1984: Some Popular Computers And Games - Remember Frogger, Galaxy Invader 1000, Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers And The Commodore 16?

Double page advertisement from 1984 for the Commodore 16 complete starter pack - Everything you need To start computing in one box.

Some computers and games featured in the Janet Frazer autumn and winter 1984/5 mail order catalogue.

Fun with the likes of Zaxxon and Sensor Travel Chess. The Tomy Skyfighters "brings you realistic sights and sounds. Press the top control buttons to manoeuvre your 'Skyfighters' against the enemy squadron."

The Atari 600XL and the Commodore 64.

Games for the Commodore 64, Sinclair Spectrum 48K and Atari 600XL and 400/800.

The new streamlined-look Atari 2600 console and games galore - including the delectable Ms Pacman.

Goodies here include the Philips Videopac G7000, a "boss joystick" suitable for Atari 2600 video game, Atari computers, Commodore 64 and Vic 20 computers, and lots of lovely games like Donkey Kong and Zaxxon.

Astro Wars, Star Force, Munchman, Firefox, BMX Flyer (BMX without the cuts and grazes), Krazy Kong and Multigame - "6 CHALLENGING GAMES IN ONE PLUS BONUS GAME".
 

Here are the CGL mini arcade games Frogger, Amidar and Galaxy Invader 1000. Such memories! Details are also listed of the items below.

CGL - Game and Watch - "The games you can take anywhere for those boring moments". Here are Snoopy, Donkey Kong, Mario's Bombs Away, Donkey Kong Junior, Mario's Cement Factory, Pinball, Mario Brothers and Popeye.

Space Invaders

From the BBC Radio 1 On Show magazine, summer, 1980. Space Invaders were sweeping into our lives and heartily endorsed by the likes of Hot Gossip, The Who and Dave Lee Travis!

The Invaders were first released in Japan in June 1978, and first exhibited at a trade show in this country in 1979. "Hmm," we said, our interest aroused as the machines slowly began to arrive. The little alien thingies then invaded the early 1980s as machines started cropping up everywhere. Mind you, this really was a case of Loving The Alien - we adored 'em!

The claims online that Space Invaders were a UK craze with a 1979 heyday are easily debunked by the newspaper archives. I'm sorry, but this 1970s obsession is ridiculous. Thank goodness the newspaper archives can verify the memories of us who do remember. Time is a constant stream, not rigidly segregated decades - after all, everybody would have been discarding their flared trousers and hippie chic in 1970 if that was so.

From the Sun, February 28 1981 - a hand-held Space Invaders game has arrived in the UK, and is apparently highly sought after, but in short supply!
-
From the Cambridge Evening News, 1981: concerns are raised by NUPE (the National Union of Public Employees) about children spending dinner money playing Space Invaders on a machine installed at a local school.

Sunday People, November 15, 1981 - and Frogger (or "Froger" as it's spelt in the article!) threatens Space Invaders throne at the local boozer! At this point, there is no mention of Pac-Man impacting on the UK. I wonder when he arrived here?

From the Janet Frazer autumn/winter 1984/85 mail order catalogue. A hand-held Frogger game is featured.

Computers and games 1983

Pac-Man 2, Donkey Kong, Astro-Wars, Scramble - 1983 mail order catalogue heaven!

Delights here include Speak and Spell (note the 1980-introduced membrane keyboard), Speak and Maths, Major Morgan and Simon.

A Rumbelows ("We save you money and serve you right") newspaper ad from May 1983. "We have the technology," but the usually smiling Mr Rumbelow doesn't look any too sure about it all! Featured here are the Texas TI994A, the Commodore VIC 20 and the good old Speccy!

From a spring/summer 1983 mail order catalogue. The Atari video system cost £119.99 - very expensive back then. The blurb read:

Connect it to your TV in seconds - sit back - and get ready for a new experience! Every system includes console, two joy stick controllers, mains adaptor and 27-game combat cartridge. There's action, adventure, excitement. Pit your wits - against the computer or up to three opponents. On-screen scoring, different levels of difficulty, realistic sound effects... start sharing in the fun now!

The TV games, including Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Asteroids and Haunted House, cost from £15.99 to £31.99.

Crumbs - the little darling at the top of this catalogue page cost £599.95. So, what did you get if you could afford it? The blurb, maestro, please!

Flexible system expansion and varied programme applications; 48K byte dynamic RAM; employs BASIC in the tape mode; PASCAL software system also available simply by replacing tapes; 9-inch high focus monochromatic display - 25 lines, 40 characters wide; advanced functions include scrolling display rolling and screen editing; typewriter keyboard arrangement with numeric keypad to make data entry smooth and operation simple; built in clock circuit; complete with four programmed cassettes covering BASIC editorial, Home Finance, Educational and Games.

And in simpler terms?

