The First Time I Saw a Videogame

The Kung - Fu Master Arcade Machine

The year was 1986. Twelve years have passed since the peaceful revolution that deposed a totalitarian far right oppressive regime that ruled over my country for nearly 80 years. During that time Portugal was immersed in a colonial war, censorship, control of outside information, and free speech weren't allowed. It made the nation nearly fifty years behind most of the modern world countries at the time. So logically the country spent the next decade adjusting to its new freedom and working in its inner structure. Most Portuguese people missed all landmarks of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, resorting to music and literature contraband, consequently being left out of the rise of the first and second console generations, as well as the game crash. Most homes barely had a TV at the time, but all through the 80s, joining the EU and opening our economy to the international market, things slowly started to change, economically and culturally. 

As inflation was very high in my country (it still is nowadays), most people couldn't afford consoles, so the priority was always only a TV. Rich people could indulge themselves with other devices such as microcomputers, home stereos, video playback devices,  cameras, and rarely, a console, being acquired abroad. Some lucky ones, with parents engaged in jobs that required traveling or with immigrant relatives, could have had access to some devices. The rest of us were oblivious to that reality, only knowing the basic needs of everyday life and simpler forms of entertainment.

I was 6 years old in 1986 and was living in a small village in the mountains, on an island belonging to Portuguese territory in the middle of the Atlantic (a fact that made us even more isolated). Similar to the Channel Islands in the UK, with a semi-autonomous status, Madeira Island was a place where things took a long time to arrive in the 80s, especially high-tech consumer products.

By this time the first generation of consoles and microcomputers were already a reality in homes across the USA, UK, and Japan. By this time, Nintendo has become a household name with the Famicon and NES. But in our corner of the world, most of us were oblivious.

A local bar owner that already had pool tables in his establishment, decided to expand entertainment options to his customers - one of the biggest jukeboxes I saw and some arcade machines. And that was the way the youngsters in my village were introduced to video games. That bar eventually became the first arcade in our area. The first titles brought in were Space Invaders, Pacman, and Pong. A bit later, a new cabinet made its appearance: The Iram release from 1984, Kung-fu Master or Spartan X in Japan, a side-scrolling beat-em-up, that ended up being ported to several platforms in the home market.

I was with my father at the time, when I saw some older kids around that cabinet, but due to being smaller, I couldn't see what was going on. My father then picked me up and I could see what was my very first experience with a video game. I was entranced with the sound and colors. To me, the fact you could control an image on a screen seemed futuristic and magical at the same time.

 But I quickly forgot about it for a few years, because I couldn't get regular access to it, since, by law, arcades are illegal in Portugal for those under 16 years old, a subject I will get deeper into in a future post. It would take more than 6 years after that, to end up being immersed in video game culture, again another tale, for another time.