Due to the overwhelming sense of contentment provided by my beloved Atari ST during the late eighties and early nineties, I arrived relatively late to the 16-bit console party. Another fabulous Christmas present, this time a lovely Super Nintendo, would break my console duck and provide some of the best gaming I’ve experienced to date. Back then the amount of buttons on the robust pad was a marvel in itself – just enough for a game of Street Fighter 2. [...]

After many years of Acorn Electron and Amstrad CPC gaming, I finally found my true love. The Atari ST, along with a carrier bag full of pirated game compilation disks (all individually wrapped, god bless you Mum) became mine one Christmas morning, and I have used one ever since. My Atari ST has been in the company of a multitude of systems throughout the hardware generations and never once played second fiddle. Until now, that is.

Last week I placed my Atari STE in the loft alongside its three STFM brethren in order to make room for the impending arrival of the fourth member of the Game & Write clan. What better way to mark this sad happening than with a look back at my favourite games for the system. [...]

Do you like big blocky pixels? Do you like garish colours? Do you like weak space-bars? If the answer to these three questions is yes, then boy do I have the microcomputer for you! Welcome dear friends to the wonder that is the Amstrad CPC 464.

While I was tapping away at my Acorn Electron’s oh-so-tactile keys, my uncle was beating the crap out of his Amstrad. He broke the space bar during one particularly infuriating game of Emlyn Hughes’ International Soccer – it still worked if you pushed it in the right way, but it didn’t sit right and couldn’t be relied on in a crisis. After a while, he moved on to pastures 16-bit, and he called me up and offered me his old Amstrad CPC. His offer was met with tears of joy (that’s right Speccy/C64 fans, TEARS OF JOY) and an emphatic yes. [...]