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THE FIRST CONSOLE I EVER BOUGHT - by Mr Biffo

5/7/2017

40 Comments

 
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I left school in the summer of 1987, and applied for three part-time jobs. The first of these would have required me to sweep the floor for three hours on a Saturday in a new British Home Stores that was opening. The second of these jobs was working on the bread counter of Waitrose.

The third I was put forward for by my cousin; she worked in the accounts department of Ladbrokes Racing, and had heard that the head office was looking for a graphics artist to draw horses on their in-store betting screens. Not with a pen, but on a special computer.

Somehow, I got offered all three jobs in the same week. Choosing the Ladbrokes one was a no-brainer.

I soon discovered that having my own money was literally the best thing ever. I'd agreed - initially anyway - to work on a freelance basis. A vague verbal contract meant that I got paid £30 per half day, though what constituted a half day was never really specified. After a few months I managed to define "half a day" as "about forty five minutes", so long as I snuck out without saying goodbye.

I rationalised it by the fact that I was significantly quicker at doing graphics than they'd expected. I was effectively compressing an entire "half day" into that time, I insisted to myself. That speed - call it a slap-dash methodology if you must - was also how I was able to juggle doing Digitiser while also working full-time as a graphics artist for Teletext. 

At first, my boss at Ladbrokes - a genuinely lovely man - told me which days he'd like me to work. ​Eventually, I just started turning up whenever I fancied being given thirty quid. Nobody ever questioned these unscheduled appearances.
SWAPPED COURSES FOR HORSES
It didn't last of course. My boss's deputy was far more canny and evil, and eventually questioned my definition of "half day", insisting that it meant "at least four hours" - which I heard as "two hours tops".

This coincided, more or less, with my disillusionment at college. Having enrolled late, I didn't get onto the courses that I'd wanted, and was making my lessons tolerable by messing around and hiding in cupboards. I figured that if I was going to be in the office for four hours, I might as well be in the office for eight hours, and earn even more thirty quids.

Consequently, I quit college - which was feeling increasingly like a waste of everyone's time - and told my boss at Ladbrokes that I wanted a permanent contract. I gave him an ultimatum that if I didn't get offered a full-time job I'd have to leave altogether and find work elsewhere.


The balls of it still amazes me; being a lovely man, he came back the following day with a job offer. I ended up working part-time as their graphics person, while filling the rest of my hours inputting race data onto the pages which ran on Oracle - the predecessor to Teletext.

And to celebrate my first pay packet, I bought this: a Sega Master System. ​
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THE SHOP WITH NO NAME
I wish I could remember the name of the shop I bought my Master System from. It's not there anymore. These days it's a shop which sells ordinary, cheap-looking, but overpriced, house stuff - like the opposite of a pound store. 

It was, as they were once known, a "computer shop" - for that is what they sold exclusively in that pre-console era.

They always had an Amiga running in the window, with the bouncing red-and-white ball demo. Plus, they also flogged Atari ST software; my main reason for visiting. Oddly, unlike contemporary game shop employees, the staff wore suits. It's a detail which sticks in my memory, because someone I went to school with started working there. I remember how strange he looked in his baggy, late-80s, light grey, Next number.

I was growing bored with my ST. I'd burned through all the point-and-click and text adventures, completed New Zealand Story and Bubble Bobble, and given up on Ninja Warriors. Worse still, I didn't even have any ST-owning mates to copy me some of their games. Unfortunately, an Amiga was outside of my budget - even with the massive £500 or so I was going to be earning every month with my full-time Ladbrokes wages. 

I'd been to London with my parents the previous year, and we'd wandered through Harrods. There had been an NES on display, with a Remote Operating Buddy twitching and rotating. With no income of my own, I couldn't afford one, and my parents weren't about to get me one. It was the one and only time I'd seen an NES for sale; Nintendo never made it as far out to where I lived.

I must've been aware of Sega from the arcades, and must surely have known that the company had launched a console in Europe. Still, when I did see it on sale in the window of the aforementioned computer shop I knew I had to have it. It was priced reasonably; £99.95, which meant I'd still have just over £400 left of my monthly salary. 

