4. Money is the Root of All Evil

'Money is the route of all evil' someone once said. Grandma Foster was obviously quite impressed with this and put it to memory. She would dig the phrase out every now and then and instill its furious message upon her 11 year old Grandson with a waggling index finger and a stern look. Her Grandson would then resign himself to the fact that he would be leaving without a shiny pound coin this time.

Money is hard to come by when you're a kid.

Remember these? Blimey.

And since my £1 per week pocket money had recently been spent 'frivolously' on a comic book, Mum and Dad had put a stop to that too. So it was with some considerable relief that its re-instatement just happened to coincide with my acquisition of a new computer. Saving began in earnest.

But it was becoming difficult finding Amiga games even in early 1994. A quick search of shops in Bishop's Stortford had come up with nothing, and even a 30 minute car journey to Harlow and its myriad of shops had proven fruitless. For a few months, Amiga magazine cover-disks had to suffice. I can still remember the wave of excitement which almost swept me off of my feet in WHSmith when I saw a Mortal Kombat demo taped to the front of a rather technical looking magazine called CU Amiga (as an aside, I can also remember the wave of bitter sadness which hit me in the very same shop 4 years later when I found that CU was to close).

As usual, mum gave me the lecture about '£3.95 being awfully expensive for a magazine', but after allowing just a little moisture to gather in the tear ducts and some resplendent pleading, I was standing on tiptoes at the till with four pound coins clamped in my sweaty palm.

CU Amiga was a bit of a revelation. It was full of articles written by people with thick-rimmed glasses and long hair. They all seemed to be going on about arcane things called 'Catweasles', 'Overdrives' and bizarrely of all something called 'HAM8'. I sat hunched in my gloomy bedroom pretending to know what all of this meant but secretly feeling completely out of my depth.

After maybe 30 pages of meaningless technobabble, I came to 'Screen Scene' and breathed a sigh of relief. You could play games on Amigas after all! And among all of this was a double page advertisement for a company called 'Special Reserve'. Special Reserve had vast lists of Amiga games for sale. As I ran my index finger down the price lists, I was elated to see that some of these games cost only a little over a fiver each! A gloomy photograph in one corner of the page showed a room filled with row after row of games, all packed in shiny cardboard boxes, just waiting to be picked up and played. I had to visit this hallowed place.

Like a fine wine

As it turned out Special Reserve had a store in Sawbridgeworth, not ten minutes up the road from my house. Not only did they boast a huge library of games for all of the major formats of the day, you also had to be a member to actually buy anything. For a whole week I lay awake at night, fantasising about this amazing place. I imagined weaving in and out of dark back alleys, skulking secretly among the shadows until I came across a gloomy and seemingly derelict building. There would be bouncers of course, to keep the riff raff out. I'd flash my membership card at them and they'd step dutifully to one side. No, actually, one of them would hold the door open for me... then my mother would try to follow me in, but they'd stop her because she wasn't a member. Quite right. Members only. Sorry.

The reality was, of course, a little different. We actually ended up going to the Chelmsford branch with my Grandma and Grandpa Clowes, who spoiled me rotten by not only paying for my membership, but also for the game I was after; the rather funky Monkey Island 2.

What a cheeky little, um, monkey!

Now that I had a place to buy software from, my interest in gaming rocketed. It felt pretty damn-good looking through Amiga Power and knowing that if I had enough money, I could play any of the games I came across. I had discovered something which was less a hobby, more a way of life and by jingo it was fun. The sensationalist 'Games Addiction and Your Child' leaflet which my mum had picked up from the library was soon ignored and trampled under foot. If this was an addiction, then it was fine by me.

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