Golden Sunsets - 50 Years Of Memories - Part 30 - 1996

So 1996 was pretty important for me, as my first daughter was born in March of this year. It's hard to believe that as I sit here writing now, she is 21 years old , has just obtained a first class honours degree in History and Literature and has just started a Masters degree in Shakespeare studies. She obviously doesn't get that intelligence from me! There have been lots of highs and lows in our relationship over the last two decades, especially after her mum and I got divorced and we both married other people, but I think we have come out of it okay. I'm immensely proud of all she has accomplished. So this post is dedicated to Hannah, with love.

1996:

The trivia:

• A 21-year old man walked into radio station Star FM in Wanganui, New Zealand and proceeded to take the station manager hostage with what was believed to be an explosive device. His one and only demand was that the station play "Rainbow Connection" from "The Muppet Movie" on repeat for the next twelve hours. Before the song could be played for the first time, local police retook the station and arrested the poor guy.
• When the movie "The Rock" (of which more later) had it's glitzy star-studded premiere, it was held at the former prison on the island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. In true James Bond style, windsurfer Jeff Bunch sailed to the island wearing a wing-collar tuxedo and bow tie under his wetsuit.  He landed on the north east side of the island, climbed over the edge and snuck into the celebrity party. He later claimed to have already had a cocktail with star Sean Connery before being captured by park rangers and escorted off the premises.
• An experienced model enthusiast was flying his self built remote controlled plane at the registered site in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland. After a few successful short flights, he suddenly lost all control and the plane flew off into the distance in a north east direction, supposedly to crash. However after five miles, the model aircraft ran out of fuel and glided to a safe stop - on the taxi-way of runway 28 at Dublin International Airport.               

The memory:

Quake

So it's no secret that I've always liked video games. I have vague memories of playing a version of the classic text game "Collosal Cave"  on a massive office machine sometimes in the late 1970s (how or why I got to see this is lost to my fading brain cells),  so I guess my love for the form grew from there. Whether it's the simplicity of "Pong", the 48k wonder of "Knight Lore" on the ZX Spectrum, the rip-off platform fun of "Great Giana Sisters" on the Commodore 64 or the fast paced spinball of "Sonic The Hedgehog" on the Sega Megadrive - I've played hundreds of action, puzzle, driving, shooting, platform and adventure games in my life - although I've managed to fully complete only a mere few of those (I said I enjoyed the games, not that I was any good at them!).

But all of those games were on simple "home computers" (which you could program as well), or early games consoles. When I first started work after leaving school, business machines were huge things that look up a whole room or "PC's" were standalone boxes that ran MS-DOS. I actually wrote the menu screen for our first office PC in BASIC. We didn't get Windows until I'd been there several years.

It was 1995 before prices dropped enough that I could afford to get a home PC - running the brand new Windows 95 operating system with it's (for then) flashy interface. I started buying "PC Zone" magazine for the reviews of new games and the cover-mounted CD-ROM full of demos and previews. Some of the first games I bought for the new machine that sat proudly in the spare bedroom were "Titanic: Adventure Out Of Time" and "Star Trek: A Final Unity" - more cerebral, thinking games than fast-paced action. I was aware of the burgeoning genre of first-person shooters pioneered by Wolfenstein 3D" and "Doom" (although I didn't get to play those two until much later). But then came "Duke Nukem 3D" and the demo I installed made me go out and buy the full game almost straight away  - and I completed it too, after much effort (and maybe a little use of the "god" mode to figure out difficult areas first...).

So by the time iD Software's highly anticipated "Quake" arrived, I thought I was pretty up to speed with how these shooting games worked. What I didn't anticipate was just how damn addictive they could be...

The core conceit of "Quake" main storyline seems fairly basic by today's' standards, but back then the combination of  Lovecraftian and satanic imagery plus futuristic technology in a gothic / medieval setting was a heady one  - building on the successes of "Doom" but with a far stronger sense of dread  and lurking horror. The single-player campaign consists of 30 separate levels (several of which are secret) across four 'episodes' - which are accessed through a teleporter known as a "Slipgate". Exploring the labyrinthine passages and hidden rooms requires accessing particular switches or keys and various other portals are also discoverable over the course of the game. The aim is to fight through each of the levels, killing or avoiding the various enemies, and collect four magic runes. These give the player access to the final level and the chance to defeat the demonic presence known as Shib-Niggurath.

The antagonists in "Quake" range from the merely deadly to the truly horrific. Grunts, Zombies, Knights, Enforcers and Ogres are recognisably almost-human, but a Fiend is a mass of teeth and razor-sharp claws, while a Vore is a spider-esque hybrid monstrosity. Then there is the Shambler with it's blood-stained fur, ripping fangs and the ability to fling bolts of electricity. Any one of these creatures appearing suddenly around a dark corner (especially if, like me you played with the lights off or really low) was guaranteed to make a little bit of wee come out...

Sure, it's true that the levels are almost always the same twenty shades of dirty brown colour and at times it could be incredibly frustrating to have to restart yet again when a stray claw took your last nugget of life energy, but the excellent level design and the sheer "oh-go-on-then-I know-it's-2am-but-just-one-more-go" playability of  it meant that I spent *way* too many hours trying to uncover every secret and defeat every enemy. I hadn't been this addicted to a game since the days of the ZX Spectrum.

