I hate you. You smell. I hate you more than the Amiga conversion of Wizball.  I hate you more than that game that got 2% in Zzap!64. I’ve never met you, and yet I know that you have the hygiene of a baboon.

 

If you haven’t already set off for my house bearing a big baseball bat, let me explain why I did that.

 

There’s a rule in journalism that’s pretty basic. Don’t insult your readers. Especially, don’t accuse them of having the cleanliness of jungle animals. It’s just not nice.

 

And yet, by breaking that rule, I got you to read this far, even though the article has very little relevance to the magazine it’s in.

 

Trust me, I’m going somewhere with this.

 

Did you know Matthew Broderick was 56 when he made “War Games”? Who knew? If that film taught me anything, it was: “sometimes the only way to win is not to play”. However, that doesn’t make for an interesting life, unless you really like avoiding tic-tac-toe games as a hobby.

 

I prefer another maxim, which is more Kirk-like: “Sometimes, the only way to win is to change the rules”. Or make the rules.

 

A chance remark in a review of “Back in Time Lite” in Manchester bought into focus why it was that I was so keen on C64 music, C64 games, and the general music of the 80s era.

 

The people I respect from that era changed the rules. Some of them made the rules. Jeff Minter, Andrew Braybrook, Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, Fred Gray, Ben Daglish, Jon Hare and Chris Yates, Archer Maclean, Matthew Smith, Ultimate Play the Game… the usual suspects, in other words.

 

Sometimes the games, or indeed the music, wasn’t as good as it was perceived at the time. But the attraction for me was that it was rebelling. It was techno-punk for the creative introvert. It presented a lifestyle that was achievable. We had the same machines as the guys we revered! What was stopping us?

 

Well, of course, skill, experience and time were all lacking, but hey, you only have to look at X-Factor to realise just how easy it is to delude yourself you have talent. For instance, your singing voice sounds like one of Archer Maclean’s cars in a pile-up. Oh, hang on, I stopped insulting you didn’t I?

 

Anyway, 80s computers were my generation’s punk. The Ferris Bueller generation. It took a certain kind of mindset to get into it, just as it took a certain mindset to prefer the Sex Pistols over, say, the reversed sound of the garrotting of five thousand rabbits recorded by John Lennon to upset Paul McCartney (hey, this was 1979, things were rough).