First and Last

 

The massive denial of service attack against the Internet Archive has been a bit of a blow. I rely on its archive of computer magazines so I need to find a different approach if I want to keep the two week cycle of updates going. What do I have in terms of other resources? I have a subscription to newspapers.com because I am unable to remember when a free seven day trial is about to come to an end. How can I use that? What if I use it to find the first and last mentions of selected UK home computers. It's a bit high concept but I think I can make it work. So, what computers? Lets pick 10 and write about them in chronological order; The BBC Micro, Enterprise, ZX80, ZX81, ZX Spectrum, Sinclair QL, VIC-20, Commodore 64, Dragon 32, and Amstrad CPC.

Automata Adverts

March 17 1983 to May 1 1985. 109 weeks. J. Alfred Prufrock measured out his life in coffee spoons. Automata measured theirs with weekly adverts on the back page of POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY. The first Automata advert, 17-23 March 1983, sits alongside news about the 16K Oric and Commodore's proposed factory in Corby, and reviews for Football Manager, The Hobbit, and Automata's Pimania. The last advert sits next to details about a new computer called the Amiga and the liquidation of Bug-Byte, and reviews of... well it wasn't a great week for classic games, Booty, Shadowfire, and Spy Hunter are probably the most notable titles. Those two years cover a lot of ground and the advantage of the weekly grind is that Christian Penfold, Mel Croucher, and artist Robin Evans frequently turn their gaze out onto the wider industry when casting around for material. The adverts provide a window onto how the UK software scene looked and how Automata regarded itself. 

Automata UK

65(a) Osbourne Road, Portsmouth, PO5

Most of the pages of this blog exist because they give me a warm hug of nostalgia. "I loved Highway Encounter," etc, etc, etc. But occasionally things get more complicated. Newsfield, for example, was supposed to be my lovely stroll down memory lane but instead forced me to consider the difference between the job of my dreams and the realities of working with actual fallible humans. Automata is also less straightforward. Positioned deliberately outside the mainstream of UK software, they were, and remain, a contradiction. A counterculture business. Simultaneously obscure and well known. Lionised, today, and yet my memory is of not liking them much. Was I a stuffy teen conformist, unable to cope with anything which didn't fit into my plastic-fantastic routine of Top of the Pops on Thursday and Howard's Way on Sunday? Am I, as Star Trek once put it, Herbert?

Questions in the House

It's there in black and white on page 15 of THE GUARDIAN (29 August 1985). "Questions were asked in Parliament." The questions were about US Gold's game Raid Over Moscow -tag line, "Play it like there's no tomorrow." Except THE GUARDIAN is wrong. The game was controversial in the UK, just ask Monsignor Bruce Kent of CND, but no questions were asked in the UK Parliament. It was in Finland where a communist MP questioned distribution of the game. This was disappointing to learn but I found myself wondering whether any of our MPs did ever talk about games or home computers. There's only one way to find out.

Quicksilva

Palmerstone Park House, 13 Palmerstone Road, Southampton

I didn't realise how interconnected the British software scene could be. The story of Mastertronic blurs into the story of Virgin Games. The Liverpool software houses give the impression of all living in each other's pockets. You can't write about Software Projects without writing about Bug-Byte and you can't write about Bug-Byte without writing about Imagine and you can't write about Imagine without writing about Denton Designs. The same is true of Quicksilva. Its story is part of the story of Argus Press Games. And also part of the story of Electric Dreams. And part of the story of Activision. Oh, and part of the story of Bug-Byte. I feel I should make one of those complicated maps with pins stuck in it and string joining the pins together.

Konix

35 Rassau Industrial Estate, Ebbw Vale, Gwent, NP3

British hardware never had the same international profile as British software. The Enterprise had a degree of success in Hungary. The Dragon likewise in Spain. Acorn, Sinclair, and Amstrad all had a greater impact but you'd be hard pushed to describe any of them as globally famous. The Sinclair Spectrum sold five million units in total, a figure dwarfed by the 17 million Commodore 64s sold around the world. Then in 1989, one company came up with a device that could change everything. A console that could take on the world. 

EMAP: East Midland Allied Press

Priory Court, 30-32 Farringdon Lane, EC1R

EMAP were first. In 1981 they launched COMPUTER & VIDEO GAMES. The first magazine in the world dedicated to computer games. Not one of those qualified firsts, like the first "regularly published" video games magazine in the world or just the first games magazine "published in the UK" or the first "multiformat" video games magazine. The first. Anywhere. Number one. EMAP did it. [I stand. Sing two verses of Rule Britannia and then sit down again and apologise to the cat, who had been sleeping quietly on my lap].