But I have to make an admission here. Most of my time spent on "Quake" was not in when it first came out. Oh sure, I played the demo and liked what I saw an awful lot - and I picked up a full copy when the price dropped somewhat, but in 1996 I was far too busy with firstly moving house and then coming to terms with the arrival of my first daughter eleven weeks earlier than expected, along with the special care that she needed. After that there were a series of personal circumstances which put a huge strain on the increasingly difficult relationship with my wife. I won't bore you with those problems here, but suffice it to say that despite the joy of my second daughter being born in late 1998, my wife and I ended up sadly separating for good in February of 1999.

So then I found myself living on the outskirts of London with my daughters 180 miles away and mostly only able to see them at weekends (my job was still in London you see and I couldn't afford to move where they now lived). I had almost no free cash and I was on my own much of the time during the week, so I turned to films and television and video games for entertainment. I pulled out that CD of "Quake" and booted up the PC. Sadly I couldn't enjoy any of the innovative multiplayer aspects of the game - my prehistoric dial-up internet connection was not capable of anything like that - so I just satisfied myself with trying to defeat the game on every difficult setting (yes even "Nightmare", which was frankly, impossible). And then I discovered "mods"...

The gameplay of "Quake" could be changed by altering the graphics and audio, using the "QuakeC" programming language. At the start this meant just small fixes and patches and the odd new enemy, but soon fans were creating whole new versions of the game that were very different from the original. The first major mods I read about in the PC magazines was "Team Fortress", but being as it was multiplayer, it was off limits to me. Of far more interest were the multitude of single player levels that sprung up. The small size of these files meant that I could log on, download it (relatively) quickly and then log off. I seem to recall that some mods were also given away on cover mounted CDs. For me this took the game to a whole other level, as I was no longer restricted to the 30 maps that came with the installation disc (yes I know there were a couple of "expansion packs" added later, but for some reason lost to the mists of time I never got round to them).

As internet speeds became cheaper, faster and more reliable, my "Quake" mod interest kept growing. I must have played or tried out dozens upon dozens of new levels. Someone invented "AirQuake" where you were now flying around the skies of QuakeWorld engaged in bombing runs or driving a tank to take down your enemies in the air. Then there was "QuakeRally" which turned things into a medieval version of a car race. "AlienQuake" had me stalking the corridors of the Nostromo facing off against Facehuggers and Xenomorphs. "FantasyQuake" replaced guns and bullets with swords and bows and arrows."Horrorshow" added Jason Voorhees and the ability to inhabit the body of Leatherface. The sky was truly the limit.

Between games of "Quake" and sessions on my beloved Nintendo 64, I whiled away the somewhat lonely evenings after work (including through that first cold winter when the central heating broke down and I couldn't afford to repair it). I persevered with getting my life back in order and clearing my debts. I made new friends and built new relationships, but I kept returning to that first version of  "Quake" to see each new modification. Like the expansion packs I mentioned earlier, I never did progress to "Quake II" or "Quake III Arena", but that was okay. Eventually things improved and in 2001 I met the wonderful woman that would become my second (and hopefully final!) wife and my nights of gaming gradually slowed to a crawl.

As part of writing this piece over the last few weeks, I dug out my dusty copy of the game from storage in the loft and after a bit of fiddling around getting the antique DOS installer to work, pressed "Single Player" on my first game of "Quake " in probably fifteen years. As I moved around that first level, the sound of collecting the backpacks and bullets dropped by the enemies and the grunt of the main character brought all the memories flooding back. Compared to today's standards, it's slow and clunky and incredibly linear but there's still a huge amount of playability and before I knew it an hour had gone past.  It's a great game and while I'd quite like to forget certain other aspects of my life in the mid to late 90s, this is one that I'm quite happy to recall. Even if I am now going to dream about running through dank corridors being snarled at by a rabid Shambler...

Honourable mentions:

• Kingdom Come - I mentioned this landmark comic mini series in my post for 1995, but it's first publication here is worth a more detailed look. Mark Waid and co-writer / artist Alex Ross envisioned the future of the DC universe where the heroes of the present day have abandoned their roles after the rise and popularity of  second and third generation meta-humans who fight more for the fun of it than to protect the innocent and who care nothing for the effects of their destructive behavior. Worst of these is Magog who murders the Joker and manages to turn the American Midwest into a radioactive wasteland, killing millions while in pursuit of the villain The Parasite. Coaxed back into action by Wonder Woman, Superman reforms the Justice League, but finds himself and his allies caught in the midst of a war with Batman and his team of "Outsiders", Lex Luthor and his Mankind Liberation Front and the threat of nuclear destruction. Not to mention a brainwashed Captain Marvel. But trust me it's far more complex and fascinating than that short summary makes it sound.

