C64 music to the ultra-realistic stuff on PC nowadays.

31. It annoys the tits off you when you hear people generalise and say ‘My son has PlayStation’ – meaning they own a computer or console of some description. Even more annoying – it probably IS a PlayStation.

32. You scoff when people tell you that, they’ve been into games since getting ‘Tomb Raider’ for Christmas.

33. Your nickname on the Net is something like Mamemeister.

34. Your right arm actually got more muscular through repeated ‘Activision Decathlon’ sessions. And it was definitely nothing to do with 'specialist' repetitions.

35. You can please women with your vibratey finger honed on above type games.

36. You enquire to a mate if he still has his C64 stuff and would he consider selling it.

37. Any time you have some cash, computery-gadgety stuff is your desired purchase.

38. You think of ‘Manic Miner’ as being a recentish game.

39. You remember Sonic the Hedgehog as being a VERY recent game.

40. You sat up till 5am playing ‘Hustler’ from Bubble Bus.

41. You take two-year-old computer magazines into the bath to read.

A Kunt. Definitely not yesterday.

42. You wish you hadn’t chucked out the ‘Guide To Computer And Video Games’ you bought in 1983.

43. You search E-Bay for said book and are genuinely disappointed when you can’t find it.

44. You boast to bizarrely unimpressed people that you know Jeff Minter and you once spoke to Archer MacLean.

45. You play your GBA while your wife is having her contractions.

46. You HATE people with ‘Space Invader’ and Atari logo t-shirts cos they weren’t even there and don’t know what the fuck they mean or stand for.

”Hey, we were THERE, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan…”

47. You spend 350 quid on a Radion Pro 9700 graphics card and play mainly emulators on it.

48. You can still recollect tunes and sound effects from games from 20 years ago but are too afraid to tell anyone. Apart from now.

49. You can name most of the screenshots featured in the retro section in Games TM every month.

50. Your ex-wife’s little boy goes to school and tells his pals he was playing ‘Moon Cresta’ last night on his step-dads computer. And gets laughed at.

MAMEMEISTER, January 2004.

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Things to 'Make' and 'Do'.

A band called 'Hundred Reasons' - show offs.

The Beach Head ROM, y'know, only if you fancy it.

See more of Big K at the wonderful Old Computer Mags website.

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