It would be fair to say that I'm fairly bitter about missing the lauded 'Golden Age' of computer gaming. Year after year, birthday's and Christmas's would come and go, yielding at best a tacky LCD game, but still no sign of a proper machine. That's not to say that the young Truemetaluk didn't enjoy his childhood; long summer days hunched over a keyboard were instead spent riding bikes, climbing trees and slowly obtaining a healthy collection of scars to prove it. Computer games became something I would dabble in at each and every available opportunity, but their overall absence was duly tolorated. Still, my parent's must have breathed a huge sigh of relief when a slightly disturbing fixation with World War 2, guns and death filled the void instead. This interest, fuelled by great stacks of vintage comic books and Sunday afternoon war films was shared with my oldest friend, Graham King. Together we obessesed over The Battle of Britain, Dunkirk, The Third Reich. We didn't think about anything else. At school, we'd play war games, on our days off we'd build airfix models before watching war films - it was something our parents weren't keen to promote, but what could they do about it?

Perhaps it was this which spurred Graham's parents on to buy him his first computer for Christmas 1990 - A BBC Micro. I'd played on one of these some 4 years previously, and like a whole generation of English kids, had grown up with them at school (before they upgraded to Arcorn Archamedies that is), but Grahams came with a huge stack of games. It was a dream come true. I was at Grahams so often that the machine may as well have belonged to me, and its relative antiquity (even at the time) didn't matter one iota. Whilst the Sega Master System had steadily become the machine of choice at St.Michael's JMI (with its confounded Sega Club which I had been acrimoniously denied membership to on account of my lacking any Sega machine whatsoever...Ben Johnson, Phillip Jones, Simon Barrie - if you're reading this: you utter, utter bastards...) I stuck out like some kind of 8 year old guru. I (sort of) owned a BBC Micro, I was different, I was hardcore. At least in my mind. 'I've just played Dynamite Duke and it's amazing' some poor misguided peer would spout. 'Yeah, it's ok' I'd sneer, whilst mercilessly squashing an ant 'although of course it owes a huge debt to Superior Software's classic - nay seminal - Stryker's Run.'

I didn't actually have any idea of what I was talking about, but by dropping the odd name and waxing about obscure games which nobody had heard of, I managed to swindle myself a reputation as someone who new his computer games. Of course, I could kick myself for missing out on the excited wait for Sonic 2 or Super Mario Kart when they were originally released, but in a way, perhaps things had panned out for the best. I didn't miss out entirely on the 80's gaming scene. In a way I grew up with it, even if this happened in the early 90's. I doubt that I'd have the interest and enthusiasm for retro games that I posess today if I hadn't experienced 5.1/2 floppies, 4-bit graphics and classics like the Repton series in my youth. This circumstance is undoubtably what made computer games so important to me. The snobby, elitest members of The Sega Club...I wonder how far their passion for gaming extends beyond a post pub game of Pro Evolution Soccer?

The BBC Micro served Graham and I for three years, when at long last I finally aquired a machine of my own. I haven't looked back since. Graham is still a big fan of armed conflict, and is now heavily involved in military re-enactment.

I'm not saying a word.

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