BACKLASH

BACKLASH

Watch out for the Revenge Of The Mutant Transpotters. Max Phillips hands out a warning.

Max Phillips

What's the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you? Wandering around with your flies undone? No problem? Do that all the time do you? Okay, s'pose you then get home and discover you forgot to put your underpants on? Bet you looked cool down the disco.
    Or taking someone out for the first time, trembling on that first kiss. And they say, "Do you always have sardines for tea?"
    Getting your head caught in your bicycle chain and being rescued by three fire engines and the flying squad?
    Not being able to get off the loo. And then remembering why you kept telling yourself not to carry SooperGoo in your back pocket?
    Nah, small fry. Peanuts. Just those little things in life that are meant to make you look foolish. Someone like you could handle any of those without batting an eyelid.
    No, the worse one is a lot, lot worse. It's meeting up with your mates and boasting about your high scores. And then someone says to you...
    "Alright, so what's your score on..."
    And you haven't even heard of it.
    "How do you get past the..."
    "In which game?", you say.
    And all your mates already know.
    It's humiliating with a capital Huuu. If you don't believe it, answer a few of these...
    "What do you think of Short Circuit?"
    "How do you do GEEZA-HAND IN Riptoff?"
    "What's your high score in Bubble Trouble?"
    Score one or more; Congratulations, you're well cool and I's a-preaching to the converted. None or less; what a plonker! All three are games that have been brought to you courtesy of the rag you're now reading. Oh no... oh yes... they're readers' programs. Available to you on the Digi'T'ape express or the Type-It-Yourself slow train.
    "No wonder I haven't heard of them", you can say. "Readers' programs never work", you can say. "They're awful even if they do", you can say. "They're a by-product of deranged trainspotters", you can say.
    But be careful if you do... that's a lot of words to eat when you finally admit you're wrong.
    This isn't a memorial to the unknown trainspotter. It's a discovery of a whole new kind of trainspotter, growing in your very midst. An entirely new breed.
    As the completely gah-gah professor in a film about killer toilet rolls would say, "But you don't understand. It's a whole new strain".
    Mutant Trainspotters!
    Nobody knows where they came from. No-one has ever seen a birth. But they're there. You can only speculate how...
    It starts with an ordinary trainspotter. Finnicky. Spotty. Wholly immersed in its Speccy without ever getting anything finished.
    Then it goes into a cocoon, wrapped up in other people's programs, in books and magazines, in endless hours weaving on its keyboard.
    In the warmth of its parka hood, the brain becomes enlarged. It starts to think for itself. It soaks up countless years of experience and know-how. Through 2-inch thick specs, it begins to take in every minute detail of the world.
    Inside that weedy little body, a change is happening.
    Then comes the day. Suddenly, without warning, it sheds its parka for good. A mutation has happened.
    No, they don't come out bright, witty, handsome hunks that would make A-Ha look like a string of cold sausages Well, not always.
    They just turn into incredibly good programmers. Self-taught yet brilliant. Completely fresh yet with a wisdom far older than their age.
    Their programs prove it. They're not just ready to take on the Spectrum. Not just ready to become the next generation of professional games programmers.
    They're ready to take on any computer. Driving it to its limits. Living on the very edge of the possible. Moving between the fantasy of their programs and the reality of their world with equal ease.
    And what they can do with a Spectrum means that they are far more powerful beings when they have far more powerful computers.
    It just isn't on to knock trainspotters anymore. You might be a games player and not know a word of Basic, let alone a byte of machine code. You might be the hottest thing ever to break a Quickshot in two. Or a battle-scarred adventurer who's crossed more miles and made more maps than you care to remember.
    But it's the trainspotters and the mutos you've got to look up to.
    Because when they move on to program commercial games, for the Speccy or some machine you may own ten years from now, they'll do it better than anyone.
    Which means that they'll create the games of the future. Games better than those you've already played and couldn't have imagined if you'd tried. Games that will make you proud you own, or once owned, a Spectrum.
    There isn't anybody, anywhere who's as good as one of the new mutant trainspotters. It's best to be on their side.
    After all, revenge is sweet.

Backlash pages on this site

1986 8 10 11 12

1987 14

Published in the November 1986 issue of Your Sinclair

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