• The artwork from Alex Ross is simply stunning, painted in such a lush hyper-realistic style that it's almost like looking at excerpts from a film, but still with the comic book sensibilities that make it flow naturally from panel to panel. It's well known that he uses real life models, but this is no tracing of photos, just a way of helping him get the right angle or pose or expression - and hell does it pay off. Every frame is packed with detail and some of the seemingly throwaway character designs have been used in subsequent years as templates for the current DC universe. In fact "Kingdom Come" itself has been referenced or used significantly in other stories in the last twenty-one years - it's that important an event in DC's history.

• The Cable Guy - Made when Jim Carrey was at the height of his first wave of popularity this psychological comedy thriller showed that the actor could also do dark and twisted characters. Matthew Broderick plays straight man as Steven, recently split with his girl friend and on his own in a new apartment. When he slips the cable installer an extra $50 for free premium channels, what he doesn't expect is to be followed around by a guy who at first appears to just be a social misfit but then turns out to be genuinely crazy. I love "Ace Ventura", but if you asked me to choose one Carrey comedy, this would be at the top of the list. Highlights are the karaoke performance of "Somebody to Love" and of course the fight at the 'Medieval Times' theme restaurant that turns into a full on recreation of the classic Kirk / Spock battle from Star Trek's "Amok Time", complete with episode specific weapons and music. This really is an overlooked film.

• Duke Nukem 3D - I mentioned this above. "Quake" might have been the first-person shooter I played the most, but "Duke Nukem 3D" was the one I played first. There's some storyline about Earth being invaded in the 21st Century, but that didn't really matter. What was important was running through a variety of environments collecting objects and weaponry while blasting as many of the hideous alien scum as possible - all while Duke himself gave a string of cheesy one liners in that deep gruff voice that were worthy of Arnie himself. The degree of interactivity with the areas you stalked through along with the clever level design and the satire of pop culture made it enormous fun to play. I'm getting flashbacks to the movie theatre level right now. It's fair to say that this was one of the most important video games of all time and all the FPS games since owe a debt to The Duke. Hail to the King, baby !

• Hamlet - I like a good "Hamlet". I must have seen a dozen or more different versions in my life, either on stage or screen. Some were amateur productions with minimal sets. Some had big name stars such as Benedict Cumberbatch, David Tennant or Mel Gibson. Sometimes the main story is only a sideline, such as in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead". I've even seen the half-hour long animation. But there is only one film version which contains every single word of Shakespeare's original text - and that's the one written, directed and starring the marvelous Kenneth Branagh. I'd been a fan of Ken ever since his 1989 version of "Henry V" and really rated him as someone who wanted to bring Shakespeare back to a mass audience.  Here he updates the setting of the play to the 19th Century, adds flashbacks that visual information and imbues the whole production with an epic style by filming it in 70mm (the last to do so until 2012) and using lots of long single takes for numerous scenes. He is helped by a wealth of famous actors in small and large roles - Derek Jacobi (whose own BBC version is almost as long), Julie Christie, Richard Briers, Kate Winslet, Robin Williams, Gerard Depardieu, Jack Lemmon, Billy Crystal, Charlton Heston, John Gielgud, Judi Dench - the list goes on and on. It's sumptuous, layered and incredibly powerful. I adore it.

• Fun Song Factory - No don't click away from the page. There is a good reason for this 90s children's program being here  - and you have probably already guessed that it's to do with daughter number one. I can't remember where it came from but somehow we ended up with a double cassette pack of the first two "Fun Song Factory" shows - the second of which was recorded in 1996, hence how I have managed to squeeze it into this post, even though the VHS releases weren't until 1998. Performed in front of a live audience of kids, mums and dads by Iain Lauchlan, Sarah Davison, Michelle Durler and kids favourite, the unbelievable cheerful Dave Benson Philips, the shows were full of pre-school favourite songs and nursery rhymes such as "The Wheels on the Bus" and "The Grand Old Duke of York" - plus inexplicably, The Beatles "Yellow Submarine". To say that Hannah loved these shows as a toddler was an understatement, and they became a permanent accompaniment to our lives in those first few years. Even now I just have to hear "I am the Music Man" and I can picture her sitting in the living room totally captivated by the screen. Now before you think badly of us, we didn't use the show as a surrogate babysitter (well, maybe only a couple of times when we needed to urgently get things done) - this was a shared experience and it's one of my fondest memories of those years with my daughter, even if around her other things in my life were...extremely challenging.

• The Frighteners - It may have been somewhat forgotten now in the wake of the massive success of the "Lord of the Rings" and "Hobbit" movie trilogies, but this horror comedy from Peter Jackson and starring Michael J Fox in his last leading film role is still a favourite in my house. Fox is Frank Bannister, an architect who is able to see and hear the ghosts around him. Initially he uses this ability to make some supernatural friends and set up a flourishing exorcism scam, but when the spirit of a mass murderer starts attacking both the living and the dead, Frank gets pulled into the investigation. Of course it's a film chock full of visual effects (more so than pretty much any other film of the time) and proved that Jackson could handle the demands of that kind of  shoot, but it's the real performances that stand out. Fox is enjoyable in pretty much everything he's done, but here he manages to imbue his character with a bit of a world-weary attitude. There is a nice turn from R. Lee Ermey who basically reprises his role as the screaming sergeant from "Full Metal Jacket". But is Jeffrey Combs who steals ever scene he is in as the disturbed (and disturbing) FBI agent.

