RetroDj: Dawn On A Brand New Old Touch

In trying to recapture a little youth, which only truly escapes if one allows it to, I have been buying items on a well known auction site and started a collection. It is truly amazing what one can find. For example I discovered a few days ago someone selling Oric-1 games. This was the first home computer I ever had and unsuprisingly time had done a great job of shrouding the images and names of the games which were available. Amazing how one can so easily forget things that as a boy were desired more than anything else in the world. I could have tasted the special place these games took me too years ago, and until recently it had been disgarded among other relics of the mind.
And suddenly there they were again, before my ever widening eyes. Rat Splat! was the first game I saw; utterly adored as a boy, long forgotten as a man but now it was back and the image sent such a wave of nostalgia through my body that for a second I was actually back in 1983 on that beautiful Christmas day when I first played it. Rat Splat! echoes of my mother saying 'urgh splatting rats thats horrible!' rang in my head like she was beside me again. And as I scrolled down the items for sale the memories got ever deeper.
Next I saw Xenon 1, a space invaders game which had a videocase type cassette cover. The green and orange space ship heading into a giant number 1 picked my nostalgia fever up a level and even though I no longer have a Oric computer to play the games on I knew that I would be placing bids.
Mr Wimpy arrived next, a fun burger making game that was a great title. The baddies I remembered well; Sid Sos, Sam Spoon, Pam Pickle and Ogy Egg, but it was the Star Nastie as he was billed who really opened the floodgates, the great Waldo!! Who was basically a jester type head that chased you about the screen. Fantastic!!
When Zorgon's Revenge appeared I was already buzzing from the high of childhood memories but it was no less a fabulous and very familiar sight. The hero of this amazing little game was called simply what he was, The Hero, and I guided him past two headed laser shooting aliens and rode on the tails of giant birds through hailstorms with him many many times to rescue the Princess. The feelings and emotions from these snapshots are indeed priceless, and millions of pounds could not buy them.
Then my eyes caught hold of the next and final game on offer, and my soul went into dizzy raptures! Dinky Kong!! This was a game I had lovingly obssessed over as a boy. Certain games strike a chord with us gamers and the three which first made big impressions on my younger self were Donkey Kong, Ghosts n' Goblins and Green Beret. I was besotted by them, they meant the world to me, (me who always delighted in escaping school through books and now videogames).
Dinky Kong was a copy of one of those games, and now it was before my disbelieving eyes again! I almost had to pinch the screen to check it wasn't a internet mirage!! There it was, a long lost object of such delirious passion now instantly remembered and within my reach again.
How well I recalled the games cover art: an evil looking gorilla with sloping jaw, barrel raised above its head, ready to throw at a frightened bean faced man with panic in his eyes who is running from another barrel and a bright yellow fireball. I very nearly choked on rabid glee. The bids could reach £20 and still would be acceptable, even with the fact that I don't yet own another Oric to play on.
I sat hypnotised by the wonderful images of the games and bathed in the calming butter of memories brought instantly back to life after long years dead.
It thrilled me to know that for a mere 99p I would be owning them again, tiny slices of a past that I am still able to touch. Resurrection through bits of plastic and cardboard. Fantastic!!
And it seems as if I am not alone in wistfully looking back toward a more innocent, more stable era. Many websites have popped up dedicated to all things retro (what a wonderful word that is: Retro). There is a big market for toys from the 70s & 80s, and rightly so for they were the years when home entertainment grew into its own. Everything took off: radio, magazines, computers, films via VHS and Betamax, television. The multi coloured rainbow stretched for miles, planting magical and often bizarre ideas into the minds of those who watched and listened.
The 1980's were a virile time for videogames, which flowered under the enthusiastic imaginations of programmers and publishing houses. Children of that era were not as soaked with cheap cider and cannabis as they are these days. There was a healthy escape to strange lands without a need for plastic intoxication.
Arcades thrived and many a sunny day I spent under a sprites protective shadow, guiding the feisty little thing past hoards of goblins or charging through gangs of punks.
Double Dragon, a great fighting game which I swamped with coins. Paperboy the arcade game where the cabinet had handlebars for controls and the player guided a mini paperboy along perilous suburbia, filled with staggering drunkards, fighting skinheads, statues that came to life and even a stalker/fan at the end of the course who held a placard proclaiming 'I Luv U Paperboy'. What wonderful sights to grow up with.