The first confession, I suppose, is yes, I am that old.
I was a part of the first generation that had the privilege of a home computer. I remember “Pong” first (the bloke across the road had it) in the 70s, then the original Atari console (my friend Darren had it and it made him the most popular boy in the year). And then came the home computer.
Most people who got one ended up with the ZX Spectrum. Not us though. There is a Baker family gene that means we are physically incapable of buying the popular mainstream gadget du jour. That’s why we ended up with a Betamax VCR, whilst literally everyone else I know got a VHS. There was a weekly trip, 30 miles away to go to a video rentals shop that actually stocked Betamax tapes.
And that’s why we got a Dragon 32. Let me explain the home computer. Like a modern games console, it plugged into the TV. This was great in one way – we got to play on a big screen. The major drawback was that this was the early 80s, and most houses only had a single television. We could play only when a grown-up didn’t want to watch the telly, which ruled out evenings and large chunks of the weekend.
(As an aside, TV back then consisted of THREE channels. A James Bond film being shown was a national event. Nowadays, I have four hundred channels to choose from, plus Netflix, and no end of streaming options. And often, I still can’t find anything to watch.)
Once the computer was hooked up, there it was: a blank screen with a flashing cursor. When it was first set up, it was staggeringly underwhelming. You had to tell it to do everything, and you did this using a computer language, the most ubiquitous being “BASIC”.
The first bit of programming every schoolboy (back then, there was a very distinct gender split – computers were a boy’s toy) was this:
10 PRINT “MAT BAKER IS BRILLIANT”
20 GOTO 10
You would then instruct the computer to “RUN”
The screen would then fill up with whatever message was sandwiched between the quotation marks. To be fair, “MAT BAKER IS BRILLIANT” was not used by too many people.
Now, I never got the hang of BASIC. My brother took to it like a young Hollywood actor to cocaine, as did my friend Robin. It was too much like hard work for me. All I wanted to do was play games. The very first game we got was a text only adventure game called “Mansion”. That’s right. You heard me. Text only. No graphics whatsoever. I remember the first gaming session well with peculiar accuracy. We were stuck outside said mansion, with an iron bar, mysteriously engraved with the incomprehensible message “4U2PRY”.
This had us stuck for two whole hours. This was pre-text speak, so we were completely thrown by this bewildering code. Eventually, someone suggested we type in “PRY DOOR”, and we were away.
Jesus. It was *so* exciting. And there is no sarcasm there. It. Was. Brilliant.
I need to rewind though, because I have skipped an important part of the gaming process. Loading games. And trust me, rewinding was an all too repetitive task.
You see, games came on a cassette tape. You hooked up a cassette player to the computer, and typed in “LOAD “MANSION” (or whatever), and then pressed the play button. After a few seconds, the tape player would begin to make this extraordinary shrieking noise. If you have ever heard an old fashioned MODEM working, it was very similar to that.
And then the game would begin to download. It could take ages. The screen would flash, the shrieking would continue, and we sat around, utterly transfixed. And then…and then…it would crash. The screen would freeze, and we would have to start the whole goddamned thing all over again. This time, adjusting the volume up half a notch, in the hope that we will find the perfect pitch that would make the computer happy.
It could take hours. Literally hours.
The thing is though, as frustrating as it was, we didn’t mind. We knew no better, and at the time, this was cutting edge domestic technology. So, you wasted huge chunks of gaming time trying to find that perfect combination of seemingly arbitrary tasks…the key phrase there is “gaming time”! We had gaming time. In our living rooms! What a time to be alive.
I need to point out something that you may have missed. My home computer was called a Dragon 32. And that “32” referred to the memory capacity. 32 kb. Any game that was played on the Dragon had 32 kilobytes to use. That’s exactly 0.032mb. Or 0.00032gb. The Spectrum started off with 16, but went up to 48 in later models. The VIC20 had 3.5.
To give you an idea what that means in real terms, this document, without the pictures and links that I have yet to add, is currently taking up 16kb. It seems incredible that any game worth playing could be manufactured using such a paltry amount of memory, but, depending on the machine, there was a smorgasbord of options available. The Dragon, being a machine that almost no-one had heard of, had a very limited choice, and any game had to sent off for, with a cheque, and the wait for it to arrive was sheer torture.
But it did have Donkey King! Released by a company called Microdeal, and written by a wizard called Tom Mix. It was, without doubt, the best platform game that could be found on a home computer. The Spectrum version was a travesty. The King Kong character looked like a drunken astronaut, and the game play was clunky.
I cursed the fact that we had bought a Dragon on many occasions, and boy, did my friends give me a hard time about it, but Donkey King made it all worthwhile. We would play it for hours. And hours. And this forms some of my truly happiest childhood memories.
I can remember when all this were fields…