When Computing Became Personal by Matt Nicholson - Book Review

Personal computers have been a "thing" now for well over forty-five years and have quite a convoluted history, full of drama, skulduggery and more than a few urban myths. This is where Matt Nicholson's excellent 2014 book comes in. Contained within is a narrative history of how, from its very beginnings to 2010, the personal computer transformed the world. 

The author has a long history working in technology journalism, having edited What Mirco? (of which I have a few later issues in my library) before joining Amstrad Action as editor in 1986. He wrote a piece in issue 8 of Pixel Addict  which mentioned this book and I thought it worth a read. 

The story of how the computer made to from big businesses to the home is a complex one, with many familiar names as well as more than a few that have been lost to the mists of time. There were numerous losers to the few winners, and even those successful in grabbing market share or establishing an industry standard were neither guaranteed that success nor destined to maintaining it. 

The author has an easy writing style with the ability to explain complex situations and concepts with ease. There is a timeline at the back of the book to keep things organised for the reader, as well as an explanation as to how computers work. All combine to make reading the core of the book an enjoyable and informative experience. 

And when I say informative, I mean informative. The bibliography covers 19 pages, and as it always seems with tomes like these, it prompts me to start looking for some of these original sources, and then stop once the "collector"prices are taken into account. Still, it reveals the depth of research that has gone into this book - the man knows truly of what he speaks. And yes, this book dispels more than a few urban legends about how certain individuals and companies acted. 

Of course, nothing is perfect and there are couple of things to note. Firstly, and this is an ask as I really have enjoyed this book - it would be great to see an updated version taking the tale up to 2020 or so. Secondly, if you're a fan of computing outside of the 'Personal Computer', you may be disappointed. I should clarify. The tale focuses on how the PC (including the Mac) got into the home. While there are mentions of other "personal computers", these are but brief mentions and the author notes this. Similarly, the tale focuses mostly on the US as that's where, in his introduction, he states that most of the important events happened pertaining to the story. It's hard not to disagree and yeah, it would be lovely to have more detail on the 8-bit home computers, the 16-bit battles and even RISC OS, but these were just side stories to the rise of CP/M, then the IBM PC and DOS, and then the duopoly of Windows and MacOS. Linux does get a piece of the action too, but that's just a small part near the end and hell, we're still waiting for 20xx to be the year of Linux on the desktop ;-)

I can whole-heartedly recommend this book as I found it well worth reading. For the period it covers, I have found no singular source that compares to it and in such an easy to read way. You can pick up a copy directly from Amazon here. If you want to read more about digital culture then check out Pixel Addict here. You can also pick up copies at most WH Smiths in the UK, as well as selected retailers internationally. 

Was That Film Really That Bad??? - The Avengers (1998)

And so we arrive at this veritable feast of cinematic brilliance. A film so recognisable, so embedded in the psyche of the general public that even the behemoth that is Marvel decided to change the name of their 2012 low budget indie in order to avoid confusion in the UK. A cinephile's orgasm of plot, characterisation and drama. Action so beyond compare that they have never tried to bring the characters back... Oh! Fuck it! You know the film I'm talking about. And if you don't, you're about to. 

As Babylon 5's Zathras say, "Not the one!"

The 1990's saw a brief resurrection of genre TV shows at the cinema. The Saint tried and and was an honourable failure, whilst Lost in Space aimed for the moon and ended up in that Dr Who quarry off the A40. It was, however, The Avengers that had the most going for it. A recognisable brand, a fine legacy (even The New Avengers had its high points... and no, not those! And it featured an ever-so-chic Hunt. DO NOT say that quickly...), this adaptation was eagerly awaited, especially as it brought together the then-hot casting of Uma Thurman, Ralph Fiennes and the ever-dependable Sir Sean Connery. Oh, and a budget of $60 million, only $10m less than 1998's Saving Private Ryan and look what they put on screen there! Anticipation ran high.

Connery's "bear" faced cheek at the first script reading.

And anticipation remained, if at rapidly decreasing levels, as the film skipped previews. Yep, never a good sign when the reviewers get to watch a film at the same time as the paying punter. If they had seen it first, maybe they would have asked what the literal fuck was the money spent on? $60m. That's $111,000,000 today. Where did it go? Maybe it was to pay for Sean Connery to wear a fucking teddy bear suit? Maybe it was for a Ben Nevis sized mountain of Columbian sneezing powder, 'cos sure as hell the writers, producers and director were off their tits on something when they thought up this sorry excuse for a 90 minute desecration of the memory of Steed and company. Maybe, just maybe, they did the whole thing for $20 mil and spaffed the rest on a weekend at that Glasto, class A and all? Who knows? Who cares. All that was left was this steaming pile of nostalgia-laced shit that took a beloved TV favourite and passed it through Satan's colon faster than a Brown Ale-coated pork pie. 