Although I ate into that by purchasing a bunch of games in the days which followed, discovering that a comic shop had opened up in town, and taking myself out for a ridiculously extravagant Chinese meal for one.

"Sir, that dish is normally meant to be shared by four people..."

"Just bring me the food."
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FREEDOM
I think it took me about two days to work up the courage to lay down the nearly £100 for a Master System - the most I'd ever spent on anything up to that point. I bought it in my lunch break, and took it back to work with me. It sat by my desk, demanding to be played, stretching the afternoon into an eternity.

I don't remember getting it home and opening it. I don't remember that first play of Alex Kidd in Miracle World and Hang-On... though their soundtracks are as fresh in my brain as they were that day. 

I wouldn't say I ever loved the Master System - let's face it, the thing was a ropey console, a stop-gap. Its biggest achievement was giving Sega a foothold in Europe, and paving the way for the Mega Drive. 

Nonetheless, I loved how easy it all was compared to the Atari ST. No loading, no faffing with keyboards or typing things in. Just plug in the cartridge and play. The games weren't as good as those on my ST, but it acted as a sort of gateway drug to console gaming.

By the time the Mega Drive was released, I was a console boy through-and-through. I needed one on launch day (though due to shortages at Special Reserve, that became six weeks after launch day).

More pertinently, for me the Master System is kind of associated with that weird time in our lives where we're first out of school, and taking our first proper steps into adulthood and independence. I associate it as much with going to pubs, heading into London without my parents for the first time. I was hanging out with actual adults from work, and I felt renewed. It was exciting.

It was also the point at which I kind of drifted from school friends, starting to slightly reinvent myself without the daily gauntlet of being ripped apart at school. It was an age when I felt grown-up, before I'd matured enough to know we're all still terrified kids, finding our way in a society that functions best as a sort of engine for manufacturing anxiety and stress.

​At the point in my life before I knew better, the Master System represented, in a way, freedom. 
FROM THE ARCHIVE:
10 UNDERRATED NINTENDO 64 GAMES
PLEASE, WHAT IS ATARIBOX?
SEGA FOREVER: WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?​
40 Comments
Jareth Smith
5/7/2017 10:39:21 am

The first one I bought with my moolah was a Wii. My parents were forced into stealing stuff for me before this. The first console was a NES, and what a joyous bucket of loveliness that thing remains.

I had a Mega Drive, but never the Master System. It's a shame SEGA has trailed off into mediocre filler, but that's the way the cookie grumbles sometimes. Look what happened to Rare. A tragic tale of woe.

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Gaming Mill link
5/7/2017 10:41:15 am

I used to have a Sega Master System. I had a weird sort of obsession with the built-in Hang On...I'd play it none stop - often into the early hours even though I'd have t be up not too long after.

Odd that.

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PeskyFletch
5/7/2017 10:43:40 am

"before I'd matured enough to know we're all still terrified kids, finding our way in a society that functions best as a sort of engine for manufacturing anxiety and stress."

Never a truer word spoken. I used to think there would be someday when i'd have seismic change, a shift in to being a proper grown up, like you assume your parents are. I'm still waiting.

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Dr. Budd Buttocks, MD
5/7/2017 11:02:53 am

The Master System has a special place in my heart. It wasn't my first system - that was a Commodore Plus 4, but the games on that were almost invariably atrocious.

Although I was quite the computer enthusiast when I was very young, I wasn't really all that aware of games consoles. Everyone else I knew had Speccies and Vic 20s. That all changed when I had a go on my cousin's Master System, probably sometime in 1988.

I was ridiculously, ludicrously excited at the prospect of Sega arcade quality games at home. I got one for Christmas that year and the excitement levels were off the fucking charts. I vividly remember it being unveiled on Christmas morning with a brand new colour 14" telly to boot. Playing Hang On and actually being able to control it (I remember being terribly upset by the full-size bike on the arcade machine and being too small to tilt it). Playing Wonderboy in Monster Land and not knowing what the fuck I was doing.

My cousin used to get bootleg games via a family member in Hong Kong, so I used to swap games regularly with him. Then my neighbour and one of my best friends also got a Master Systems as a result of seeing mine and also pissing all over themselves with excitement. So I was never short of new games to play.

