#aticatac

A knight, a wizard and a serf walk into a castle....a bit of a corny start for a joke , but let's meet one of  the truly great Spectrum games, Atic Atac.

I wish I could tell you dear reader about the first time I played this game. I wish I could tell you that when the loading screen appeared wind machines switched on, strobe lights flashed , eighties power chords echoed from some giant synthesizer and a heavenly choir ascended from the sideboard.  If fate had realised at the time how much of an impact this little game would have had on my life , I'm sure it would have arranged them. But let us start at the beginning. The loading screen itself was a sheer feast for the eyes, the use of colour was fantastic . I loved that magenta robed figure, especially against the dark blue of the stones. It held so much excitement , surely no game could live up to the excitement of the loading screen? Straight into the game and already there is an interesting twist, a choice of three characters , each character being able to access a different secret passageway. ( My Famous Five senses were tingling already, the Five always had secret passageways.) You had a knight, a wizard and a serf  ( a low level farmer who cannot leave the land where they work) , I immediately felt a certain empathy with the serf and we began our long friendship. The aim of the game was more complicated than I had played before, find coloured keys, open coloured doors with the keys, collect objects that kill/stun other characters and ultimately find three pieces to form a key that lets you escape from the castle .( Phew...any questions?)

So off we went,  zipping in and out of wine barrels ( the serf's  secret passage of choice) , through decorated rooms, some had pictures, some had suits of armour, some had rugs and others had trap doors . Now, to the 11 year old this was an amazing game, so many rooms, so many flying nasties and  one of the best bits, if your energy was getting low you could eat things to refuel. Yes, if you played carefully you could make this game last for a whole side of an LP (younger readers may wish to google that term!) And....no, I'm not finished yet...your life force was represented by a chicken that gradually got eaten away. I'm not entirely sure why I found this so funny as a kid, but it was one of the unique points of the game. ​ Within a few days this game had me hooked , there was just so much to explore, with every key found you unlocked more doors, so more to explore. There was a great sense of achievement with every key found, and greater achievement with each part of the big key found. Yes folks, my name is Julie and I had an Atic Atac addiction. No other game got a look in, I played this so often I could play it on a black and white TV! (Although  I feel  should make a confession, the reason I played it so often on a black and white TV was that I could get away from the main living room and use the TV to gain illicit glimpses of Saturday morning TV in-between playing. Mike Read , you have an awful lot to answer for.)  

But surely Julie, when you finished the game and escaped the castle this addiction ended? Hmm, not really, because then I played as the other characters, then I decided to see how fast I could finish the game, how near to 100 percent could I achieve  (98% in case you are interested). This game had well and truly captured my imagination.  ​ But why should this game have been so addictive, and still so endearing? It could have been the wonderful Spectrum colours, it could have been the clean animation, the options for exploration, the simple puzzle solving , the fact that it could be completed in about 30 minutes. It was all of these but also the fact that when we got this game it corresponded with my final year of primary school.

Just as the serf , wizard and knight were exploring their haunted castle, carrying out their quests, discovering new rooms and new items. So was I, a new school, new classrooms, new things to learn. But as someone who back in those days was usually shy and tongue tied, how would  I make friends in a class of completely new people?  Funnily enough, it was usually just one sentence , "Hello, I'm Julie, do you like Atic Atac ?".  Although I'm no longer that shy or tongue tied , this game is still an ice breaker  , a conversation starter , a friendship igniter.

Those of us who played it in the early 80's talk about it with a sense of reverence , a sense of love , to most of us it's a dear friend from a far more innocent time.