• DC versus Marvel - Fans had been looking for a meeting of the heroes and villains of the rival comic publishers for decades, and after a lot of wrangling we got this four issue mini series by Peter David, Ron Marz, Dan Jurgens and Claudio Castellini. There's some nonsense about cosmic embodiments of the two universes setting up a contest, but it was really an excuse for a series of smack-downs between various characters, with a fan vote deciding the outcome of each bout (I still can't believe Storm defeated Wonder Woman though). It's fun stuff, particularly when the intervention of new character Access resulted in the two universes being merged - and we got the 12 issue "Amalgam" imprint with odd fusions such as Dark Claw (Batman & Wolverine), the Green Skull (Lex Luthor & Red Skull), Moonwing (Nightwing & Moon Knight) and Doctor Strangefate (you get the idea...). There was even the Two-Faced Goblin and an amalgamation of Green Arrow and Hawkeye called...er....Hawkeye. In terms of sheer comics geekery it was pretty hard to beat - until 2003 anyway...

• Mars Attacks! - I wasn't even born when the original "Mars Attacks" trading cards were released, but I was soon aware of them once I started to seriously become interested in all things science fiction (plus, don't forget Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds from 1978...). Who couldn't fail to enjoy the lurid, sometimes blood-soaked paintings by Wally Wood and Norman Saunders depicting the Martians with their skull-like faces and pulsating brains? The cards soon became huge collector's items and think I didn't get to see a full set of images until the rise of the internet. As for Tim Burton's live action satire / comedy / thriller adaptation - it's as mad as a box of frogs. Where else would you get to see Jack Nicholson hamming it up to 11 in two roles. Or Pierce Brosnan as a disembodied head smoking a pipe. Or Tom Jones playing himself as an action hero! Or the Martians heads exploding when they listen to Slim Whitman? It's all over the place and I love it more because of that. Plus the aliens themselves are a triumph of 90s CGI. "Ack Ack Ack Ack !"

• The Rock - Before Michael Bay became the king of over the top mindless action, he made this smart thriller starring the legendary Sean Connery and personal favourite Nicholas Cage. A bunch of rogue US Marines take over Alcatraz Prison, hold all the tourists hostage and threaten to release nerve gas over San Francisco unless they get $100 million for the families of Recon Marines who died on covert operations. Cage plays the FBI's top chemical weapons expert, the wonderfully name Stanley Goodspeed, who is paired up with former British SAS Captain John Mason (Connery) - a man who has been mysteriously locked up without charge for thirty years and is the only person to ever escape Alcatraz. What follows is a wonderful action film, made all the better by the chemistry between the two leads. Connery is clearly enjoying himself as the secretive Mason (was he a disguised James Bond?...) and Cage is on a career roll. It's also worth mentioning Ed Harris as the Brigadier General in charge of the bad guys, who makes his character quite sympathetic at times. It's one of those movies which, when it comes on TV, I stop changing channels and end up watching all the way through - no matter how many times I've seen it before. There's nothing guilty about this pleasure.

Golden Sunsets - 50 Years Of Memories - Part 18 - 1984

"Tuesday evening, after tea and compulsory prayers, the last mouse on Earth tried to hide from mankind inside the machine"...

1984:

The trivia:

• Walt Disney's Donald Duck had become part of the U.S. army war effort back in 1942 in the cartoon "Donald Gets Drafted". He then appeared in a number of short features during World War II, including "Commando Duck" where he was parachuted in to the Pacific Theatre to fight against the Japanese. However he never officially left the army, so by his fiftieth birthday in 1984 - when he had been serving for over forty years - the military arranged a full parade and sent a  four star general to simultaneously promote Donald to "Buck Sergeant" and grant him official retirement.
• Scientist, astronomer and personal hero Carl Sagan shared a jail cell with Martin Sheen when the pair (and others) climbed over a chain-link fence at the Nevada Test Site to protest at the United States continued development of nuclear weapons.
• In July of 1984 President Ronald Reagan called ice cream "a nutritious and wholesome food" and established National Ice Cream Month. A man after my own heart.

The memory:

Deus Ex Machina

By 1984, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was *the* home computer of choice (at least in the UK). Yes it only had 48K memory and could only display 256 colours, but as I have mentioned previously, those limitations helped produce some of the most innovative and ground breaking games ever made. Anyone and everyone could become a programmer, create a software company and enter the big time with a release that took the enthusiastic community by storm. Games could be (and frequently were) about anything.

At the forefront of this innovation was "Automata UK". Established in 1977 as one of, if not the first ever British video games company, It was run by the guru's guru Mel Croucher (Robert Rankin's Hugo Rune has nothing on this guy), aided by his long time collaborator and programmer Christian Penfold. Automata were pioneers in self-distributed, resolutely non-violent games on the black and white ZX-81. However it was with the release of "PiMania" in 1982 that they really took off.

An electronic take of the famous "Masquerade" book from the late 70s by Kit Williams, "PiMania" was billed as the first ever real life treasure hunt computer game. Hidden somewhere in the UK was a golden sundial worth £6,000 - yours if you could figure out the incredibly cryptic clues hidden within the game. A surreal text and graphics adventure full of lateral thinking puzzles and starring Piman, the company's pink, huge-nosed  mascot , it was launched in a flurry of publicity on several different platforms but it's fair to say that the ZX Spectrum version was the most popular. 

