The Greys

Back in the old days, when I was a lad, we didn’t have the fancy colour graphics that we all take for granted in modern games. Characters were blocky and pixellated, and if you wanted colour it required strips of cellophane to be stuck to a black-and-white screen. And as for the creature on the cabinet artwork – that was purely a matter for your imagination, ‘cos there was no damned sign of it in the game.

Except that tale of a black-and-white youth isn’t strictly true. I’m not quite old enough to have played the original arcade version of Space Invaders. There weren’t any arcades where I lived. Such things were the sole preserve of the annual family holiday – and cascades of coppers were a better value proposition than the money-sucking video games that ate your silver then killed kids like me as quickly as possible.

So my first real encounter with Space Invaders was probably on my uncle’s brand new Atari 2600 console. Oh sure, it had “real” colour with no need for cellophane, but the blocky graphics still called for a hefty dose of imagination. Perhaps my youthful imaginings are what led to this comic. That would probably explain this one, too.

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