Thank goodness for the Acorn Electron.

Games "What were arcades like?" Just another reminder that I'm thirty-five at the close of October. For me, arcades were expensive places, where the really 'cool' games like Hard Drivin' (!) were too expensive to play with my pocket money so I'd be feed the odd ten pence into knock-off Centipede machines. Thank goodness for the Acorn Electron.

When I visited Blackpool last year, I was pleased to discover that not only were the arcades still there, but with most of the same coin-ops huddling together waiting for retirement, admittedly in various states of disrepair. It's one thing to be able to attempt to get the second stage of Outrun as many times as you like through an emulator, but quite another to sit in the original hydrolic car, the wind and sand from the promenade blowing through your hair.