Space Invaders

The first video game I remember playing was one of the various Pong clones that were around in the late 70's.  The amazement of being able to switch from tennis to hockey at the flick of a switch - ooh look its split the bat into two - was pretty short lived as I remember and I was soon packed away and forgotten about.

Shortly after that I was in a cafe somewhere, aged 9ish and was fascinated by the strange huge machine in the corner that I could barely see over the buttons.  After begging a piece of change from the not impressed parents I was quickly absorbed into a world where aliens when bip-bop-bip-bop and advanced down the screen in straight ranks.  This wasn;t just your ordinary Space Invaders though it was the deluxe version where they has stuck colored strips of plastic accross the screen meaning the aliens changed color as the marched towards you.  Of course it also meant you missile changed colors as it fired up the screen towards them.  Back then though we didnt worry ourselves with such trivial details and any way we were too concerned with trying to time that one missile at a time shot perfectly to shoot that last alien before it flattened the houses. As first impressions go its one that shaped the rest of my life and cost me a fortune in loose change and ditching to school to go to arcades.  But that came later...