Making the most of the fact that the "PiMania"was loaded from a cassette tape, Automata UK bundled it with a B-side - a bizarre yet hilarious song of the same name with music and lyrics by Croucher which sounded like it was composed with a Bon Tempi organ and a kazoo. He was like an 8-bit Frank Zappa or Neil Innes. I loved it.

A second prize game followed in 1983 - "My Name Is Uncle Groucho, You Win A Fat Cigar" - along with another song. By now Automata UK had taking over the back page of "Popular Computing Weekly" (PCW). Starting off as standard if anarchic adverts, the page then began to feature the comic strip adventures of Piman and his cast of supporting characters drawn by the brilliant Robin Evans. Gradually over the months the strip took over and for many (like me) it was the main reason we brought the mostly text based magazine. The team also became regular fixtures at the Alexandra Palace computer fairs, holding court from a large stand with Croucher as Uncle Groucho and Penfold cavorting round in his frankly creepy looking pink Piman costume. It was part sales pitch, part entertainment show and the crowds lapped it up.

I guess that if Croucher was a visionary leader and innovator, you could say that my brother, friends and I were his"acolytes". We had become quite friendly with him and were warmly welcomed when we turned up at the 'Ally Pally' Microfairs. At one point my brother created a stuffed soft toy version of Piman, and for several years it sat in the front window of the Automata UK shop in Portsmouth like some deformed hairless Bagpuss. There's a picture of it somewhere on the web that I know I've seen, but can't seem to find at the moment.

Branching out using other external programmers, Automata UK released a whole series of "Pi" themed games, each with their own musical b-sides. A full album compilation of the expanding catalogue were produced on cassette, and I still have it (and the sequel) to this day. Songs such as "Donkey Hotay","Leader of the Pac" and "Piballed Blues"  became our soundtrack as we indulged in long hours of gameplay.

Then in 1984 via the PCW back page, the company announced that they would be producing a game unlike any other - their magnum opus - "Deus Ex Machina". It was Crouchers' personal project in conjunction with wunderkind programmer Andrew Stagg  - the culmination of his journey to produce a unique integrated multimedia blend of music, graphics and gaming, pushing the boundaries of the humble ZX Spectrum to their limit. Along with the game cassette would come a complete synchronised musical sound-track featuring voice-overs and singing from Croucher, along with Donna Bailey, Ian "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" Dury, comedian Frankie Howerd, and most excitingly, former "Doctor Who" Jon Pertwee. 

Sold for the price of £15 (high for the time, when most games were between £5 and £10), this was not so much a game as an event, and was trumpeted as being the next big thing - as important as the first graphical adventure game of "The Hobbit" that had defined the ZX Spectrum's early years. Naturally when it was launched we all went along to the next Microfair and shook Mel by the hand, and parted with our cash, taking home the huge plastic case with it's double cassettes, poster and complete set of lyrics. We couldn't wait to get home and start the adventure.

Inserting the first side of the game into our trusty tape players (with the volume set *just right* so that we would not get the dreaded "Tape Loading Error") we watched as the introductory graphics appeared complete with 8-bit representations of the key performers (unfortunately Mr. Pertwee's name was spelt wrong as "John", which was slightly amusing. (It was corrected for the Commodore 64 version). Then having begun to listen to side one of the music tape, we were kindly told by the Third Doctor "I want you to pause after I count you down and recommence playing at the screens request...". A similar countdown was initiated on screen. This insured that the soundtrack was (mostly) in sync with the graphics on screen. Thus the story begun...

In a Big Brother-esque 1994, players had to take part in the epic life story of an accidentally created artificial life form and guide it from birth to death via a series of connected mini-games, loosely based on Shakespeare's 'Seven Ages Of Man'. Pertwee was the narrator and guide, Howerd played the part of the authoritarian Defect Police - out to stop the creature -  and Dury the initial sperm that becomes the lifeform.(there's nothing quite like hearing Ian Dury uttering the immortal line "Wotcha cock! I'm a fertilising agent...my brothers are all wriggly.") Each of the stages required you to perform some kind of action to move yourself (the 'accident') through your life cycle and to keep your percentage score (the "degree of ideal entity") as high as possible. Success raised the score but mistakes cost you percentage points.Lets take a detailed look at the main sequences...

You begin by helping the machine create a baby through a series of repeated cursor touches - manipulating DNA helix's and keeping them spinning in the void, nurturing the early cells and allowing the machine to steal an egg before bringing it together with a spermatozoa  All the while the Defect Police are out to get you and stop the aberration before it can be born.

"At first the infant, mewling in the test tube's neck..."

The embryo lives. You protect it by keeping the outer cocoon intact before the baby is released spinning from the Incubator.The eyes of the Defect Police are watching and capture is unavoidable, but as it has been born with powers of telepathy and telekinesis, you can help this new life deflect the physic probes.

"Then the whining school child, with cassette and shining morning face. Creeping like a snail unwittingly to databank..."

