OK it's 1983 and I should be working my socks off preparing for a
presentation of my work for a crit but instead was fiddling with
a program I had written for the ZX81 which had kept me up all the
night long. During the night there was a factory explosion up the
street that didn't even cause me to blink my eye, I was so engrossed
in what I was doing. During the day a quite memorising piece of
music kept flooding across the radio waves which kinda summed up
my new life with the computer. It was Blue Monday by New Order. I
just had to get this record.
Some days later I visited my local record steward and found that
the record only came out on 12 inch vinyl. The cover was pretty
bland and I kinda felt a touch cheated. Same day I tripped into
the basement of the same store and gobbled up a few more games.
The record got hammered and very soon I had upgraded to a 16K and
then a 48K Spectrum. I have to say, those early days of gaming were
quite dangerous for me, as I found the games most addictive. There
had been nothing like this before and so it was intoxicating.
Blue Monday zonked up the chart being the first to rise to such
heights as only a 12 inch record. It was only recently that I
discovered that the record cover had been based on a 5.25" floppy
disk. Evidently the cost of the cover was more than the pressing
and so New Order lost money with every copy. Why my cover did
not have the 5.25" holes I do not know. I've botched a picture
together to show what it was like.
The games I feature here are the actual games that I bought during
the New Order Blue Monday period. I know cus the next year I nearly
blew my diploma playing them. I have to say I am kinda glad I did
not have the joy of the Spectrum during my school and early college
years as I doubt I would have ever gotten educated. No idea how
kids cope today.
Most of the games were pretty crap but there were many that just
kept you up all night. It certainly was a glorious time and one I
recall with find affection. The Spectrum was a fantastic computer
and gave me hours and hours of pleasure for what was the cheapest
technological period of my life.
Interestingly New Order are still kinda around though the members
have changed over the years. I bought most of their albums, though
not on vinyl I have to say. It was interesting that they chose to
use a 5.25" disk as the format for their album. It was a nod to
the emerging power of the computer and the 'New Order' of things.
I have linked at the bottom of the images a YouTube video of an
8-Bit Commodore playing the track.