Brilliant console. It got unceremoniously dumped when I got an Amiga in 1991, but for a brief time there was nothing else quite like it.

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RichardM
5/7/2017 11:03:31 am

Also have happy memories of the Mater System: Sonic Chaos was all right, I think?

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RichardM
5/7/2017 11:08:56 am

Damn phone posting that early! Anyway: happy memories of the Master System, playing Alex Kidd on the one a guy down the road's dad had rented. I picked one up years later as a curiosity and seem to remember enjoying the end-of-run Sonic Chaos. Almost like a Mega Drive game.

My own first console was the NES, handed down to me when my sister got a SNES. I must have been about 5 or 6? Greatest achievement was finishing Super Mario Bros 2. Thankfully sister lost interest in the SNES after a bit and I snared it.

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Biscuits
5/7/2017 11:27:07 am

Possibly well known fact: Master System continues to thrive in Brazil due a contract set up between Sega and a local toy manufacturer. When Sega stopped making consoles, the toy factory just continued

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Voodoo76
5/7/2017 12:24:28 pm

Hmmm I think I'd heard that a while ago. Are they still making new games for it then? Would be interesting to see what they can do with the technology now after all these years!

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Jol
5/7/2017 01:01:23 pm

Not sure about the Master System but there is a Mega Drive version of Duke Nukem 3D that was exclusive to Brazil until a couple of years ago.

The company's (Tectoy) own versions of the Sega machines do look pretty snazzy compared to the originals -

http://segaretro.org/Master_System_3
http://segaretro.org/Mega_Drive_4_(Tectoy)

Biscuits
5/7/2017 02:36:41 pm

Cor, those look nice!

Spiney O'Sullivan
5/7/2017 03:16:44 pm

They also remade some games from the Wonder Boy series with a popular Brazilian cartoon license (Monica's Gang).

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Voodoo76
5/7/2017 12:32:15 pm

I think I received a second hand master system as an Xmas gift with a few games, when I was about 12. I remember the built in shitty snail game and some of the lesser games came on thin cards such as Teddy Boy! Enjoyed lots of time on 2 player Great Football with a mate. Psycho Fox was good, or at least I thought it was for the time. A few other games spring to mind such as Black Belt, Vigilante, Thunder Blade, Zillion and Golvellius. I did like the black squared design on the boxes.

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Darren Browne
5/7/2017 12:38:04 pm

The Master System was also my first console - mine cost £60 with Alex Kidd built-in but for some reason I actually bought Castle of Illusion for £30 before I owned the system (a month's earnings from my paper round), my mum was mad when she found out what I'd done and took me back to the store to get a refund so I could afford to buy the system the following month!

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FTL
5/7/2017 01:06:20 pm

A friend of my grandparents who we referred to as an uncle, was well into his 60's (this in the early 90s) yet still used to basically buy any gadget and gaming system going.

Very fond memories of him bringing his master system over and all us kids fighting over a go on sonic. My own grandparents were rural folk who could barely operate their TV, yet crazy uncle Les would bring over consoles, computers and music sequencers and electric drumkits and stuff. RIP mate, legend!

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HKT3030
5/7/2017 01:45:32 pm

I definitely loved the Master System. I grew up in a pretty poor area, so the Master System II was the console of choice for parents who needed to deliver Sonic for Christmas but couldn't afford a Mega Drive. My mum was one of those parents, and she paid in instalments through Littlewoods so that I could have one for my sixth birthday.

Because everyone else in the area was in the same boat, I was always able to borrow games from school friends. The falling prices as the 90s wore on meant that every so often, I'd get a treat when Future Zone had marked something down to a fiver. Robocop vs The Terminator and Rampart were two of the best ones I got that way. Eventually I amassed a pretty large collection of games.

Even now, there's a boxed Master System under my desk, plus that weird left-handed joystick and a Master System Converter for the Mega Drive on top of it.

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Captain Jupiter
5/7/2017 02:02:31 pm

"It was also the point at which I kind of drifted from school friends, starting to slightly reinvent myself without the daily gauntlet of being ripped apart at school." – you as well?

