Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy User Manual
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Trigger Happy
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cassette, and I would swap copies and hints with my
schoolfriends.) For many years, the myriad delights that
videogames offered were a reliable evening escape,
their names now a peculiarly evocative roll call of
sepia-tinged pleasures: Jet Pac, Ant Attack, Manic
Miner, Knight Lore, Way of the Exploding Fist, Dark
Star . . . Then I decided, at the age of sixteen, to put
away childish things. So I bought a guitar and formed a
skate-punk heavy-metal band.
While I was away practicing my ax heroics, home
computers—the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, as
well as a later, more powerful generation comprising
the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga—were gradually
being supplanted by home videogame consoles. These
little plastic boxes could not be programmed by the
user, and the games came on cartridge rather than on
cassette tape. The big players in the late 1980s and
early 1990s were two Japanese giants: Nintendo, with
its Nintendo Entertainment System (or Famicom) and
the more powerful Super NES; and Sega, with its
Megadrive. Each company was represented by its own
digital mascot: Nintendo had Mario, the world-famous
mustachioed plumber, and Sega had Sonic, a cheeky
blue hedgehog.