So it all started back in 1980, when we moved to a little seaside village on the North Norfolk coast called Walcott. Little did I know that this move would change by life, forever. As an 11yr old, I was turning my back on the toys of my past (Action Men, Airfix model kits, and Britains farm toys) and looking for more engrossing forms of entertainment. Coming from a farming family, I had previously lived in small villages hidden away in rural Norfolk and my parents weren’t really into technology. We had a colour TV and record player but that was about it. Then the 80’s arrived and so did videogames.

Ah, 1980, quite a year. The Jam were ‘Going underground’, the Vapors were ‘Turning Japanese’, and I was going down to our local arcade. Living on the coast was a year of two halves. During winter it was a cold and dreary ghost-town, but in the summer was a busy time with holiday-makers and visitors to the beach. As much fun as the beach was, the novelty eventually wore off, and I soon started to explore my new surroundings. Back in the 80’s every coastal village and town had at least one arcade and we had two in Walcott. One was housed in The Kingfisher, which is a large building on seafront (still), which consisted of a chippy, restaurant, gift shop / ice-cream kiosk, and the small arcade. The other one was located at the Coastline Holiday Village which was just up the road from our house.

The arcade at the Kingfisher was the one I spent the most time in (as my Mum worked in the chip shop next-door) and, for it’s size, it featured some classics. It had seven machines, which included Pac-man, Warlords, Asteroids, Defender, Lunar Rescue, and Astroblaster. I don’t remember what the other machine was but I’m sure it wasn’t a videogame, so may have been a fruit machine. So as I walked into this arcade for the first time, I had entered the world of videogames, and it was a total assault on the senses. The wacka-wacka of Pacman, the deep boom of exploding asteroids, and the zings from Defender, but there was one game that really caught my attention. As I stood looking at the screens, a voice suddenly called out ‘Fighter pilots needed for Sector Wars, play Astroblaster’. I was transfixed by this strange metallic voice. I started by watching the older kids playing the machines and was envious of the high scores that got. I managed to persuade my Mum to let me have some change and soon I inserted my 10 pence and started the game. The games were over quickly but I was hooked. I didn’t really play the other on the machines (especially Defender with all it’s controls – although there was one kid called Liam Larter who was a real whiz on it) . There were only so much change I could scrouge from my Mum so most of the time I was watching other people play the games, although the odd person would let me have a game (they probably felt sorry for me).

My first experience with computers came when I reached high-school at North Walsham. They didn’t have a dedicated computer class, in fact the only computer I saw was in the Agriculture Studies classroom, this was a Commodore PET and was absolutely not used for playing games, never ever. As the summer break approached, a friend mentioned that there was a ZX81 computer that was loaned out over the break. There wasn’t really many kids interested in computers, so when I asked, I was told I could take it home. Thinking back, it seems a strange thing to do as I don’t remember the ZX81 being used during term-time, so maybe one of the teachers brought their own in. Anyway, it was more fun then taking one of the school gerbils home, which I had done the year before.

After setting up the ZX81 on our little Ferguson black and white portable TV, I realised that I was missing something (well, two things, but we’ll come to the other thing shortly), I had nothing to do. I didn’t have a user guide to follow or anything to type in. Ah, thankfully my friend, Barry Talbot (his parents used to run The Ship pub in Bacton), had a folder with some game listings written in something called ‘BASIC’, so a quick bike ride to the Pub (and after Barry had terrified me with a horror film he was watching) , I got back home and started typing away. It wasn’t log before I had a block moving around a simple maze. It didn’t match the colourful and noisy games in the arcade but it was a start. I then realised the other thing I was missing and that was a way to ‘save’ my programs. So after patiently typing for 15 minutes, all I could was switch off when I was finished playing and then starting with another game. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted but I still hung out in the arcade to try and get some goes on Astroblaster. I think my parents were getting fed up with me constantly asking for change as we soon had our first videogames console at home.

And so the Voltmace Database console arrived and was quickly connected to the little Ferguson black and white tv. It was no Atari VCS or Colecovision, but to honest I wasn’t even aware of other home consoles so for me it was perfect. I’m sure the fact that the local Hughes TV store in North Walsham was selling them off cheap had nothing to do with it. But it was entertaining and ‘Earth Invasion’ (the console’s version of Space Invaders), wasn’t too bad even if it was a little slow. We also had a game called ‘Shooting Gallery’, which had rabbits, birds, and other creatures scrolling along the top of the screen whilst you controlled a little chap who would shoot upwards and try to hit them (they would move at different speeds to make it more challenging). Often I would sit down with my bottle of ‘cola’ from our Soda-Stream and play for as long as I could before somebody else wanted to use the TV (it was in the kitchen so Mum would want to use it if she was working in there). So from now on, after watching Noel Edmonds ‘Multi-coloured Swap Shop’ (on the black and white tv), I would try to beat my high score on ‘Earth Invasion’. Eventually we got another two game cartridges, ‘Air Sea Battle’ was just ‘Shooting Gallery’ but with ships, submarines, planes, and helicopters, and the other one was a space game where you had to line up the ships in your sights and shoot them plus there was another game type where you had to land a little lunar module on an asteroid. I’m sure after a couple of months the cartridges had paid for themselves with all the 10 pence pieces my parents had saved.

