The Midlife Crisis begins

My other half looks unimpressed with our latest foray into retro gaming.

There's nothing quite like the unadulterated joy of holding a joystick in your hand and figuring out how to make it do exactly what you want - and that isn't even some kind of euphemism. As a kid I dreamed of owning a "proper" games console, like some of my friends had - a C64 or an Atari - complete with proper games rather than games with unconvincing names like "Let's Play Maths!", complete with redundant exclamation marks in an attempt to make them sound enjoyable, that you could play in school for ten minutes every other week. Instead, I made do with a borrowed BBC micro every holiday (plus side: better graphics, relatively speaking, and short loading times, but no joystick) then, a few years later, a borrowed Acorn (plus side: Lemmings!) Now, more than two decades on, as I approach my mid-life crisis, I finally have my Atari.

The Atari flashback comes with 2 joysticks and 60 pre-loaded games which, according to one of the websites "defined a generation". This seems needlessly hyperbolic: I don't think anyone would claim that the likes of Human Canonball and Nightdriver defined a generation. Pacman or, say, Space Invaders possibly did, but they're not on there. Instead you get an eclectic collection of games that range from the gloriously addictive to the comedically unfathomable. The result of this combination is hours of pure pleasure.

The Atari flashback had mixed reviews. Some criticise it for its "basic" graphics and clunky gameplay, which begs the question: "what did you expect?" Others wax lyrical about the simplicity of the games, which strikes me as missplaced nostalgia, because some of the games are positively crap, even by early 80s standards. The reality is somewhere in between: some of the games are genuinely fun, and don't require the ostentatiously high-tech spangliness of their modern counterparts. Others look laughably amateurish and are, by today's standards, just plain dull: "adventure" games where your pixellated alter ego totters from "room" to "room", symbolised by different coloured squares with gaps for doors, just don't cut it if you've ever played on anything developed since.

As ever, the guide which comes with it is at times as enjoyable as the product t accompanies. It doesn't actually perform any useful function, like tell you what the heck you're meant to be doing when confronted with an unidentifiable shape on the screen which doesn't seem to actually move anywhere but seems to be being shot at (we also gave up on "Miniature Golf", which consists of several squares of various sizes which don't appear to do anything). Instead, its contents are a colletion of factual descriptions interspersed with statements of the blindingly obvious with a smattering of wistful geekery. "Now this is an interesting concept for a game", says the writer at one point, raising our expectations until we discover that it isn't. "The aim of this game is to score as many points as you can", he says at superfluously at another (really?) "Collect as many dots as possible to win points", begins a third. Dots? Really? Surely they symbolise something - coins, perhaps? Treasure? Some life-saving elixir or weapon you can use later on to destroy your enemy? Apparently not: they are just dots. The description of "Wizard" is delightfully baffling: "Get hit by an imp's magical bolt or touched by an imp and your damage goes up by 2 points. Hit an imp with your own magical bolt and their damage goes up by 2. However the Flame seems to have a mind of its own and goes deeper into the catacombs with each confrontation." Good. Glad we cleared that up. As for "Fun With Numbers", someone should report the name to advertising standards: the aforementioned "fun" is simply a series of sums, but at least you get to "choose" from addition, subtraction, division AND multiplication. Get in! I bet that was well worth your hard-saved twenty quid back in 1981.

As usual I've rambled on for far too long, but I will at least pick a couple of games that I and my trusty gaming sidekick have singled out for special praise.

Frog Pond: This. Is. Brilliant. A two-player game, you are a frog (inexplicably pink or luminous green) and you get points by catching flies on your tongue. The flies look uncannily like birds, but hey. Detail.

Bowling: Who needs the Wii when you can bowl on an Atari? AND you get to see your character perform a nice little dance to the accompaniment of some marvellous sound effects and epilepsy-inducing flashing lights when you get a strike.

Circus Atari: I have no idea what the significance of the dots at the top of the screen are, except that you get points for hitting them. You basically have to catapult a stick man on and off a deceptively difficult-to-move see-saw, but there's something sadistically pleasing about the underwhelming splat when you miss.

Soccer: Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! Table football on a screen, with a square ball and no concept of the offside rule and no ability to move the goalkeeper on his own. Great stuff.

You probably have better things to do and far superior technology with which to do them, but if you fancy a bit of untainted enjoyment do pop round some time.

The Best Cake in the World...Ever!

Of all the cakes you will see throughout your lifetime, I'm pretty confident I can guarantee you will never see one as fine as this. The friend who made it for me wanted to combine the two things I love, namely Space Invaders and Bradford City FC. I'm not sure what this says about me, though looking back at recent blog posts I can't deny that she got it spot on. I'm particularly impressed that she managed to get the shades of claret and amber so perfect.

My Retrotastic Other Life

I’ve fallen in love. In the space of an hour, confined in bed with my laptop and a mug of Lemsip, I’ve fallen head over heels in love for this website, and with it for an engaging geek and his informed yet pithy game reviews, written in a delightfully colloquial style (“Pretty weird game, this. Can anyone explain this to me?” “I think this one is smashing, and has lots of great puzzles.”) I’ve called him Paul, and his strengths are enough for me to forgive his persistent use of an apostrophe in “80’s”. Endearingly shy without being too socially awkward, intelligent without being arrogant, gently witty and on the admirable rather than the creepy side of geeky, Paul is from some much-maligned town – from Rotherham, maybe, or Preston – and is bashfully proud of his impressive video game-based oeuvre without being obsessive. Nowadays he probably dabbles in a world of Wiis and DSes without feeling he’s sold out, but his passion still lies on the retro side of things. We day trip over to Bradford in the Micra with “Best of the 80s" playing on the stereo and spend far too long in the Media Museum’s games exhibition before proper fish and chips and then, on the back seat overlooking Baildon Moor...Oops, sorry, got a bit carried away there.
National Media Museum, Bradford

I know deep down that he probably isn’t Paul at all, but more likely a collective of single, embittered, midlife-crisissing civil servants from Purley with hygiene issues who spend their evenings and weekends clad in sweaty, unwashed global hypercolour t-shirts ,eating ready meals directly from the carton and tetchily deriding one another’s opinions on the relative merits of the various Repton sequels with “The First Cut is the Deepest” playing on repeat in the background.

