How did it all began? I’d say the moment, or moments leading to the “falling in love” with the “computer games” happened when I was still a young little fart, still playing with my hairless balls, ah, I’d say I was about 8 (?) if I remember correctly.
I saw a PONG “console” at a friends house some time in the later part of the “disco” decade (for you millennial idiots, it is the 70s).
Simple as that. I was hooked!
That was my first true foray into controlling something and somehow making it do things I wanted. Well, well – from that point on, it was on.
Then a few years later, a friend had a Sinclair ZX 80 to show off (wee little funny thing),
and we used some German electronics magazine (Elektor (?)) to manually type some BASIC programs from listings they were publishing, and we were absolutely stunned by how easy it was to make changes and do things differently.
Then a couple of years later, successor showed up – ZX 81, and that one was even faster, smaller (more compact) and MORE programs (games really) available to it.
After that, progression stopped when ZX Spectrum showed up (issue 2) (that’s another story all together). Initial ZX Spectrum had 16Kb RAM, but issue 2 (revision 2) bumped that to full on 48Kb and it had color, sound was much better (haha, sound). Spectrum became one of the best selling “home” computers and there was so many games written for it – we just HAD to play as much as possible.
From Manic Miner, JetPack, Football Manager, Hobbit, Knights Lore, Chuckie’s Egg – I mean, you name it – it was available. From classics to something completely new – and it was early 80’s!!! While Apple II and BBC were too expensive… this was a dream….