Having a games console at home was the catalyst for my future interest in the subject, even if I didn’t realise it at the time. At the same time I started spending the summer holidays at my Aunties. When she moved near to Great Yarmouth I would get regular visits to the arcades. She also had a Commodore 64 but without any interesting games I never gave it much of a look (I missed the perfect time to learn about BASIC and the Commodore 64 but I guess there were plenty of other things to do so it never dawned on me). I do remember one game called ‘Out Back’, with a really annoying rendition of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ that played over and over again. I later recognised the game as a clone of Pooyan.

I spent a few fun years at Walcott but eventually we moved near to Norwich. It was a bit of a shock as for the first time, we lived in a built-up area and there wasn’t the ‘countryside’ that I had enjoyed so far. It even took a while to get used to the orange glow of street lights that shown all through the night. But the move certainly allowed me to pursue my gaming journey in a way that wouldn’t have been possible had we stayed in Walcott. It was 1984 and Madonna was on ‘Holiday’, Frankie Goes To Hollywood was getting banned with ‘Relax’, and Limahl was singing about the ‘Never Ending Story’ (which I think this is starting to become), but it wasn’t just the music was that getting interesting.

If there was one event that would change my life forever, it was the fact that I could now take a ‘Computer Studies’ class at Costessey High, something that wasn’t an option back in North Walsham. And it turned out that I had an aptitude for the subject. bearing in the mind the year, you may be surprised to read that the computers we had in the computer room were Commodore PET’s, ah they came back to haunt me again. It was quite common at the time for schools to have the famous BBC Micro but the only one we had was in the Maths room, next door. But it was school and we were supposed to be learning so those lovely green screens, slow tape decks, and a whopping 8kb of RAM was just fine for learning BASIC and the concepts of a computer. If you were really lucky you could use the machine on the teachers desk (good old Mr Bailey), which had an eye-watering 32kb AND a floppy disk drive! I did get to use the BBC Micro a few times as the teacher would allow us to play on it during break times so I got to see Frak!, Revs, and Sabre Wulf.

As the old Voltmace had been going for a few years by now, it was beginning to get a bit worn out (and I was ready to move on to something more engaging). I managed to persuade my parents that I should have my own computer to help with my with studies at school (that might actually have been true at the time, I’m sure it had nothing to do with wanting to play better games at home). Anyway, I ended up with the ‘Mattel Aquarius’. We got it from ASDA and it seemed like a good idea at the time (I’m sure the decision was also based on it’s price as the computer was already heavily discounted, even though it had only just been released). I absolutely loved it and would play around on it a lot (when I could use the TV). I did read through the guide that came with it and worked through the BASIC listings but I didn’t have a tape deck so couldn’t save anything (I think a tape deck cost almost as much as the computer).

I soon realised that it was not easy to get games for the Aquarius as it wasn’t a mainstream machine so none of the computer shops had anything, nor did WH Smith, Boots, or Debenhams (all good places to find computers and games at the time). In fact the only shop that had any was John Menzies on Gentleman’s Walk (they had a small selection of cartridges in their games section upstairs). As a 14yr old with his first computer, I would gaze longingly at the great artwork on the front of boxes and thought how exciting the games sounded. The only problem was that the games were amazingly expensive (£25 or even £30 I seem to remember). I had two games that we bought with the computer at ASDA, Astrosmash and Tron Deadly Discs. As you can imagine, they got a lot of play!

Although the Aquarius was a lot of fun, I did grow out of it pretty quickly. In fact, I think I only had it for about 18 months before I sold it (my parents persuaded me to sell it on live radio!). It was terrible knowing that hundreds (okay, maybe 10 or so) people were listening but it did the trick and the Aquarius was sold soon after (I must have had a knack for selling computers…). I wasn’t really sorry to see the back of it as my school friends had better machines, Clive had the Texas Ti-99/4a, Craig had the Commodore VIC-20, and Mark had the Dragon 32 (not sure how much better than my Aquarius that was though), and kid with rich parents had the BBC Micro. I needed a better computer and this time I was going to get a tape deck!!

It was 1985 and the Pet Shop Boys where storming the charts with ‘West End Girls’, Talking Heads were on the ‘Road to Nowhere’, and Simple Minds were ‘Alive and Kicking’. I wasn’t doing too bad either, now being the proud owner of an Atari 800XL and 1010 tape deck (at last). Unfortunately (or maybe ironically), I soon discovered that the 1010 tape deck had problems. It appeared that the buttons were a little fragile and the one that caused the most trouble was the record button. We must have taken it back to Brainwave (later to become One Step Beyond) at least three times and my Dad had decided enough was enough. I will never forget that day, my Dad started to make a big scene in-front of everybody in the shop. He got the managers attention and it was finally sorted properly. It’s funny, looking back on it, as I would one day be working in One Step Beyond. The manager, Alan, did get his own back on me by making me re-tune all the Commodore C2N tape decks that came back but that is a story for later.