Sharp computer, designed for home and office environment. Applications include stock management, invoicing, marketing analysis, maths, physics, chemistry, computer linguistics, data analysis, home budget management, games etc.

1980s Holidays - From Silver Sands, Caister, To Monarch Flight 666...

An early 1980s magazine ad for Silver Sands Holiday Village, Caister, near Great Yarmouth, and a 1989 Monarch Flight 666 boarding pass...

What were holidays like for a young working class lad like me in the 1980s?

Well, where I went early in the decade was entirely different to where I went later...

You may have read that the era of holidays abroad truly began in the 1960s. Not if you were poor it didn't. Throughout my childhood in the '60s and '70s, we rarely had a holiday - I've counted four caravan camp bargain weeks in my first seventeen years, and an occasional day out in my step father's old rust-bucket.

We had no dosh.

It was in the late 1970s and early 1980s that we sampled the aforementioned bargain caravan holiday weeks - amidst the heady delights of the Silver Sands Holiday Village at Caister, near Great Yarmouth. We stayed in an (to us) lovely caravan (with black plastic-covered seating, some of it cracking to reveal yellow foam), frolicked in the sand dunes, splashed in the sea and lapped up the "entertainment" in the on-site club.

I remember, back in 1977, my cousin Sue won a disco dancing competition on-site and received a copy of Down Down by Status Quo as a prize. Talk about crumby. And it was already out of date. What a disappointment!

I also remember when Silver Sands installed a Space Invaders machine in 1980/81. This was really "trendy" and "with it" as the Invaders had only been invented (in Japan) in 1978 and the machines had only made their debut at UK trade shows in 1979. So, the burbling Invaders from outer space at Silver Sands in 1980/81 led to great excitement and intense competition. And vast outpourings of spending money.

Nipping over the dunes to that lovely sandy beach... black and white telly in the caravan (we still had black and white at home, too)... fish 'n' chips and ice cream... "fun" entertainers at the Silver Sands Show Bar...

Simpler times. Often rather grotty in the actual living. But nice to look back on.

1983 - Silver Sands, Caister and Sunbeach were all then owned by Ladbroke Holidays. Silver Sands Holiday Village was touted as being "one of the friendliest on the Norfolk Coast."

Next door to Silver Sands was the Caister Holiday Camp, England's very first holiday camp, as it happened, beginning as a socialist venture of John Fletcher Dodd in 1906.

There were many changes at the Caister Camp over the years, as accommodation moved from tents to caravans. The Eastern Daily Press reported at the time of the camp's 100th anniversary in 2006:

Now owned by Haven, the camp continues to host 100,000 guests a year - although now they have chalets rather than tents and caravans of yore.

Some of the proudest moments of the camp's history came in the 1980s when Prince Charles chose to take his fledgling Prince's Trust charity to Caister for an annual holiday for 400 underprivileged youngsters.

Yesterday officials read out a letter from the prince written to commemorate the centenary.

Jack Bennett, who was special events organiser at the camp in the 1980s, said yesterday: “Everyone was on a high when the prince came to town. Everyone wanted to be photographed with him and he was very gracious, meeting as many people as he could.

“He did, however, have this thing where he never wanted to enter and leave by the same door - which led to a lot of hasty carpentry just before his arrival.”

Also from 1987 the camp played host to annual conferences featuring up to 5000 evangelical Christians, including George Carey, then Archbishop of Canterbury. “Before agreeing to come they asked who visited the camp,” said Mr Bennett. “I said enthusiasts, fanatics and nuts. I said they were in the first group but for a while I thought I'd lost them.”

And the camp's smaller neighbour, dear old Silver Sands, my old haunt, has now been swept up and absorbed into the bigger (and better?) scheme of things on the Caister site.

By the late 1980s, I was taking my first foreign holidays - jetting off to Italy in 1988, and Tangier in 1989.

My grandparents wouldn't have dreamt of such a thing. Nor would my stick-in-the-mud parents.

And nor, after 1989, would I.

I was really a Silver Sands type of person. The new freedoms of the 1980s did appeal to me, but discovering just what calamari was whilst I was in the act of eating it in Italy in 1988 did not.

Nor did flying. The merest hint of turbulence, and I simply knew that death was imminent.

For my holiday in Tangier in 1989, I discovered that the plane waiting on the tarmac for me was emblazoned "Monarch Flight 666".

I kid you not.

And so, since 1990, I've rediscovered the charms of Caister, Brighton, Blackpool and Hunstanton.

In fact, since the opening of England's - and indeed the whole of Britain's - first nudist beach on April 1 1980, Brighton actually seems quite an adventurous destination. But only for those brave enough to "bare all"!

I'll stick to fish 'n' chips, a nice polystyrene cuppa tea, an ice cream cornet and a wonky deck chair looking out to sea...

My idea of bliss!

Now absorbed into the Haven Caister Holiday Centre, Silver Sands, seen here circa 1980, is gone but not forgotten.