Gorf - To a child, THE FUTURE

Compared to my grown up self, that is rather blase about computer games and gaming, the child version of me was absolutely enthralled by early video games. I remember first playing on a "Pong" cabinet in the Grand Hotel, Brodick in 1978, a holiday also memorable for me being banished from the hotel dining room after throwing up a chicken maryland all over it, many happy hours on a mini golf course, and the sheer upset of Scotland's world cup demise settling over Arran.

I was thrilled by Pong, to a Blakes 7 and Star Wars loving kid, this was space brought down to planet earth. Space Invaders was even more of a step up - lasers in a box! - and soon every chip shop in England had Galaxians bleeping away in a corner.

But my stepfather disapproved of such games, claming them to be a total waste of money and the past-time of dodgy youths. If ever we were at a motorway service station, my hopeful hanging around the games as they demoed away was always met with derision, not a single 10p coin was I ever given to feed to the intergalactic Moloch by the exits.

Heartbroken, I would pretend to play the demo, fingers on the buttons in hope the machine would spring to life beneath me. It never did. When we did get a Commodore 64 a few years later, only tedious educational software like dull as ditchwater "Gortek and the Microchips" was encouraged.

However, trips to stay with my father over in Manchester led to escape from videogame exile though. My father would take me to an early video game arcade in the guts of the Arndale complex in the centre of the city, near what I think was called Shambles Square. A modern entire glass fronted paradise, this arcade was neon lit, noisy, and full of the sounds of space.

And within its glass walls, lived GORF.

Gorf was incredible! Never mind Space Invaders with its boring left-right-fire buttons and monochrome graphics tinted by coloured perspex, Gorf was a cabinet of the universe beamed down to enrapture an 8 year old with its tricks. It had a massive, space ship joy stick, real colours that sprang out of the screen, and a craft that moved in TWO WHOLE DIMENSIONS rather than one.

More than that, it talked. It actually spoke to you.

It spoke to me a lot.

"BAD MOVE, SPACE CADET" it robotically intoned at me every time I got killed. Which was, like, about every thirty seconds. Despoite my excitement at them, I was rubbish at playing video games, always was, and probably still would be now. Many 10p coins my father gave me; many times I got balsted to bits without clearing so much a single level of aliens, all accompanied by Gorf's electronic taunts.

I didn't mind. I just loved Gorf so much, my father used to talk to me in a Gorf voice a lot. Gorf was always a treat dangled at me, for a couple of times every visit, if I was good.

Then, tragedy. That little arcade disappeared, swallowed up by heaven knows what, and to my father, the new treat was a trip to The Gogglebox video shop in Hale or Altrincham to hire a pirated ET.

New toys for new times. I eventually had tabletop Scramble and Firefox F7 that I played to death. But I've never forgotten Gorf. And I've never forgotten the wonder I felt as that young, enraptured child.