One of the coolest things about the Atari was the face that the tape deck could hold data and audio on different tracks. This was used on the introduction tapes that came with my computer, so the ‘lesson’ would load and then you would get the audio instructions that you would follow on-screen. It was also used by a certain Andrew Betts (programmer of Warhawk on the Atari), once the game had loaded, the tape carried on and played a Jean Michael Jarre track and fooled at least one person who thought it was the in-game music and couldn’t understand why it sounded so good. The introduction tapes were a great help in learning Atari BASIC and that would turn out to be very useful for my school ‘O’ Level studies.

So after making my parents feel happier about their purchase by learning how to use it, I soon got onto the games. The first game I was given was ‘Gridrunner’ by Llamasoft, but as soon as it loaded I realised that I needed a joystick to play the game (I had been so used to using the keyboard on the Aquarius that it hadn’t dawned on me that some computers needed a joystick). Luckily I managed to persuade my Dad to take me down to the local BB Adams at Bowthorpe and splash out on a nice Quickshot 2 joystick for £8.99. At last I was gaming on a decent machine. The next game I got was ‘Captain Sticky’s Gold’ (don’t ask), which was a game by English Software and had a rather jolly theme tune. When it came to Christmas, my Aunty (the one with the Commodore 64) splashed out and bought me Pac-man on cartridge. I was so excited to unwrap it, only to find she had bought me the Atari VCS version. My disappointment was only matched by her insistence on ‘trying to make it fit’. Oh well, it was the thought that counts. At least I did get some other tapes, including Atari Smash Hits Volumes 1 and 2 by English Software, which included five games on each tape. They may not have been the best games for the XL but they were fun and one game, called Diamonds, was even played by my Mum and she was never interested in games before.

There is one last story about my trusty Atari that I’d like to share. As the computers at school were rather ‘lacking’ in capabilities, I was really struggling to design a project for my ‘O’ Level Computer Studies exam. Eventually I managed to talk the teacher into letting me do it on my Atari (I was the only one that didn’t do it on the Commodore PET). So I started working on ‘Irata Quiz’ (I know, not exactly a clever title), which was basically a multi-choice quiz game based on several categories of questions. It was nothing special but I was proud of it, although it was a challenge to come up with enough questions to make it interesting. There was just one problem, I had to supply a listing of the program for the teacher to look at and I didn’t have a printer. My parents weren’t willing to buy one so I had to ring around the various shops in Norwich that sold Atari items and ask if any would be willing to let me use one of their printers. Most of them couldn’t help (I can’t remember if I rang Brainwave, but after the fiasco with the tape deck, I doubt they would have been helpful). Eventually I received a positive response from the ‘Norwich Camera Centre’, which were based in ‘Back of the Inns’. I had to being my tape and they had an Atari setup and connected to an Epson EX800 printer. As it was a quiz program, it contained pages and pages of question and answer data and these old dot-matrix printers weren’t the fastest so we stood around waiting for the noisy Epson to churn out page and page of computer code. The staff were really kind and didn’t charge me for doing it (they just asked that I put me a good word about the shop to my friends – little would they know (or me at the time) that a couple of years later I would be working for one of their rivals). The program impressed my teacher and it was considerably more complex then many of the programs on the PET computers (they did only have 8kb though).

Before taking my ‘O’ Level computer exam I had attended Norwich City College to take an aptitude test for a place on their Computer Studies course after I left school. I passed the initial test and was offered a provisional place but had to achieve two ‘O’ Level passes at school (it was going to tight as I was only able to take Computer Studies and Geography at ‘O’ Level so would need to pass both). I had now decided that I wanted to start a career in computers and everything was looking good, with a college place waiting for me but something terrible was about to happen.

After designing Irata Quiz, all I had to do was sit the written exam and I was sorted. The exam times were printed out and displayed in the foyer outside the main school hall, so students could look down the list for their exam and make a note of the date and time. The geography exam went well but when I turned up to do the Computer course, I realised I had written down the wrong date and I had missed it. I was completely devasted and angry with myself for making such a stupid mistake. My whole future had now been destroyed and I suddenly I really didn’t know what to do. Without the college place I felt my path was now blocked. As I walked home I fought back the tears but it was no good and I really wasn’t looking forward to breaking the news to my parents. When I spoke to the school, they suggested I sit the exam on a different day, which I did, but still got a X on the results slip. Oh well, it was too late now.

Read the next episode of ‘Life Is But A Game’ to find out what happened in ‘The Next Generation’. Thanks for letting me share my past adventures with you all. I hope you found it interesting and feel to leave a comment if you want to share your stories with me.

Article and images by Gary Skipper, April 2006 (revised June 2014 & December 2024)