This imprisoned spinning form grows from child into man as the voice of Donna Bailey sings. Using it's mental powers the defect absorbs information and learns. To start with it is innocent and loving but as time goes on it is corrupted and becomes cruel and hurtful. Part one end as an electronic eye sheds a single tear.

"And then the lover, sighing like a furnace, with a woeful video made to their lover's hologram"

As part two begins, the voice of Jon Pertwee has changed. Now it is authoritative and commanding. The noise of battle echoes in the background of the Overlevels. It's time for war. The fully grown lifeform follows the orders of the Defect Police and runs across a desolate landscape. Players have to take control by jumping over chasms and deflecting weapons and walls of fire. The soundtrack to this element brings to the fore Croucher's strong personal views about the evil of violent computer games. Ian Dury and Frankie Howerd verbally spar in rhyme as another battle ensues for the conscience of the soldier. Does you blindly follow orders or resist and rise up against your oppressors?

"Then a soldier, full of strange oaths. Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking hi-score, even in the laser's mouth"

Ultimately the Defect Police are defeated and you now rules the Overlevels. But life goes on and as you becomes older and more corpulent, you must make the right decisions by jumping over the good things and stamping evil out underfoot. Every false move means a part of the empire collapses in the distance and the Machine begins to regret ever having made you.

"And then the Justice, in fair round belly and eyes severe and clothes of format cut, full of wise words and machine code..."

As old age approaches and life reaches it's sunset, all the player can do is trace the line of the heartbeat and try and disperse the clots that float through your bloodstream...

"The Sixth Age shifts into the lean and skippered pantaloon..."

Life ends and the Machine takes you home. But the end is the beginning . Your life is expressed as a percentage score. Imagine if this was nothing but an electronic game, and you could begin your little life all over again...

"Last scene of all, the ends this strange eventful history is Second Childishness and mere oblivion. Without keyboard, without monitor, without power supply"

Okay, so clearly looking back now from our modern shiny CGI, 1080p, photo realistic graphics world, that all looks incredibly basic and probably quite dull - and yes I'll admit that it's not the most rewarding game to play. But the point is that the player interaction wasn't the thing  - it was the truly original combination of electronic music, poetry, dystopian lyrics and unusual visuals. "Deus Ex Machina" was as much avant garde  / prog rock concept album art installation as game - something you experienced as well as participated in. The soundtrack could be listened to in it's own right - in fact it was never off my Walkman - and was full of great performances, humour and subtle digs at the establishment.

Donna Bailey is a revelation and both Dury and Howerd perform their parts well. But as the Storyteller, Pertwee really seems to get into the spirit of things and enjoy himself (this is even after he had apparently fallen off his motorcycle on the way to the recording studio!). He and Croucher became good friends from this project and later released a comedy quiz book together.

I make no secret of the fact that I am very biased in favour of Mel Croucher's output and his extraordinary vision. The title of this very blog is named in honour of some of his magazine columns. However as much as I loved "Deus Ex Machina", it failed terribly. It gathered good reviews and won an industry award as program of the year, but sales were awful. Part of this is due to the fact that many casual gamers just didn't "get" it, having been conditioned on a diet of "Jet Set Willy" and "Knightlore" which were technically more polished and more playable - and they were being asked to pay £15 for an hour or so's "experience" - far higher than they could buy games for from WH Smith.

But more importantly Automata UK were sadly a victim of the success of the UK gaming industry. With titles being more and more sold in high street stores as retailers wanted a piece of the mail-order / Microfair turnover, large distribution companies got in on the act and *they* got to set the price points and choose which titles were allowed onto shelves. As a little company trying to take their puck rock attitude and buck the trend, Mel and Co were doomed to fail.

Automata UK never really recovered from the losses of "Deus Ex Machina" and Croucher walked away in 1985. The UK computer industry had probably disillusioned him, but it was a sad loss. It would be years before he stepped back into the arena in any major way - although he did write dozens of columns for industry magazines. He also managed a number of media companies with both corporate and celebrity clients. But in 2012, he launched a new version of the company "Automata Source Ltd" and successfully crowd-funded "Deus Ex Machina 2" featuring the voice of the legendary Christopher Lee. Even thirty plus years later Mel is still innovating, still creating and still producing great music. This post is dedicated to him, with huge thanks for the years of fun and laughter.

Honourable mentions:

• CRASH - no post relating to the ZX Spectrum can pass without mentioning the most popular computing magazine of the day - at one point selling over 100,000 copies a month. CRASH was known for the distinctive cover art by Oliver Frey, who also contributed to the "Terminal Man " comic strip inside. Full of irrerervant news, reviews, playing tips and cheats, it developed a unique style and became the go-to source if you wanted to know anything about Spectrum games. I had almost every issue. The physical copies are all long gone of course but thankfully they are now available online. CRASH deserves a much more in depth look from me. One day...

• Sherlock Holmes - The definitive period version of the world-famous detective. Benedict Cumberbatch may have won tons of awards but for many Jeremy Brett *is* Holmes in a way that has not been bettered before or since. Across 36 episodes and 5 feature length specials, Brett and his two Watson's (David Burke for series 1 and Edward Hardwicke thereafter) starred in the most faithful adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories - praised for their high production values and attention to detail. I had become a fan of the original adventures when I read the complete works a few years earlier and my whole family never missed an episode. It still stands up today as a high watermark in television drama.

