Entertainment For Lively Minds
Fun in Space
If you ran down to the refectory at Brighton Polytechnic and got your 10p in the slot first, you could spend your entire lunchtime cleaning up the universe in your conical cosmic JCB, while your cigarette burned the paint off the console’s fascia.
Asteroids was crack to Space Invaders’ weed. I’d tried the latter at school, of course, and thought I could handle it, but within weeks I was walking three miles every night to feed the gaping maw of the Galaxians on Eastbourne Pier. I dabbled in Defender before getting hooked on the rocks.
Essentially a Sisyphean exercise in the futility of labour, Asteroids took you to some remote galaxy where you were tasked to reduce whole belts of astral bodies to rubble, much as chain gangs were once expected to smash stones into smaller stones, for ever and ever, or until you died. At least the prisoners didn’t have the distraction of occasional aliens, who’d fly by and shoot at you – a bit unfairly, I thought, as surely they’d be beneficiaries of the Space Debris Reduction Programme too.
At the higher levels you’d feel like your tiny ship was at the centre of a black hole, sucking the entire universe towards you at warp speed; but you’d pirouette like a bullfighter and let the big rocks graze your hips as you took them on one by one. That was the trick – if you shot indiscriminately, you’d fill the screen with tiny, high-speed boulders and leave yourself nowhere to hide.
The coolest thing in the cosmos was to leave one large rock intact until last. Then you’d let it drift to within an inch of your cannons and then give it the middle finger - five light-speed taps of death to despatch it, a drag on your fag, a slurp of your Coke, a glance out of the window like a weary space contractor dreaming of home, and then punch in for the next job.
Earlier this week I was at an event that had some retro arcade games to amuse bored guests. My old addicts’ instincts told me there were rocks nearby, and there it was, my old friend and nemesis. One game can’t hurt, can it? I found that despite my old man eyes and wine-fuddled reactions, my fingers remembered what to do. I stood like a passenger and watched them recall muscle memories from thirty years ago. I lasted a few levels before getting mowed down by the tiny UFO that screams across the screen just when you think you’ve won, and walked away happy that I could walk away. And then I started smoking again.
So….arcade games, anyone?
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I never had any interest in arcade games...
but Space Invaders, or rather a particular Space Invaders machine, brings back some poignant memories.
When I was a kid my Mum and Dad had a cottage in Wales. Every so often we used to drive to the nearby town of Caersws where there was a top notch fish and chips restaurant. In around 1979 (when I was 10) every kid in the village was incredibly excited by the arrival of a Space Invaders machine. Whenever I went in there I would see ten or twelve of them crowded around it, each desperate to be the next to play.
Years later I used to go up to the cottage with some friends and make mischief. We passed by Caersws one time and I decided to pop into the restaurant, which was still there. As were the now teenage kids I'd seen long before, still crowded around the Space Invaders machine. Only by that time the screen was cracked and it barely functioned, if at all. Those ebullient children I'd remembered weren't doing much better, their pale, sunken faces and hollowed cheeks giving the game away. In recent years heroin had arrived in Caersws; an even more addictive and infinitely more tragic alternative to whiling away the hours playing an arcade game.
Bomb Jack...
...stole my adolescence...
I also dabbled recreationally in the occasional team sport of Gauntlet, and fell for a game whose name escapes me now which was a wire-frame sort of affair whereby ones line-based craft slinked around the interior of a long wire tube of sorts, and had a rotary control and button to blast those darned line-based foes into, um, littler lines.
Them were the days.
That would be
Tempest. Fiendishly difficult.
I was a pinball wizard
On the way home from school I would call in an amusement arcade with my friends and play the pinball machines. It was easy to develop an addiction when you understood the nuances of your favourite contraption; when to nudge, when to hold the ball on the flippers (keep it clean - Ed.) and how to guess the lucky number for a free game.
