Having become hooked on early Arcade Video Games I had been primed as it were for the glory years that were to follow. The late 70's was the era when Video Gaming went ballistic. After the early basic black and white vector games there needed to be something come along to break the mould, to kickstart the revolution. Hello 'Space Invaders'.
Still being at school in the late seventies half terms were a time when I went on holiday with my parents. We often went to a Camp Site in the West Country. One spring half term while there with my good friend David Brown we discovered that in the clubhouse sitting proudly in the corner sat a snubbed down version of Space Invaders. Yes you guessed it, we played it all day, for as long at least that our parents would let us.
Snubbed Space Invader Cabinet
The campsite's owners had 3 sons and the youngest who was a few years older than us was truly a master of his art on the Invaders machine. He had already mastered the now defunct looking Breakout sitting quietly in the corner and now ruled the roost on Space Invaders.
This kid held court on the cabinet so we watched, learned and eventually got our go on the machine. It had the 2 button control for movement and a third button for firing. We learn't the rhythm for firing, where to hide on the screen, which column to take out first, where to wait and fire for UFO's. We played doubles for the first time which added to the excitement and our scores gradually increased .
The
famed Space Invaders control panel!
Even back then I realised that gaming had entered a new era. I remember dreaming of what games would be like by the time I was old and in my thirties, and wondered whether I would still play them...hmmmm.
The game swallowed all my money, my credits ran out and all I wanted to do was get back home, get some money and find a local arcade that had one of these machines. Having played Invaders there was no turning back, the thudding repetitive sound of the columns of Invaders coupled with the piercing wail as a UFO entered overhead would not leave my head. I was on the path of no return, and the games industry would not let all us young addicts down.
Original Space Invaders Screenshot
Over the next
few years the games that would be released would go down in gaming history
as some of the best the industry would ever produce, and my friends and I
could hardly wait for the next big game to hit these shores from The States
or Japan.
From now on how good or bad a holiday was would depend entirely upon which Arcade Games there were to be played on campsites. Some notable games fondly remembered from my holidays include: LadyBug, Scramble, Galaxian, Space Chaser.
LadyBug and Space Chaser Screenshots
Many a credit was spent mastering Space Invaders et al, eventually I was the proud owner of the High Score on a Space Invaders cabinet at a highway service station on the Severn Crossing Bridge on the borders with Wales. There it was written in large pixels for all the world to see...Video games had arrived...better than that I had arrived...I had a High Score.
