I was born at an early age in October of 1974. Harold Wilson was Prime Minister for the second time and Carl Douglas was at the UK Number One position with his hit tribute to violence, “Kung Fu Fighting”. He alleged that “everyone” was was doing it, but my memories of the situation were vague at best, having both just been born and also, lacking the requisite motor skills needed to kick arse in a manner “fast as lightning”.
My earliest electronic gaming memories were centred around the then ubiquitous “TV Game”, which like it’s peers, was in black and white and boasted something like 72 games – all of which were Pong variants with differing numbers of bats of differing sizes. Being an odd child, my only opponents were my grandmother, a lady who survived the Blitz, and my one armed uncle. Needless to say the challenge level was not high.
Computing didn’t feature largely in my life until until I got an Acorn Electron in 1985. They were heavily discounted by then, and I had been begging for a Sinclair Spectrum because my friend at school had one. The salesman in Currys told my mother that the Electron would run Spectrum games, so she bought it.
Whilst I was initially disappointed with receiving an Elk, I soon grew to love the system, and in fact my friend with the Spectrum traded machines with me for the whole summer of 1985. His dad was into programming, so my friend and he used it to learn the BBC variant of Basic.
That’s not to say that electronic gaming wasn’t already firmly fixed in my mind. My cousin (the one with ALL the toys) had an Atari 400 with Caverns of Mars and Star Raiders. I loved going around his house to play on that thing, although he was more interested in the FULL set of He-Man figures he had.
His dad, my uncle Chris, loved gadgets so there was also a Gakken modular electronics kit to play with. Happy days. I still absolutely love Star Raiders to this day and hanker after the (very collectable) 80’s Gakken electronics kit.
From there my love of electronics began, and my obsession with computers, consoles and gadgets of that era took hold. Plus… I’m a bit mental so I started a Youtube channel called… Mark Fixes Stuff!