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Spiney O'Sullivan
5/7/2017 03:11:42 pm

Somehow I doubt that too many of us here in the comments of a website about an old teletext page were top of the social pile in school.

I genuinely pity kids today in the social media era. Imagine if school could follow you everywhere you go on your phone.

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Biscuits
5/7/2017 03:47:04 pm

Good lord, that's a way of looking at it! On the other hand it's got to be easier to escape/meet other dweebs right?

Nick
5/7/2017 04:39:34 pm

You go right for the social bone don't you Spiney...
I'm of to slam my bedroom door and play Terrorvision too loudly (blows fringe out of eyes and exits).

RichardM
6/7/2017 10:24:35 am

B-but all the cool kids used Teletext! (To check the football scores.)

PeskyFletch
7/7/2017 01:12:04 pm

HEY! I was super rad and kewl(at school)

Jol
5/7/2017 02:54:14 pm

These big purchases never quite felt like the watershed moments I thought they'd be. Like many others I had to rely on Santa carelessly leaving a console under our seasonal indoor tree, so being able to buy one myself seemed so out of reach. You'd think finally being able to cough up the spondoolies and buy a console with amazeballs graphics (which as we all know equates to amazeballs games) would be some euraka moment.

But much like the descent into adulthood that Mr B alludes to it was more of a gradual thing. It wasn't uncommon for classmates to sell on consoles, and we had a couple of really good 'computer' shops, so a bunch of us had already bought second hand consoles and traded one for another. When I finally bought one brand new - a Gamecube, just after finishing high school - it felt like a bit of an anticlimax.

It was a bit like buying a flat after having gone through student accommdation and then the rental market. Instead of approaching it with a heady cocktail of terror and excitement, it's more of a sigh and a shrug, with a muttered "this'll do". Which is what growing up is all about.

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Seabiscuits
5/7/2017 03:55:26 pm

I remember my friend buying an Xbox in installments. A bad idea at the best of times, but he was notoriously irresponsible, and, surprising nobody, he missed a bunch of payments and had to pay extra. A few years later we totaled up how much his Xbox had cost: £2049

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FTP
5/7/2017 04:07:19 pm

I got a minidisc player on tick from comets before I'd even received my first pay packet, setting me up for a near decade of being riddled with a large amount of debt. Not that it was just the minidisc player that caused this, but having easy access to shiny things I wanted immediately without the funds contributed to my awful personal finances.

ChorltonWheelie
5/7/2017 09:47:23 pm

I left school in '82 and bought a Commodore 64 on tick from Woolworths in Stretford Precinct.
Payed every single installment on time from my £25 a week YTS 'job'.

Never bought a console of any kind though...oooh crivens no.

DEAN
5/7/2017 03:33:02 pm

My first console was an NES. The other kids at my school wanted a Sega but I'd read about a game called Legend of Zelda and wanted me some of that. My mum bought me one for Christmas (from Boots, in Exeter), with ROB and the light gun (Deluxe Pack) and Zelda of course.

Absolutely one of the most significant events in my life so far!

I played Zelda until I didn't even know which way up was Tuesday and I'm pretty obsessed with anything to do with Link's 1st outing.

I eventually got my hands on a Master system and yeah, I'm glad I went the other way.... But to this day, that stupid diagram on the Master System still makes me grin! I love it for that <3

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DEAN fan
5/7/2017 04:38:58 pm

Is it your favourite game?

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DEAN
5/7/2017 05:27:50 pm

Before we get into all that, can I just say, THANK YOU! Means a lot.. like vindication and validation in equal measure.
I'm probably a fan of your's too, champ! :O)

The Legend of Zelda NES
It big time is! I probably like it more than it deserves but whachagonnado?

*swoon* it's DEAN!
5/7/2017 07:12:57 pm

That's great! Not a bad favourite game at all

DEAN
5/7/2017 08:13:24 pm

Thanks again!

How about you?

DEAN harasser
6/7/2017 07:54:18 am

I dunno, it's always shifting... Civ 3 and 4 are up there though

DEAN
6/7/2017 12:40:41 pm

Harass away; I love the attention!