Really, WB, really???

Sigh...

Where to begin? The plot, maybe? 

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaalls

So there's this guy, Steed (Fiennes). He works for The Ministry and is tasked by his boss, Mother (a woefully wasted Jim Broadbent), to find out why Dr Emma Peel (Thurman, who has zero on-screen chemistry with Fiennes) has sabotaged her own project, a weather control system named Prospero. She claims innocence, so the pair head off to check out Sir August de Wynter (Connery),a scientist who previously worked at The Ministry. Along the way, we meet Father (Fiona Shaw), second in command of The Ministry, and Bailey (Eddie Izzard), a henchman of de Wynter. Naturally, de Wynter is up to no good, as there is skulduggery, cloning and what not. Oh, and a Grace Jones song for the after party. At 90 minutes, it lasts far, far too long.

Bloody good right to look smug after that payday!

Let's begin with the casting. As noted above, our leads show naff all chemistry or, indeed, likeability. They trade innuendos in performances akin to a local am-dram performance of Romeo and Juliet with Anne Widdicombe and Jacob Rees Mogg in the lead roles, making most of their banter excruciating to watch. You do get to see Connery dressed as a teddy bear, but the rest of it feels like he's phoning it in. Shaw, a superb actress (most recently in Andor), is given little to do, and Izzard, who is sublime on occasion, barely registers at all. And why is Shaun Ryder a henchman? I have no sodding idea! 

If only they'd made a Mr Benn movie!

The state of the casting follows into the setting. It's like the cast are the only living souls on the planet. The 60's TV show had a specific look and style because it was filmed on the cheap. This film wasn't, but they kept the style anyway as a homage and it doesn't work. Logic is missing in action too and, aside from trying to look cool and prove Steed is handy with a brolly, the opening village scene makes bugger all sense. It doesn't get better - the aforementioned teddy bear costumes for one.

Or a remake of The Sweeney?

It feels like the writers got hammered watching old repeats then tried to re-create the magic through the port and brandy induced hangover (never, ever mix those two!) whilst thinking "Cool Britannia" was something more than just a marketing slogan. As per the rules, there's a cheeky voice only cameo for Patrick Macnee (the one, true Steed!), but that is slight comfort. By this point in the film, you'll just want the pain to end. But no, there is more to come, as the "special effects" culminate in badly shot model of a hot air balloon blowing up and then the actual denouement with de Wynter. 

Career symbolism ahoy!

The thing is, do you care that he gets his comeuppance? I didn't by the end of this celluloid mess. You may feel that I am being too hard on The Avengers. You might think that, just as The Saint and Lost in Space had some redeeming features (honestly, The Saint is pretty decent), The Avengers has too. I respect your point of view but you're just plain wrong. It was pulled from its original release date and dumped at the arse end of the summer. It was withheld from critics until its public release. It hit the box office with all of the style and grace of a seagull turd hitting a windscreen.  

"I'm thinking The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen will be a good follow up..."

When I started this series back in 2020, The Avengers was one of the original half dozen or so I wanted to review, having never actually seen it. It took a while, but I found a copy for £1 in CEX. I am pleased I have watched it, because now I can pass on this warning. No matter what good things you may have heard, what tiny, minuscule gems of brilliance you might have read about, The Avengers is a stinker of the highest order and, hand on heart, I can honestly say that yes, this film really is that bad.

Attract Mode by Jamie Lendino - Book Review

Arcade machines for me as a child were a source of wonder. The imposingly tall cabinets surrounded by groups of older kids, bright flashy graphics and the amazing sound and music - they were the main attraction of a trip to the coast, for as we (well, mostly UK readers) will know, it was always the amusement arcades at the seaside that drew your attention. Jamie Lendino's book on the subject, whilst predominantly a US-centric view of the videogames arcade's heyday, is very much a trip down memory lane - and yes, gentle reader, I'm in a sharing mood today.

Summer of 1986 - the annual family trip to Scarborough in the six weeks school holiday. The usual Bed and Breakfast is closed due to a fire, so an alternate is found, one with the dining room/bar in the basement and, in the corridor leading to that room, a Space Invaders machine. Here, with the few 10p's I was allocated each day, I spent as much time as possible enthralled by the ever advancing alien waves. It also meant kind of fresh air as this was the 80's and it seemed almost every adult smoked. A win-win situation. 

Presented chronologically, Attract Mode begins with a history of the arcade itself, from the electro-mechanical and pinball machines that attached players (and organised crime) to the coin devouring time killers, to the machines the youth of the 70's and onwards became familiar with. The format of the book settles into the familiar layout of the author's other publications - there is some background to the specific period being covered, then as each manufacturer comes along they are given an introduction and brief history, before each title within that period is detailed, usually with a screenshot. There are descriptions of how the games played, their technical specifications and interesting tidbits about sales figures, reviews, cultural relevance and the like.

