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. [...]

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. [...]

It’s only 60p! I spent more than that on a Star Bar last week. To put Shoot 1-Up’s incredible value into perspective, consider the following comparison: 20 seconds of peanutty goodness, or 20 minutes of unadulterated shoot ‘em up bliss. It is technically possible to enjoy both at the same time, though caramel is known to have adverse effects on the XBox 360 thumbstick’s responsiveness.

It would be hard to turn your nose up to even a generic shoot-by-numbers title at 60 pennies, but at its heart Shoot 1UP has a genuinely unique play mechanic that makes it impossible to pass up. [...]