My first real experience of video gaming came early in my life when my dad treated us all to an Acorn Electron. My dad was always a sucker for a piece of new technology, and the beige beauty had caught his eye a few weeks before at a friend’s house.  His motivation to buy one for the Johnson household was steeled upon the realisation that said friend had a vast library of games which we could purloin through the ingenious invention known as the tape-to-tape cassette recorder.

Thus began my journey through the world of video games. My father had chosen the path and I would stick to it diligently from that day forth. The mainstream wasn’t for me; Johnny Popular could keep his Spectrum, his Commodore 64, the Elk was for me. Further down the road I would shun the Amiga in favour of the Atari ST, turn my back on the Playstation and fling my arms wide open for Nintendo’s 64-bit beauty. Playstation 2? Pah! I’ll have a Dreamcast please!

My friends would always be looking down on me, but I was impervious to their jibes and taunts. Aside the occasional lapse (there were a few exclusives I would secretly covet, but they will wait for a future post), I was more than happy with my lot.

What follows is a potted tour through my gaming past. Each post will be a chronological record of systems owned and the games I most enjoyed on that platform. First up: the Acorn Electron.

Repton

Basically a Boulderdash clone – albeit a slower, more considered one – Repton was the game that first got its claws in me deep. I remember my first play like it was yesterday: running along a corridor, happily digging away the earth before me, when CRUNCH! the boulder above my head that I had barely registered falls behind me, missing me by a hair’s breadth. Heart pounding, I continued ponderously. Looking back, this was when I became aware of the power of a video game to move me, and after that there was no turning back.

After being hooked by this thrill, I would go on to discover a deviously designed puzzle game where a faltering step could result in diamonds (collecting all of which is each level’s goal) cut off and out of reach, while a dim wit could result in loss of life to a monster during the game’s more hair-raising moments of action.

See it in action (YouTube).

Chuckie Egg

Nigel Alderton’s platform masterpiece is a rare beast as far as 8-bit games are concerned in that it still holds up to scrutiny in the harsh light of the 21st century. While aesthetically similar to Donkey Kong, only a few seconds of gameplay are needed to dismiss the notion that this is some half-arsed clone. The pace of this game, coupled with its solid jumping mechanics and responsive controls give the game a kinetic feel unrivalled by its peers. The main sprite is huge and really belts it around the screen, amazing considering the limitations of the hardware.

The level design is inspired: the ladders and platforms are well matched to the athletic qualities of Hen-house Harry, resulting in a game where it is fun just to control the main character. Add to this bonus munching emus and, later on, a giant angry game-changing hen, and you have one of the greatest platform games to come out of the bedroom coding era.

See it in action (YouTube).

Plan B

At a young age, this game was dangerously close to going over my head, but thanks to a distinctive monochrome hi-res art style and a large number of new rooms and secrets to discover, I persevered, and as I grew older, the game opened itself up to me.

I don’t remember the story behind the game, but my youthful imagination span quite a yarn around its simplistic gameplay of key collecting and computer destroying. Reminiscent of Speccy and C64 classics like Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner, with a touch of Jetpac, each play would reveal a previously undiscovered destroyable bit of scenery revealing a new room, and maybe even a new monster. It doesn’t sound like much, but it kept me coming back for more.

See it in action (YouTube).

Plagarism

The Electron is renowned for its high quality arcade clones: Planetoid, Snapper, Hopper, and Meteor by Acornsoft provided superbly playable versions of Defender, Pac-Man, Frogger and Asteroids to name but four, and Cybertron Mission is a version of Berzerk that really captures the claustrophobic and hostile qualities of its progenitor. Arcadians and Zalaga are admirable attempts at Galaxian and Galaga respectively and Deathstar, while expertly avoiding one lawsuit by setting itself up for a second much larger, successfully recreates that soil-your-pants thrill ride that is Sinistar. RUN COWARD!

The Electron was the machine that I cut my gaming teeth on, and the machine on which I first learned how to program and display graphics. Learning how to use this new arcane machine at a young age provided me with a solid foundation in computing and it will always have a special place in my heart.