Move into work, day-release at college then full-time Polytechnic. Rooms full of pinball machines and new favourites. Working for the Student Union, in a position with a grand title, I became a person who could choose what pinball machines we hired and got to sample their delights at the suppliers headquarters. Ye gods I could even hold the golden key that gave me unlimited access to free games so I need never go home again. Non-stop flipping and nudging to my hearts content on machines adorned with Playboy models or The Kiss Band logo.
I've probably not played the pinball in over 25 years. I have an itch now that needs to be scratched but I shall resist. I no longer have the golden key.
Brian Protheroe - Pinball
Such a supple wrist
sorry Len, nothing for you here :D
this was my addiction in art school days -
@ The Beanster, have you tried any of the Pinball Apps available from Apple's AppStore? I bought two and they're fantastic!
and
which also has Jungle Style and Wild West bundled, all 4 for about five quid.
Job's a good un'.
Harlem Globetrotters:
The business.
Shame I wasn't as good at Creative Photography as I was at racking up the replays on this.
There is a simulation over at Virtual Pinball, apparently.
How ironic..
Gorgar was my favourite table at Uni..
I owned a Whirlwind and (proud me) a Twilight Zone for a while. Circumstances and marriage saw the back of them, though.
Atari Battlezone
I once got an hour and three quarters play from a single ten pence piece. It was all about repeating the same technique. Pull back. Pull left. Fire. Pull back. Pull left. Fire. And so on.
http://www.atari.com/play/atari/battlezone
Scramble
Was my addiction between the ages of 12 and 14. There was a machine down our local chip shop. My mum knew I'd been there from the smell of my jumper.
What was the one...
...where you controlled a spaceship in 2D while the scenary scrolled underneath whist tanks and gun turrets/towers fired at you? You could go up and down, or 'viff' Harrier style....you could get down low and fire forwards at the tanks, or had bombs which you had to judge the trajectory thereof. Not Galaxians...what the hell was it? My God, I want to play it now...
Sounds like Scramble
Substitute rockets and fuel dumps for tanks and turrets, and you've described it to a tee.
Track and Field
Whlst in Eastbourne my arcade of choice was generally the "regal" rather than the pier. It was more hardcore. No tourists out for a day trip and walking through the pier arcade on the way to see the glass sculptures and saucy postcards.
I dabbled with asteroids but found it too difficult. I had already invested so much money in Galaxian and Gorf that to start learning another one was just too daunting, a bit like foolishly trying to learn the piano at the age of 47; one just has to give up. And Asteroids - it was just a black screen and a load of little white lines. I thought Galaxian and Gorf were prettier, more colourful, more fully formed - more realistic.
However while you were at Poly I was avoiding lectures at Bath College of Higer Education by wasting most of my full student grant (those were the days - no wonder grants were abolished) and most of my time (i.e. when someone else had already bagged the snooker table in the student union) playing Track and Field. This was where one assumed the persona of Daley Thompson and contested the sprint, hurdles, long jump, hammer, javelin and high jump. It was the peak of my athletic career. There was some timing and judgement involved to get the angles right in the throws and jumps, but mostly the required skill was a frantic jabbing motion with the favoured finger. I would even now, still be confident enough to pit my finger jabbing skills against all comers, but I don't think there would be many takers. I haven't found it to be a very useful/transferable skill either.
Don't diss the 'Roids dude!
Track & Field was deadly on the fingers. People lost whole hands playing that. Worn down to the wrists, they were.
Asteroids.
Always was my favourite. Still is. The artistry and simplicity is wonderful, as is the play. The matador-esque dodge, vector and thrust..
Anyone who dreams of games past needs to downoad MAME. Multi Arcade-Machine Emulator. Turns your computer into an arcade machine.
http://mamedev.org/
You then need to get the ROM files for the games you wish to play. These are tiny.
http://www.rom-world.com/dl.php?name=MAME
Put the lot together, follow instructions, configure controls and enjoy.
I showed Asteroids, Super Cobra, Galaxian, Galaga and others to the twelve year old child of a mate of mine the other day. Kept him quiet for ages.
There's also a couple of iPad apps for classic arcade games.