Howard Scott Warshaw is a man who knows what he likes, and being a high ranking systems engineer at Hewlett Packard is not it.  Programming games for Atari, however, is.  This is how he came to leave the former for … Read more

Snake is to mobile phone gaming what Pac Man is to upright cabinets or Tetris is to consoles.  If you’ve never heard of it, please leave now.  If you’ve never played it, you’ve probably never had a phone.  If you … Read more

Thanks to political correctness gone mad, the days of watching a midget fight a booze crazed Russian called Vodka Drunkenski in a south east London pub are sadly gone. The magic of those far off nights – and the fine … Read more

In November 1972, a heap of litter appeared in one corner of Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California.  Upon further inspection, however, it turned out to be a black and white television, a coin-op mechanism from a local laundrette, a … Read more

Galaxian was the last of the first arcade games, featuring as it did a lone, undergunned ship battling against several rows of relentlessly descending invaders from space – much like Space Invaders, come to think of it. It would be … Read more

People were obsessed with impending nuclear Armageddon in the 1980’s, presumably as a way to take their minds off the awful music and rubbish clothes. However, even in 1980, with Two Tone dominating the charts, the mod revival in full … Read more

As we discovered last time when we examined Manic Miner, Miner Willy’s working life was arduous, risky, and set to royalty-free classical music on an endless loop. So, like anyone in the 1980’s, his chosen method of relaxation was to … Read more

In the 1980’s, miners were more notable for picket lines, pitched battles with the police and their part in an ideological struggle with Thatcher’s Britain that threatened at times to boil over into an actual gloves-off class war. There was … Read more

Apparently, in First Blood, a character called Sgt Galt falls from a helicopter, and registers his concern by screaming. Elsewhere in the film, someone called Deputy Mitch also has a bit of a scream upon discovering that Rambo is hacking … Read more

Railroad Tycoon 2 is one of those games where the best way to play is to not win. It isn’t as if you are going to get overrun by barbarians or sacked by your board of directors or, well, die, … Read more