I was more than a little obsessed with BBC computer games as a child. My mum was a teacher and used to “borrow” a computer and a stash of games every holiday in the hope that I would then leave her alone for the duration, which I invariably did. I must have spent literally weeks of my childhood hunched in front of those computers doggedly perfecting my Chuckie Egg score whilst everyone else did sensible things, like shopping. Hours and hours spent staring fixedly at implausible birds climbing improbable ladders probably explains my now-poor eyesight. Over time I perfected routes through the various platform-based games, learned which direction all the unlikely causes of death went so I could go the other way (games being more predictable and limited in those days that they are now.) Before I even got to secondary school I could effortlessly breeze my way to level 8 on Chuckie Egg and smash the high score of anyone foolish enough to challenge me on any of the many takes on Space Invaders, though I never did find those Flowers of Crystal. Looking back, it probably amounted to an addiction. Then, at the age of ten and a full year after some of my wealthier, trendier contemporaries, I eventually got a Game Boy, and this fickle, disloyal child traded Dare Devil Denis for Balloon Kid. Where the wart on the end of a witch’s nose in Granny’s Garden once epitomised for me the height of cutting-edge graphics, I now wanted walking mushrooms and jumping fish corpses (huh?!) I can still complete Super Mario Land and still have eighteen lives to spare, and of this I am (I think justifiably) proud.

Recently though someone sent me a web version of Chuckie Egg, and, to my dismay, I can’t even get past level 6. Once so adept at arrow key-based manoeuvres, I now find myself giving up and making a cup of tea after a mere hour or so. You can get Repton on the same site, and I can only marvel at the patience I must have had as a child to doggedly play such a grindingly irritating game, with its gratingly chirpy Scott Joplin soundtrack and its smug-looking lead character which is to all intents and purposes some sort of upright reptile in a jump-suit. As for Flowers of Crystal, I don’t believe it even had an end, and you certainly wouldn’t get away with a game that involved typing “yes” and “no” to a series of inane questions (“Would you like to use a spell?”) nowadays.

But Paul, as ever, is a little more balanced on these matters. So here are a few of the games I used to play, along with Paul’s descriptions (*sigh*).

Arcadians: “One of my favourite games, it is really just a Galaxians clone, but it is especially well done. It has two minor gripes, the ship is a bit out of proportion to the invaders, and they tend to get you into a corner all the time. Cool things include the neat explosion sequence.” (The ship is out of proportion? Wow. That's proper analysis for you.)

BMX on the Moon: “The original game of riding along in a moon buggy, dodgin the ships overhead, shooting them, and jumping over craters on the moon. You have to be very two minded in this game, I suppose if you were good at rubbing your tummy whilst patting your head then you would be good at this! It has a nice sound when you shoot the aliens, sort of a coughing sound!”

Chuckie Egg: “The ORIGINAL platform game on the Beeb. This was a great game, I hope you have it in your collection! The aim was simple, collect the eggs and bird seed, whilst dodging the ostriches! Also, you had to negotiate gaps, holes, ladders and lifts (very awkward to use). If you got far enough, I seem to remember the ostriches being replaced by a giant bird which roamed around the screen. A true classic.” (Your memory serves you correctly, Paul. Level 9 goes back to level one, except with a giant bird that seems to be magnetically attracted to you. I wonder what they were taking when they designed it?)

Firebug: Paul says: “A really original game, this one puts you in the character of a Fireman, putting out little fires on the different platforms, whilst dodging the baddies. Highly original gameplay and great for a quick burst everyday. One of my favourites, although I can't seem to find it anymore!” (Quick! Someone find it for me now! I’ll send it to Paul, win his heart and we will drive off into the sunset in his Micra in a sort of 80s version of a fairytale...)

Repton: “Probably THE most famous game ever done by Superior, it was the Super Mario of the BBC world, this is an all-time classic. You play the part of Repton, the humanised reptile, with a zest for life, and probably (by now) one hell of a diamond collection. The idea is simple, collect all the diamonds, avoiding the rocks, and dodging the evil monsters which hatch from eggs. One of my all-time favourites.” (Ahhh, Paul, you and I will have to just differ on this one.)

Wallaby: “I think this is a cute little game, you are in control of mummy wallaby, whose baby has just been kidnapped by monkeys. You have to go through the level, punching all the monkeys (somehow the wallaby is a boxer!) and collecting the fruit, climbing ladders and trees. It is great fun, and the boxing part is great, it is a little repetitive though.”

It really is a fabulous website. Do look at it, and pine for those days when not only did we have floppy discs, but they were genuinely floppy. Meanwhile, it’s been so long since I went in the Wii Fit that I think it thinks my Mii has died.

Space Invaders

My latest obsession...

These are the work of a street artist who has "invaded" cities all over the world and hidden space invader mosaics within them. We saw a couple in Paris, congratulated ourselves on spotting them but didn't think to take pictures. He's been doing it since 1998 and a lot have been destroyed, but some, like the one we saw today in Fitrovia, are still there. So, if this is your cup of tea too, happy spotting!