• The Saga of the Swamp Thing - Okay, so this title had been running since 1982 and featured some sterling work from writer Martin Pasko and various artists, but we all know that it was when Alan Moore took over from issue 20 (and particularly #21's "The Anatomy Lesson") that everything moved onto a whole new level. Moore was relatively unknown in the U.S. and was given free rein to revamp the title to save it from cancellation. The rest is comic book history. There have been millions of words written about the importance of Moore's stint on the title so I don't intend to repeat them here, but it did usher in a new maturity for mainstream comics and paved the way for the "Vertigo" imprint. I'm slightly ashamed to say that I didn't start picking up the comic until issue 28 on the strong recommendation from my local comic shop owner and had to scrabble around for many months finding the back issues as prices started to soar.

• Robin of Sherwood - Written by Richard "Kip" Carpenter, whose work I had previously enjoyed on "Catweazle" and "Dick Turpin", this is another example of a TV interpretation  which has yet to be bettered. Combing authentic production design and real locations (so you felt that the outlaws really did live in a forest) with genuine history and elements of pagan myths, I lapped up this series as it appealed to my love of both classical heroes and fantasy. Michael Praed was a perfect Robin of Loxley and his not so merry men were also well cast. The addition of Nasir the Saracen has had such an influence that it now seems to have always been part of the legend. However let's not talk about season three. As far as I am concerned Robin dies at the end of "The Greatest Enemy"...

• Mage: The Hero Discovered - The first part of writer / artist Matt Wagner's epic trilogy of the life of Kevin Matchstick, wielder of an enchanted baseball bat that turns out to be Excalibur. Part examination of the power of myth, part autobiographical allegory and all whole lot of fun, I loved the lush artwork and somewhat humorous take on the Arthurian legend (not to mention the triple gatefold panorama in the final issue). It took until 1997 for the second chapter "The Hero Defined" to appear and the final part, "The Hero Denied" will at last be released in July 2017. It will undoubtedly be worth the wait and I intend to re-read the whole series before then. Oh and that black T-shirt with the white lightning bolt that Kevin Matchstick wears? I had one of those and wore it proudly for years.

Frankie Goes To Hollywood - If one band came to define the mid-80s for me it was "Frankie". Hugely successful  - especially after lead single "Relax" was banned by the BBC leading to it hitting the number one spot for five weeks - hugely influential, and more than a little racy, the provocative nature of their singles and first album meant that the country (and I) became obsessed with everything they released. "Frankie Says..." T-shirts were everywhere. They became only the second act in the history of the UK charts to reach number one with their first three singles. Even now I still think that "Two Tribes" (and it's multiple remixes) is one of the best records ever made. It became a ritual to go to my local "Golden Disc" record shop every Thursday lunchtime to pick up the latest 12", and when the double album "Welcome To The Pleasuredome" (with a cover you  really couldn't show your mother) was first on sale, the queue was out the door. I bought everything in every format including the rare picture discs and trust me, those are one of the few pieces of vinyl I'll never throw out. Alas the follow up album " Liverpool" was a disappointment (I personally liked "Rage Hard") and by 1987 after internal disputes the band was no more. A real shame.

• There are a couple of other comic books which were very important to me that were released in 1984. However I want to do more in depth lengthy posts in the "Collector's Dream" segment  on these. Watch this space...

Tape Loading Error 1 - Do It Yourself

Computers have come a long, long way in the last 70 years. If you asked people to name the first examples of computers, they would probably come up with  things like Charles Babbage's Difference Engine from the early 19th century, or the 'Bombe' machine developed by Alan Turing to decrypt the German Enigma code in World War II. Others might remember devices called 'Colossus' or 'ENIAC' - number crunching behemoths the size of a house and weighing tons, powered by thousands of vacuum tubes, resistors, capacitors and inductors. These were creations of unique teams or individuals and primarily used by the military. It was the development of the transistor and then integrated circuits in the 1950s  - which in turn led to the development of the microprocessor -  which has transformed modern society.

Today there is more processing power in an iPhone that there was in the machines on board the Apollo mission rockets that took men to the moon. Computers (and the internet) are so inextricably woven into out lives and our homes that we interact with them hundreds of times a day, sometimes without even noticing. It wasn't always like this though and nowhere is this more obvious that in the world of home computers and video games. It's hard to believe in these days of market domination by Microsoft Windows and X-Box's and Sony PlayStation's and Apple Apps that there was a time over 30 years ago when the UK led the way with the development of home computers. When the most popular games 'console' in the UK was a rubber keyboarded thing the size of a hardback book with a massive 48k of memory. When game developers worked out of their bedrooms, and innovation was more important than realism. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's first go back in time to the birth of the devices that really founded the British home computer market...

