SIGNED, UNSEALED AND DELIVERED

Do you know who wrote your favourite book? Of course you do. The author’s name is on the cover. And you also know who sang your favourite song and starred in your favourite film. But do you know who created your favourite arcade game?

I certainly didn’t back in the late-Seventies and early Eighties, when I was playing Boot Hill, Asteroids, Joust and every other new game that magically appeared, like the shopkeeper from Mr Benn, in the small arcade or the cafes and chip shops of my home town of Ripley in Derbyshire.

I do now. One of the many wonderful things about writing is getting to talk to, and sometimes meet, the people who created the games that I pumped my paper round money into when I was growing up. I’d never been one for collecting autographs but then I discovered the ‘arcade flyer’ – the advertising sheets, usually A4 in size, produced by Atari, Williams, Gottlieb and all the other coin-op manufacturers, to encourage arcade operators to buy their latest release. I found one for on eBay for $10 and as I’d just interviewed the programmer, Warren Davis, for issue 21, I sent it over to him in California and a few weeks later, it arrived back, signed. I got it framed and put it up on the wall… of my toilet. It was soon joined by , , and a dozen more, all signed by the coders and artists behind each game, a daily reminder of those formative years spent in pursuit of the next high score.