For most of us our first recollection of classic video games would be of either PONG or SPACE INVADERS.
SPACE INVADERS being found in a dirty dark dank arcade in some back street well before videogames became “cool “. Maybe you remember (if you ‘re old enough !), as I do, sneaking out of school to feed the nearest arcade with shiny ten pence pieces to while away many a few hours.

MOONCRESTA, PACMAN, SCRAMBLE, GALAXIANS, GORF & GALAGA all have fond memories for me. Arcades were uncool places unlike today - mainly filled with fruit machines and Pinball tables, and at best a small spattering of coin -op heaven.
You would be overjoyed as a new machine turned up and your pockets emptied as your pleasure grew.

SPACE INVADERS cabinets nestled between Pinball machines with that familiar thud thud thud as wave after wave of alien scum inevitably beat you into dust. Competing with your mate for that high score that would beat his.

A domain of male aggression in those days as not many femme fatales were gamers - unless they fancied one the blokes and would “hang “ around like a love sick groupie.

Going in an arcade as it opened to set a new high score on your favourite machine, leaving your initials to prove your worth and returning later to find some nerd had either beaten your score or even worse had “accidentally on purpose turned the machine off" so resetting the machine and wiping off your score after all your efforts.

The smell of fags in the air, the din of electronic heaven. The scrabbling about to find the required dosh to feed the habit of gaming and keep playing for just a while longer. Knowing you were in trouble for missing school, or not being home for mum’s beans on toast at the required parental guidance set time, so a few more mins out wouldn't make much difference.

Colour me bad with only monochrome invaders were replaced with waves of coloured Galaxians or Scramble’s maze of rockets and missiles, or Robotron’s limited appeal Square Dance fight effect. All turning into a mish mash haze of ultra violet flashing lights - no epilepsy warnings in them days - inserted your coinage it was then upto you what happened next. Times were a-changing and more people were getting into games.

Home systems were becoming more prevelant from the early ATARI V.C.S’s to the miniscule memoried VIC-20 (3.5 k!) to the SPECCY and CBM64 et al. (Arcades today - home console revolution another day) arcades were where it was at in my youth.

I can remember 3 scams back in the day - oh what a devil I was when I was younger and the world was simpler.

1) “Fanny by gas light “ The con of being able to obtain illegal credits for free by using a gas cooker ignitor to fool the machine that you had inserted money into its' greedy innards.
As the coin slots were metal originally you could use the ignitor to send a spark into the slot and it would fool the electronics into thinking you had put money in - sorted!
Unfortunately they sussed us and replaced the metal coin slots with plastic ones and then the con did not work anymore. But it was fun whilst it lasted.

2) “ Wot no puppet on a string or soap on a rope?” The old coin on a piece of string trick meant you could get your money back if youu were nimble enough - a skill in itself. You drilled a hole in a coin and tied a piece of string through it tightly and as the coin dropped it was whipped out again at the last second.

3) “ Not the water Margin …………”My mate even froze water into 50p shapes using an indentation of a 50p in blue tack - never saw it work but he was always full of crack pot ideas and stories. Supposedly when the ice froze it became “real money" and thus meant more free gaming!Nowadays we are spoilt with what we have at our fingertips - XBOX & PS2 & CUBE, PC ONLINE , MULTIPLAYER DEATHMATCH GAMING all at home - only a dream in my day!

No internet to talk over or XBOX live to lounge around in - these were the real nitty gritty in your face arcades - where fights often broke out if you were thought to have distracted someone and caused them to lose a credit or scupper their chances at that elusive high score.

To be factual 1979 was when the UK 1st saw TAITO’s SPACE INVADERS cabinet’s appear - seen in your local chippy or pub (you can even spot one in early episodes of Only Fools & Horses if you look in the bar scenes closely enough).

Monochrome was followed by the lush colour event that was GALAXIAN - featuring coloured diving alien hordes. It was a revelation in comparison to the basic invaders stance and you got COLOUR!!!!For the player with 4 hands (or more usually - you flew it and a mate did the firing and smart bombs) was the octopuss lover’s game DEFENDER from WILLIAMS, created by Eugene Jarvis. Instead of a static attack from side to side as in SPACE INVADERS or the swooping attack formation of GALAXIAN you now had to contend with the whole screen moving left or right dependant on which direction you took. Not only were there varying hordes of baddies to dispatch but you had to save the poor sap humanoid figures and carry them back to 'mother earth' to safety - complicated at the time and still a challenge today. The games were innovative and the genres were fresh, as nobody had seen these wonders before.

Atari unleashed a classic - BATTLEZONE - the 1st 3D vector graphics game where you controlled a wire framed tank which, in its' day, was a revolution as the graphics had never been so big or done in this way before.

CENTIPEDE was to see the use of the first trackball controller (a ball mounted into the cabinet which you rolled about with the palm of your hand in order to control the direction of the ship), the aim being for you to destroy the alien centipedes and spiders. The trackball often broke or got jammed at inappropriate moments but it was unique compared to the norm of button bashing (like using a mouse now on QUAKE or COUNTER STRIKE, it was very intuitive).

This was followed by MISSILE COMMAND which also made use of the trackball controller. MOON CRESTA was my fave of this time (great to play on a pc-based emulator but not the same as being there nearly 25 years ago). It had a simple theme you had to kill the bad guys - whether they looked like flying jammy dodgers or moon rocks that resembled marshmallows or not very scary icicles : all the time trying to preserve your ships, of which you had 3. This was unique as the stratergy behind the game was to stay alive long enough through the first few waves to be reunited with your other ships via a tricky docking manouevre. This docking needed skill and you always looked like a real plonker if you crashed one ship into another after trying so hard to keep them from destruction by the alien hordes only to crash and burn yourself.

SCRAMBLE was a huge hit also, with you having a ship flying over mountainous terrain. You had to shoot & bomb at the right time to kill the enemy spaceships and keep re-fuelling as you flew from left to right to reach the maze of the enemy base. A very colourful game that required hand and eye co-ordination to kill the bad guys and keep hitting enough fuel power-ups to keep your ship afloat.

GORF from MIDWAY was a take on SPACE INVADERS and featured the first early digitised speech. I remember playing PHOENIX, which was a GALAXIAN clone. PHOENIX was great. The game itself reminds me of visits to the seaside and summer hols spent at Blackpool or Yarmouth. Young love and teenage holiday romances. Yesteryear!