By the late 1970s, thanks to the aforementioned  microprocessor, everyone in the UK was familiar with pocket calculators and digital watches. I remember getting my first ones of each with their distinctive red LED display around 1978 / 1979. We had also been exposed to some of the first rudimentary electronic games  - initially versions of the basic "pong" or tennis, with classics such as Electronic Mastermind, Merlin and Simon appearing later on toy shop shelves. But these were expensive gadgets that not everyone could afford and if you knew someone who had one, they were the most popular kid in school (I might do a whole separate post about the evolution of these games at some point).

However the initial attempts at producing an actual computer for the home market were aimed at the electronics hobbyist - mere kits requiring copious amounts of electronic components, wire and solder (and skill) to put together with the printed circuit boards and primitive silicon chips. Devices such as the Altair 8800, which appeared in 1975, could only be "programmed" by tedious toggling of multiple switches to set the instruction, loading that into the tiny memory and then repeating over and over and over again. The only output you got from all that hard work was the specific blinking of lights on the front panel.

By 1978, circuit boards and processors had developed sufficiently that a more sophisticated machine could be produced, leading to the appearance of the NASCOM-1. Still firmly directed at the niche enthusiast (as it required home assembly and the soldering of over 3000 joints) and costing a then eye-watering £200.00, it was based on the then new Z80 processor and boasted a real keyboard and suitable interfaces for connecting the machine to a TV display and a cassette player (tapes being a cheap alternative to floppy disks). Both the Z80 chip and the tape recorder would form an integral part of the success of the home machines to come.

With hard work and more than a little patience, users could even create rudimentary games on the NASCOM machines:

Of course games created by bored mainframe programmers had been around for decades. "Spacewar!", designed by some of the first "hackers" on  the PDP-1 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1961, is credited as the first widely available computer game - but there are many others such as "Hunt The Wumpus (1973) and of course Colossal Cave Adventure (1976) that are equally well known. I can remember that even when I first started work in the mid-1980s, the company mainframe still had a copy of "Adventure" on it (if you know who to ask)..

It's also at this point in 1978 that inventor, entrepreneur and all round genius Clive Sinclair comes into the picture. His company 'Science Of Cambridge' produced the MK14 - the first really cheap mail order computer kit in the UK, retailing at £39.95 plus tax. It was not as powerful as things such as the NASCOM-1, being more a machine designed for learning about programming. With a then reasonable 256 bytes of RAM (expandable up to 512), a *very* basic keyboard,  plus interfaces to allow it to connect to a cassette player for storage and a standard TV set for display (at additional costs of £7.99 and £33.75 respectively), it was originally expected to only sell in small numbers. Demand was vastly underestimated and from an initial production run of 2,000 units, it went on to sell ten times that (accurate totals vary) - significantly expanding the user base of hobbyist computers. The MK14 was so successful in fact that it gave 'Science of Cambridge' the capital to embark on their next venture - a computer with wider mass market appeal.

Having dabbled in building simple electronic projects like Crystal radio sets, sound effect generators, door buzzers,etc  I was aware of the MK14 from trips to stores like "Maplins" to pick up supplies of components. But for whatever reason, building something like that didn't really appeal to me. Having visited science and computer fairs as part of school trips, I was really interested in something that was a bit more "complete".

Following the success of the MK14, Clive Sinclair looked to the US, where there were three big machines dominating the computing market - the Apple II, the TRS-80 and the Commodore PET. These were proper desktop computers used in offices but were hugely expensive and Sinclair knew that to target a wide enough market he would have to come up with something innovative. Two years later in February 1980, "Science of Cambridge" released their next project - the ZX80. As with the MK14, the idea was to provide a cheap entry point to personal computing. Available in kit form for £79.95 or ready assembled for under the magic, consumer-pleasing, £100, this indicated a real shift towards a more general audience. It even came with a fully functioning keyboard- albeit a membrane one - and was completely enclosed within a stylish case. It had only 1K of RAM out of the box, but crucially could be expanded up to 16k via an external expansion pack, which simply plugged into the back of the machine, requiring no soldering or electronics experience. As was now becoming standard, connections to a cassette player for storage and a TV for viewing were provided.

One of the limiting factors of the ZX80 however was that there was no sound and the display was still black and white and flickered constantly. The hardware was unable to hold the screen image and process other tasks at the same time - if you wanted it to do a calculation, the screen went blank until it was completed (oh and it could only deal in whole numbers). A counter to this was that the machine came with "Sinclair BASIC" - it's own programming language based on the ANSI standards co-developed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. For the first time the general user (with the support of the included user manual) could write their own programs!  Books started to be published with listings of all the BASIC commands necessary to create your own software. 

Even though the machine was inferior to its rivals, sales were impressive: over 50,000 units. The ZX80 really turned the market on its head. The sub-£100 price point and the fact that one could simply walk into a shop, buy one, plug it in and use it was unheard of at the time. It's success demonstrated that there was a massive potential market out there for a cheap consumer-friendly home computer. I desperately wanted a ZX80, but had to satisfy myself with visiting my friend David after school, because his parents had splashed out and bought him one. We used to sit their in awe as he proudly showed off his hours of programming skills by making a minimalist text game or Breakout, or something that was meant to be a flight simulator. It was the dawn of a new age. A black and white one with no sound maybe, but still a new world of possibilities.

In the next episode - we reach 1981 and I take my first steps into the world of home computing...