BUH BUH BUH BUH
BUH BUH BUH BUH
BUH BUH BUH BUH
BUH BUH BUH BUH
I distinctly remember the first time I heard the sound. Autumn 1980, the day the sleepy North Yorkshire pub helmed by my genial Uncle Keith (look it up if you like, it’s still a nice little boozer – The Black Bull in Great Smeaton) fell victim to a marauding, relentless army of psychopathic extra-terrestrials. Insert your own joke here about the residents of Northallerton, but I’m talking about the first Space Invaders machine I ever saw.
Aged eight, and given 10p from behind the bar “to have a go”, I was instantly hooked. My mum smiled patiently, my dad couldn’t see the appeal (“It’s not like you actually win anything”) but I knew I had found my purpose in life. To defend the residents of Great Smeaton, Appleton Whiske, Yarm and even Northallerton from… well, from this…
All night, as I lay in my bed, the “BUH BUH BUH BUH” march of the Space Invaders themselves echoed inexorably through my dreams. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. And in 1981, when I somehow became aware that our local seaside resorts, Redcar and Saltburn-by-the-Sea, boasted lurid, neon palaces filled with similar cabinets of 8-bit delights, I ceaselessly badgered my mum to escort me on day trips to these “amusement arcades”. On the few occasions when she grudgingly relented, I passed through portals of delight to realms of pixellated paradise. I have rarely found anything in my life as immersive, addictive and deliriously time-destroying as that first wave of perfectly-formed arcade games. “Amusements”? These weren’t “amusements”. These were OBSESSIONS.
At home, with no access to computers or consoles (Technology? God, it was a running battle to get BBC2 to work in our house), life felt stultifying. Dull, empty and endless. So, in early 1982, I took matters in my own hands. If my mum, on rain-soaked Teesside afternoons, was inexplicably unwilling to take me on a rattling train ride to Saltburn and stand idly for six hours while I pumped a dwindling pocketful of 10p pieces into the Galaxian machine, I would take matters into my own hands. I had paper. I had felt-tip pens. I had a slightly unreliable memory of the machine in my Uncle Keith’s pub that had already been superceded by Pac-Man.
I drew my own Space Invaders.
BUH BUH BUH BUH
BUH BUH BUH BUH
BUH BUH BUH BUH
BUH BUH BUH BUH
Feep Feep Feep Feep
“Get to bloody sleep, you’ve got school in the morning”
Felt Trips is a collaborative effort. If anyone wants to contribute their own childhood drawings from the era, I would be utterly delighted – please drop me a line using the “Contact” link at the top of the page. A good quality scan would be perfect, but – if not – then a clear photo of your artwork, lying flat, is fine. And maybe a few words of explanation, too: when the drawings were done, how old you were, what inspired you to tackle those particular subjects? Thanks so much.
Support the Haunted Generation website with a Ko-fi donation… thanks!
https://ko-fi.com/hauntedgen
The Haunted Generation 
Great picture!
In the post Star Wars/Pre-home computer age I would often spend a boring Sunday afternoon drawing spaceship whilst waiting for maybe, Catweazle, Supergran or Metal Mickey to come on….
LikeLiked by 2 people
My answer, before convincing my Dad of the merits of going into debt to buy me a ZX Spectrum, was to save like mad to buy one of these…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astro_Wars
The novelty lasted a few days before I ran out of money for batteries. Fortunately an Uncle threw me a bone in the shape of a 9v AC adaptor.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I have an Astro Wars still! Was hours of fun back then, 5 minutes of fun now 😉
I also had and still have the Caveman electronic game.
Such things were so cool in the early 80’s eh?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Me too. In its box! (No use there you might say). My brother had numerous other games of that type – the Caveman one that you had, Dracula something-or-other, and a few of those pocket contraptions. My Dad, the wit, reckoned he was playing ‘pocket billiards’ all the time 😉
Yes, cool then, arguably cooler now for those of use who remember when we used to have ‘attention spans’.
LikeLiked by 2 people
My own first arcade experience was Space Invaders too; a Sunday trip to South Weald park, and a pop-in to the little cafe they had there. Contents; one jukebox, two E/M pinball machines, always turned off with the plug draped across the glass to show that, and then one time, a Space Invaders Machine “landed”…. life was never the same again. Regards
LikeLiked by 2 people
Bizarrely, given I never really got into computer games, I remember the first time I saw a pace invaders machine, in Western Super Mare – it was the distinct ‘space bear’ graphic on the side, along with the noise that I remember most…
LikeLike
Wasn’t it annoying how The Space Invaders began to turn up everywhere in early 1980s? First at the amusement arcade (a quaint middle-class term for a child’s gambling den), then at the pub, then in the burger bar, then in a local chip shop. Finally one day the hand held version turned up at my house.
As a child of the 80s I had the feeling The Space Invaders were following me around. Indeed I half expected to find one in my wardrobe – or under the bed. It was like Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers, especially when all your friends at school told you that they, along with their brothers, sisters and also parents had been taken in too – just like in that 1950’s Invaders From Mars movie on BBC Two.
Even though my father did not have a microchip implanted into his skull – he may as well had when he turned up with Grandstand and then the ZX Computer Collection (with the games). Just look at the screen children. Nothing to fear. Just stare into screen and see. Just like in Halloween Three. While my brother was taken by Astro Wars and my uncle taken by a Pac Man, I smugly thought all that had happened to family would never happen to me. For all I had was a Simple Simon, Buckaroo and Ker Plunk! For I resisted for a week – but it was futile. In days I too was “done”.
LikeLike