Tokyo Blog

When I was in England over Christmas, I saw some old photographs that reminded me of a computer my parents bought me when I was younger. It was the mid to late 80’s and I was probably around 9 or 10 years old when I got my first computer, this Oric 1 you can see above the text. Compared to all the breeze-block fashioned personal computers of the time, I think this was a design icon. Smaller and thinner than its counterparts and packing the same sound card as the one found in the Atari ST.

The computer used to be kept on a drawer that slid out from the video cabinet beneath the TV. In order to use it you had to squat or kneel in front of it. I used to play Hunchback or Zorgon’s Revenge when no-one was using the TV, or try to program it by guessing at the syntax. Zorgon’s Revenge used to give me the creeps in much the same way as Quo Vadis and Jet Set Willy. The games themselves were very surreal, and when you mixed this with the garish graphics and garbled, contorted sound there was something disturbing about it. A bit like the old Vectrex at my nan’s house.

I experimented with many of the early personal computers during the 80’s. My friends all had a different one: an Acorn Electron, a VIC 20, an Acorn BBC, a Dragon 64, an Amstrad, Commodore 64. They all sucked, but without them I probably wouldn’t be where I am now, so I have a right to be sentimental.