Bletchley Park and 70s TV games

Mrs DD, myself and a few mates went to Bletchley Park on Sunday, home of the Enigma codebreaking facility. The people there did a lot more than this or course, it also housed for a while Britain and world’s uber-geek, Mr Alan Turing, a pioneer if ever there was one. Like the Kelvedon “Secret” * Nuclear Bunker, it was a place that wouldn’t necessary jump out on anyone’s ‘must-see’ agenda, but I’d recommend a trip up there just to sample the atmosphere alone. You don’t have to be a code or WW2 junkie to enjoy it, although if you are either, there’s even more a chance that you will.

The most enjoyable part of the trip was spent about 2 minutes before the place closed at 5, however. In Block B, one of the main exhibition spaces was a selection of very old computers indeed, including my first real computer, an Amstrad PCW8512. Yes, I said . It wasn’t a Speccy anyhow, and did “real” work, like get me through my A levels, and a good chunk of my degree. ‘Twas sad to see the back of it, though given a race between the spellchecker and a three legged, drunken tortoise, the jury would be out as to who would cross the finishing post.

Nestling innocently amongst the 80s behemoths, including the first IBM PC, Amstrad PCs (I failed my A level business studies exam on one of these as hard drive corrupted all my work before getting to print, leaving nothing but random crap and a befuddled PC support guy), a BBC Model B, VIC 20 and C64, was a silver coloured box. I stared at it. It stared at me. I questioned it as to where the hell I’d seen its brother before.

Then…

EUREKA. The orange label read ‘SPORTEL’. My childhood friend Andrew, the kind of person for whom ‘My Perfect Cousin’ was written about, only he wasn’t my cousin, owned one of these. We’d spent hours playing Pong-like games on it, huddled around the telly at his parents’ house in Greenford. Bloody hell, nostalgia struck me with the impact of a class 375 Electrostar as it reaches warp speed between West Horndon and Basildump.



Those TV games, the ones that go bip-bip-bip-BIP as you paddle a couple of over-large pixels into a “goal”. Who needs Fifa 2006 World Cup Stimulator when your ‘players’ could consist of two long lines and a variable angle? For that, ladies and gentlemen, bought up on the X-box, was how they did it in 1977.

These Pong games may have had the brain of a mongol child, (well actually their “brain” was a General Instruments 8700 chip, mostly) but boy, were they fun if you were of a certain age (under ten I suppose would is about the right level of maturity that best suited).

The model pictured above, nicked from www.old-computers.com, wasn’t the machine I had, which was a Grandstand ten-gamer, but it was that my neighbours owned, and one that I deeply, deeply coveted in ways which only an eight year old boy sans cash, can. It was available at the Southall branch of Woolies for about £16. It came with a riffle. You’d aim it at the telly and try to knock out a flying ball (a bigger square of pixels this time). I still haven’t a clue how the technology works – magic I reckon - but if you managed to get your sights lined up the ball and fired just the right time, it would disappear and your score would go up by 1. I think 15 was the max you could get.