You know, it all started so innocently. Once or twice a week the parents involvement in the local community association would take us down the road to the social club bar. There, lurking in the corner, was a large box making strange bleeping noises. Noises we had only heard from the tv before. Naturally my brother and I were compelled to investigate and suddenly found ourselves in a world of scrolling caverns, rockets, fuel dumps and "can I have another 10p please Dad"? The weeks passed and the Scramble upright was exchanged for a series of cocktail tables, all bearing similar thrills.

And then the summer holidays arrived. It was 1981 so I was six weeks away from my last year in the juniors and thus only three terms away from Big School. Having had an extension built earlier in the year we were not going away for more than a few day trips. Which left us with time to kill. And two days every week the Mother worked in the Electricity Board shop in town. Rather than leaving us with friends for the day she would drag us along too. Morinings we would sit in the staff room armed with the traditional array of pens, pencils, paper and Star Wars figures. In the afternoons though we were allowed up on to the shop floor where, plugged in to one of the display tellies, was a squat brown box. Connected to that were two joysticks, and from the welcoming slot protruded a smaller box. This had a single word emblazoned upon it.

Combat.

Oh, the hours we spent with that VCS and its crude blocks. But the hunger for more had been created.

And then, towards the end of the six weeks we made the epic journey out of Welwyn Garden City, round the bizarre wrong-way roundabout at Hemel Hempstead, through the torturous one way system at High Wycombe (and how did that old woman in the Hilman Imp get round quicker than us?), over the narrow bridge at Wallingford and past Didcot Power Station to arrive in Wantage. Which was where my best friend had moved to a couple of years before.

And there, sitting on a table in the corner of their lounge was another machine that would feed the hunger for a few days. Of course then we would have to go home and the hunger would grow again. But for now the chance was there to be lost in another world.

Much bigger than the Atari was this beast. Although it was a let down that there was only green and more green on the screen the places this Pet took us were more real than the wonders outside. And there were only two of those places available, but oh how they enthralled. But which to chose? First up the young Stephen showed us how we could use our retro rockets and land a module of the lunar variety. We were soon setting ourselves new challenges on that one. Could we almost land on the extreme left, then thrust up and make it to the right of the screen before the fuel ran out? How late could we leave firing those rockets? And so forth.

The following day though, it was time to really explore. So into the caves we ventured. North, East, East, South. Kill that spider. Get that Gold. And then a wonderous thing occurred. A torch was found, and the top half of the screen which had until now been mysteriously empty began to fill up. A map drew itself before our eyes as we moved about and at that point I knew. We had to have something at home to do this with.

So the campaign began.

And much to our surprise it didn't take long before evidence of giving in began to appear in the house. Magazines with the C word on could be found in the new back room. But nothing was to come to fruition before Christmas.

Then, as winter faded into spring a box was brought home from work one Friday. It had the word Sinclair and the code ZX81 printed upon it. The television was commandeered. Polystyrene was removed from around the black boxes. Manuals were consulted. A tape recorder was purloined from the kitchen. Plugs went in to sockets. Power was connected and behold, the cursor was blinking upon the screen.

It had begun.

By Monday we had made our first attempts at getting it to do things. We had seen those black lines strobing across the screen as things were commited to and retrieved from WH Smiths C15 tapes. And we had played games. In our own home. From now on things would never be the same again.

And of course the joy had to be shared. When lunchtime came around and Mark Adams boasted that his Dad had promised him an Atari if he went to Stanborough school while the rest of us were destined for Sir Freds across the road I could not contain my news. OK, so perhaps it was only balck and white and had no sound, but the ZX81 could be made to do things the Atari could never dream of. Already the magazines informed us of proper keyboards, connections to real printers, people doing their accounts, writing to the papers and even controlling their lights with them. And we had games as well to think of. Take that MA!

Not that we ever expanded beyond the 16k ram pak of course. But the potential was there. And by the time the transition to Sir Freds had been made, and I no longer got in trouble for telling people we had a computer ("You don't know who might be listening, it is an expensive thing that could be stolen") the mystery of how it worked was begining to be revealed.

Those hours copying in listings from Sinclair User were paying off. And although we would soon be hankering for more power and the other delights offered by the new Spectrum there was still time to impress my new friends from other primary schools. So, in preparation the adventure game we had so laboriously keyed in was loaded up. The listing was once again examined and the treasure value of the poisonous snail changed.

So, when Andy Fish reckoned he could get a higher treasure score than either of us the next day he was in for a surprise. Only we knew the right combination of kill, hit and stab that would dispatch the beast in less than six attacks and reward us with the previously tinkered with maximum points. Only we would be able to get out of that dungeon with a bulging sack. And only we knew how to make that happen.

Cheating? A hollow victory? Oh no. A simple case of boys vs boys vs machine. And we knew we had him beaten. We went on to give up hacking in favour of just playing the games. He went on to be saddled with a Camputers Newbrain so we once more emerged victorious.

Simon

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