Computer Virgin and the Syntax Error

I thought I’d start and explain to you one of the main reasons (And it’s not the only one!) as to why I love computer games and why I’m still playing them 40 years later. I grew up in the 1970’s when Computers were really fucking expensive. We were working-class so other than a Black and White Grandstand Pong Game with a light gun, we couldn’t afford one. They cost many hundreds/thousands of pounds back in those days and that was a shitload of money. Then in the early 1980’s the home computer revolution began, the cost of computers started coming down. I remember going into the tax-dodgers Boots store at the Victoria Centre in Nottingham on a Saturday morning with my eldest sister. While she was shopping for makeup, I buggered off on my own upstairs into the electrical department where the TV’s, Radios and Stereos were which was safe to do back then. I was only about 9 years old, we didn’t worry about paedophiles even though the most notorious one Jimmy Saville was on our TV screens weekly. And there it was, I came face to face with not one but a selection of computers. Some of them were hooked up. So I ran over, super excited and came face to face with a computer called a Commodore Pet. As any kid with no experience of computers does, I started pressing buttons and typed in random letters and key presses and soon figured out that if you pressed the return button, the words “SYNTAX ERROR” would appear. What the fucking hell is a SYNTAX ERROR? It soon dawned on me that instead of typing random letters, I should type something the computer would understand so that I don’t get a SYNTAX ERROR. I’d seen computers on films and TV before and they were really clever and super smart, so I’ll say hello to the computer, so I typed in “Hello” and pressed return. SYNTAX ERROR!! What! What do you mean SYNTAX ERROR? Then I had a brain wave, you can play games on computers, so I typed in “Let us play a game” pressed return. SYNTAX ERROR! After typing various English phrases into it, only to be met by SYNTAX ERROR after SYNTAX ERROR, it made me realise that these computers were completely shit, they were total crap. You can’t do anything with them other than getting a SYNTAX ERROR. What I didn’t realise is that computers aren’t crap at all, they are just really, really dumb. They only understand binary 0’s and 1’s, anyone who only understands 2 things is clearly dumb. Computers don’t do anything unless they are instructed too and they always do what they are told, so they are docile and unable to think for themselves. Completely fucking dumb! But they are geniuses at understanding those 0’s and 1’s. It’s the only thing they do, and they do it well! If you do not understand how computers work or how to communicate with them, that's fine, you do not need to know to appreciate them. I do understand how they work having eventually worked out how not to get a SYNTAX ERROR after owning them, and understanding that computers don't understand English. And you may never know the brilliance of how all those 0’s and 1’s translates into the games you and I play. I remember being gobsmacked at how many planets you could visit in Elite on a 48K Spectrum, I remember being astounded at the size of the character sprites on Drunken Master for the PC Engine, I remember picking my jaw off the floor the first time I saw Gran Turismo on the PS1 and wondered how the fucking hell did they manage to make Soul Calibre 2 on the Dreamcast better looking than the Arcade version. In recent time, the size and attention to detail in Red Dead Redemption 2 and I won’t even begin to talk about the technical genius that is Star Citizen. And it’s those moments of pure technical genius that makes me love computer games so very much. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that graphics are as important as gameplay because it’s not but every time I think that computer games can’t get any better, some smart-arsed developers exceed my expectations. Hybrid Rules