Something Wicked

Well today I am going to throw them away. I've been staring at them for a while and it's a shame, but they have got to go...my remaining tape cassette computer games.

Of course, many of them are not entirely original (ahem), but as a young teenager cash flow could be a bit of an issue.

But I look at the names now and I remember well bits.. fragments of hardwired images, names and promises. 

Penetrator was a great copy of the defender arcade game, much played. 

It on a tape with a game called Joust, and on side b is Time-Gate, a larger concept (like a movie compared to a TV episode) with the properties of the hyperspace leap after each level.

There were the little miracles created by the company,  Ultimate, or to give their full title "Ultimate, Play the Game", which astounded everybody with their graphics. Pssst, Jet Pac, Lunar Jet man, Atic Atac were names that will strike a chord with an entire generation.

There were other software  -  Vu3D, Corridors of Genon, not famous, but I remember writing to a magazine and winning 3 games. Not with any skill, just because I gave it a go. 

So now you know those people who say - "I never win anything" - well ever since I won three games, I haven't been able to say that. Annoying! Of course I never played them anyway they looked boring. One was just for drawing and designing pictures. You didn't have too kill anybody.

But all of this promise was waiting for you at the promise of a single concept, which was this : Load Quotes.

Or rather Load "" - the command the Speccy needed to receive your bidding (when it felt like it).

There are games played and many unplayed. Many that I only got to level 1, but all of whose images and promise of excitement that I lived with.

That I still live with.

The tapes are neatly labelled and magazine picture cutouts glued onto the front of the WHSmith C15. A 15 minute tape!! WHSmith were teaching us to be pirates - when have they sold a 15 minute tape cassette since?

I'm looking at Cookie, 3-D Deathchase, Kong, Meteoroids, zip Zap (from Imagine.. the Name of the Game, another big brand). There's Zzoom, Halls of the Things, The Pyramid of which I remember almost nothing and Mr Wimpy , which I think I enjoyed playing for a while. The "for a while" of course, is redundant. It just seems suitably nostalgic.

And Magic Mountain, whose colourful image strikes cords.

Of course, on the Spectrum, the defining image of the opening screen was the miracle that peeled into sight during the noisy download.

The tension was heightened by holding your breath in the hope that the programme was going to load, and not fail at the last second, but it was often a coin toss. You learned to live on your nerves. It made me the man I am today. A nervous wreck!

Jungle Fever (or was it Jungle Trouble as it seems I had both), was fun. I remember having the ambition to design a game of my own. Cluelessly optimistic even at an early age, having no idea where to begin programming. I was always impressed by the boys at school who could write machine code.

They might as well have been telepathic.

How ironic that this week I heard on the news schoolkids (do we call the students now ?) are to be taught machine language again.

Too late. I think. Too late.

The machines have already won.

Scrabble I played a lot and successfully managed to load onto the microdrive -  quite a coup in my house both having it and getting it onto the microdrive. This meant that it didn't take forever to load (when the micro drive behaved itself - it was still tape, but a faster version). And when I had gone to bed Dad could load it easily and play Scrabble himself. 

I am discarding old favourites like Arcadia, annoyances like Horace goes skiing, rip-offs like Spectres (which I'm assuming was indistinguishable from the insanely popular Pac Man ) and Tanx (?).

I remember having a soft spot for Dictator but I can't remember why. And filling up that tape is Slippery Sid, Gobble-a-ghost (another PacMan ripoff??), something called Crosser and Demolish. I can't believe I would have played many of those.

And a little bit of magic called the Key... which could unlock the world of game piracy.

Tucked away on the same tape is Tranz Am... had a bit of fun with that one... And on the original Sinclair ZX Spectrum free tape was Android Nim, Stock Market (didn't learn much from that!).. and Biorhythms.. I played that a bit with great fascination and perplexment. You entered your date of birth and graphs of your personal performance and emotion appeared. In fact, the tape inset says the programme plots the "cycling variations of human vitality, emotion and intellect". How about that?

How about that, ladies and gentlemen?

1982!

And in a big doubletape box a game called "The Black Crystal" - an adventure game (everybody was always looking for another Hobbit - the outstanding spectrum adventure game..) but one that was too difficult, or too difficult for me, or just not engaging.

Still hardwired with the powerful image though as this was an original.

I also have one game that I really persisted with. One that not many Spectrum users will be familiar with.

It was called the Black Planet.

It had seven tasks and I played it quite a lot.

On one occasion I completed all seven tasks.

I revealed the secret code word and then could send off for a badge.

I can't believe I would have thrown the badge away, considering what I went through to get it.. but it said something to the effect of "I cracked the code".Or I escaped The Black Planet". And very happy I was to too. It was an achievement. Satisfying because it was difficult.

Those games pretty much marked my entry and exit into computer games.

I do think I've missed out on further worlds. But what can you do?

I have touched on a bit of Sonic the Hedgehog, and been amazed with the worlds. But things are a little bit too 3-D for me now, less interesting.

The great thing is you can go on to youTube, you can go on a walk through many of those unfinished games. It closes off a lot of open-ended synapses. Games you never finished now be completed.

You can relive your childhood.

You can get closure.

Why am I telling you about this in a somewhat literal retrospective?

Well, I'm not telling you this.

I'm telling myself.

This is a note from the past to the future.

The present isn't the time or place for this.

I'm not here to recount my adventures, I just mention one or two along the way in passing.

I am throwing these games away today... but I have a sneaky idea in my head that I haven't finished revisiting them.

I'm really just writing the names down.

So I can come back this wicked way once more.