I was hoping your favourite game choice would shed some light on your true identity. Go on, give me another clue!

jawa
5/7/2017 05:29:15 pm

I left school in '87 and bought the Master System as my first console, too. Picked my one up down at Westgate whilst on a family day out. Good times!

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Meatballs-me-branch-me-do
6/7/2017 12:41:02 am

My first console that I bought for myself was an N64, with the money I made working front of house in a notorious (and defunct) "American style" restaurant chain. I took it back less than a week later after becoming bored of the two games I had (Goldeneye, which can get hard going, and Mission: Impossible, which didn't stand up to repeat play and I'd already finished it with friends) and swapped it for a PS1 with Resident Evil 2 and Road Rash 3D. A much better choice and I had a lot of fun with it and subsequent games.

As for the Master System: never had one. We were an "IBM CLONE" family, with our old Colecovision occasionally dragged out. All my friends had either the Master System or NES, and without any of the arguments or animosity people tend to associate with Nintendo vs Sega. They were more excited than anything to play Mario or Wonder Boy because they didn't have it at home themselves.

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Biscuits
6/7/2017 12:38:38 pm

Don't be coy! If the restaurant chain is now defunct, please spill the beans

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Spiney O'Sullivan
6/7/2017 08:02:15 pm

I would have guessed Wimpy, but I happen to have come across two in London, so it's not totally defunct.

Chris
6/7/2017 11:26:50 am

You lived in Watford didn't you, Biffs? Was the computer shop "SRS"? We used to call it "The Spectrum Shop". They sold Speccy games.... and cameras. Last time I went in there they had various consoles/computers on a bench on the right-hand side of the shop with the checkout and cameras on the left. The window on the right was generally stuffed with various computer bits, new and used. The window on the left was generally filled with cameras.

I never fully understood why a shop would sell computers and cameras, although in this modern era it makes more sense. Perhaps they were just ahead of their time.

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Smelly Bully
6/7/2017 12:39:16 pm

Spaccy Shop more like

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Kelvin Green link
6/7/2017 06:57:00 pm

I wanted a Mega Drive but I got a Master System II instead, and I was disappointed... but only for about five minutes because I fell in love with that thing. I had one of the earlier models that had Alex Kidd in Miracle World built in and I played that to death. The theme tune still sticks in my head to this day, as does the music from the scissors-paper-stone minigame.

I can't remember now how many games I had, but I know it was a lot. Phantasy Star was my favourite, but I also loved Populous. I had Alien 3, which wasn't very good, but I discovered the cheat code, sent it in to all the magazines of the day, only for every single one to print my name as "Kevin" so no one know it was me. Sad face.

I did get a Mega Drive in the end, but I never got as many games for it as I did for the Master System. At some point I acquired an original MS to go with the weird bread bin second edition, as well as those odd joypads that had holes in the middle in which you could screw a joystick.

I think it's an underrated console, not least because it never took off in America, but I still love it. I wish I still had mine, but both of them fell victim to the traditional "parents throw your stuff out while you're at university" situation.

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Skerret
7/7/2017 04:22:18 pm

My mate had a NES with R.O.B for Christmas. We played Duck Hunt & Gyromite for hours (though R.O.B. never actually worked) I'd had a 48k+ speccy for a few years but the NES seemed light years ahead.

I saved up and marched into Dixons to hand over my money for a NES but they'd sold out. With the true impatience of a 9 year old I decided I had to have something rather than wait and bought a Master System instead. Splurged what was left of my savings on random games from behind a locked glass cabinet in a "computer shop", chosen only by the pictures on the covers, though Master System cover art was not very enticing or reflective of games (though obviously a 4 Mega Cartidge was a better game). It think I even had one game on card.

I lover Bomber Raid, Outrun (I bought the odd shaped wheel), California Games, Black Belt but the true standout was Wonderboy 3. I'd bought that on holiday in America and couldn't wait to fly home to play it. That also where I first clapped eyes on a Mega Drive.

One weird trait my console had was that it'd start up in Black & white before flickering into colour after 5 minutes.
I wonder if I can still remember the cheat to get the hidden in built game?

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