Sometime in the very early 90's - it's lunchtime at Tanfield Comprehensive (think high school for those of you too young to remember or not from the UK) and a group of us walk the mile or so (the direct route through the Good Street estate, across Oakey's Field and then up Barn Hill bank) to Stanley. We grab food from wherever and congregate in the Roma Cafe near the bottom of Front Street, where we take turns playing Robocop, its battered cabinet evidence of a hard life. Along the way, we avoid groups of kids from South Stanley Comp, because obviously there was a rivalry that sometimes spilled over - I mean, not Sharks vs Jets level - there weren't as many musical numbers and not everyone could click their fingers and dance... Then, of course, we lost track of time and had to run back to school to avoid being late for the afternoon lessons.

It's only as you read through the games included that you realise how much of a formative experience actually playing an arcade game was. Not only were these better looking than anything you could play at home at the time, but they were available to play instantly (once you fed in your 10p coin anyway), and that fact alone was immense compared to a ten minute cassette load from a Spectrum or CPC. Ok, your game could last maybe seconds, but that just made you want to come back and try again. What is more surprising is that a lot of these games are still very playable today unlike many of the home conversions. For most of the 1980's, if you wanted to play the best version of an arcade game, the arcade was where it was at. Unless you were either very rich or monumentally in debt to have purchased an SNK Neo Geo as the 90's arrived (and paid £200-£250 per game!).

Spring 1998 - the student bar at the Kingston Hill Campus of Kingston University, London. After stocking up on pints for £1 during happy hour (prices went back up to the usual £1.10 afterwards and we were students after all), we settle down to a tournament of two player Cruis'n World. It starts off well enough, but after imbibing several pints, it becomes more a game of insult challenge as everyone's driving skills suffer from the cheap lager. The game brought us together, the insults made us friends.

Arcade games offered completely different experiences, audibly, visually and socially, to what could be had at home. Sure, there were conversions (and rip offs too), but standing in an amusement arcade/cafe/bar/B&B corridor was the real deal. It was gaming nirvana. This book captures the essence of that and what arcades meant during the early years of videogames. If you wanted the best, then the arcade was the place for you, and this book also brings context and history into play as well. The depth of research is superb and the 13-page bibliography is something I'll be working through for months (if not longer) to come. 

Jamie Lendino, with Attract Mode, has written a fantastic history of the video arcade and the games that form its legacy. Both instructive and a nostalgia-laced tour of youthful memories, for readers of a certain age such as myself, this is a must read book. For those who never experienced the video game arcade of the 1970's to 90's, this book will tell you what all of the fuss was about. You can pick up a copy from Amazon here in either paperback or Kindle format.

Evercade Evolution Issue 5 review

The fifth issue of Evercade Evolution was released a few weeks ago and, after ordering the physical copy directly from Amazon, it turns out that the team have done it again - 64 pages (excluding covers) of handheld gaming goodness!

As per the previous issues, the magazine is well laid out and packed with both text and imagery. The star of this issue is the 50th anniversary of Atari. To cover that, the team have reviewed the Atari Collection 2 and Atari Arcade 1. Other features include a trip down memory lane for Vaughan Anscombe, a chat with YouTuber Thunderm00se, and a tremendously informative and fun interview with former Atari employee Scott Rhoades. The usual news and high score sections are also present. 

I may have said it before but I really like the way the reviews are laid out in the magazine. Each cartridge gets an overview review, with separate scores from some of the other team members too, then each title gets its own page, again with a second opinion to add context to the scores. It's a format that works well, especially considering the nature of the collections - there may be a dozen or so titles per cart but there will be some stinkers amongst the selection. 

For example, Atari Collection 2 contains decent titles such as Yars Revenge, Haunted House, Solaris and Asteroids (the 7800 version). It also has less... "good" entries like Air Sea Battle, Human Cannonball and Street Racer. As always, nostalgia will only get you so far, and it's good to see that the reviews do highlight this. The good thing with Evercade carts is that there is always enough wheat in the chaff to warrant a purchase.

The same goes for Atari Arcade 1, and the inclusion of Asteroids and Crystal Castles more than offsets the inclusion of the turd that is Canyon Bomber. 

Evercade Evolution issue 5 is another well written edition that is very much an essential purchase for fans of the Evercade family of devices (the original handheld, the VS home console and the recently released EXP handheld). The £7 physical copy is as good as you can get from Amazon publishing for the price and you don't even have to go physical if you don't want to - the Kindle version costs £2 and even then, there is also the free .pdf copy available directly from the Evercade Evolution website. Given the options available, there's no reason at all not to give it a read!