Just a trip down gaming memory lane.

Being a gamer for nearly 30 years I have pretty much seen it all. Now while games nowadays on our Playstation 3’s and Xbox 360’s offer a near cinematic experience. Many of these games are just like being part of some blockbuster Hollywood movie. Despite the amazing advances in technology, and I do enjoy playing newer games. I still find my self every once and a while going back and playing some of the classics from my child hood. I think part of the charm of a lot of these older games lays within there simplicity. You had to use your imagination to make up fro some of the graphical short comings.

It was the awesome looking Space Invaders Salt and Pepper Shakers that we have for sale here on the site that inspired me to write this as Space Invaders was one of my favourite games as a kid. My first experience of playing Space Invaders was in a local fast food place. They had a Space Invaders arcade machine in there. The first thing that grabbed my attention was the menacing picture of that big black alien on the side of the arcade cabinet. While we were waiting for our food my dad gave me twenty pence. Yes that rights twenty pence was all it cost to play a arcade game, me and my son were at the shopping centre the other week, and it now costs £1 just to play one game.

Anyway back on topic I got my twenty pence put it in and prepared for war. Now of course the graphics in the game looked nothing like they did on the arcade cabinet. I expected this as this was the case back in the 1980’s the arcade cabinet would have elaborate art work to catch your attention. I started firing like a mad man. At first I made the rookie mistake of thinking my shields were actually blocking my shots so I started to try and shoot them first. I died pretty quickly, but I thankfully this was one of the slowest fast food places on the planet so I had more than enough time to play a few games.

It was a few weeks later while out shopping with my mum that in a electronics store we saw Space Invaders for the Atari 2600. I was lucky enough for my mum to buy it for me, and I could not wait to get home. When I got home I put that game in and never left my bedroom for the next 10 years. Truth be told the Atari version was a bit inferior to the arcade one, but I still loved it. I imagined that I was a commander trying to save Earth from these evil aliens.

I still play Space Invaders now every once in a while. It never ages it is a time less classic. What’s cool is that now it is considered “retro” cool so you can get a whole bunch of merchandise for it. Here on the site we have this really cool cake mould that will let you make a cake in the shape of one of the Space Invaders.