In the beginning

I can't be 100% sure when I first played with a computer.  It would have been the early 1980s and the computer was the glorious Acorn Electron.  32kb of memory, a single channel sound system and a tape player to load games.  This was the beginning of the commercial home computer market, the mass-market computers.  Developed by Acorn Computers as a less expensive version of the BBC Micro Computer, the computer that was in every classroom in the United Kingdom.

It's main competitor in the home computer market was the ZX Spectrum, with 48kb of memory, a slightly more powerful machine, with the unique rubber keyboard.  But for me, my parents bought an Acorn Electron.  The key reason for purchasing this over the other home computers, was the commonality with the BBC Micro.  My parents wanted me to be comfortable with computers from a young age.

I remember attempting to write my first computer program.  I chose a simple game to start with, chess.  I remember my Dad telling me that you have to instruct the computer how the game had to be played.  I think my first program went something like

10 Draw Grid
20 Colour 32 squares black
30 Colour 32 squares white

I was surprised that the computer didn't draw a chessboard at this point, But I was hooked.  Many nights of reading Electron User magazine, typing in the listings, debugging the listings and then playing the games and I was well on my way to being a fully fledged geek.

The Acorn Electron, ZX Spectrum and other games of the computers at the same time, led to the growth of the bedroom industry of game development.  Kids designing and developing games in their bedroom.  Some games never making it off of the paper, others making it to full production.  It was a time of people pushing the 32K of memory to the absolute max, with some amazing results.  And so, after firing up the machine, that still works after all of the time, it is time to re-visit those games of my childhood.