It’s 1978.

You’re stood in a darkened arcade pressed against one of a line of monolithic cabinets set against the back wall of a room. The phosphor green glow of a screen reflected against teenage skin and your clammy fingers frantically press against cigarette burned buttons. Your ears are assaulted with the monotone bass thump of an oncoming invasion. Line by line, they’re coming. And you stand alone as Earth’s last line of defence against an unstoppable remorseless attack.

In 1978 the world fell prey to Space Invaders. It was an event that helped define the identity of the first digital generation. An event that took on such magnitude that it forever changed our entertainment habits, for a time it even drained the Japanese economy of small change. Such was the fervour that its youth employed in shovelling coins into what was the latest coin operated sensation.

Nowadays the kids venture out into virtual worlds of such complexity that they make the endeavours of their predecessors seem positively crude. And in fairness that’s an apt description. By today’s standards Space Invaders, Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Phoenix and a whole raft of others are the epitome of simplicity. By today’s technological standards they require a miniscule amount of processing power to run.

And yet for some reason, (call it a misplaced sense of nostalgia or whimsy or perhaps a desire for simple but knife edge gameplay) a nation of gamers keep coming back to the places where it all started to get their fix in a retro eight bit style.

If you’re one of the faithful who fancy getting to grips with old school gaming then there are a number of ways you can go about doing it. The most popular however is through emulation, anyone with a PC or Macintosh or even a Linux box of relatively modest vintage can now obtain software which essentially tricks the computer into thinking that it is actually an arcade machine, the software is called MAME and is available in formats for the above mentioned computing platforms (and a variety of others). Of course this alone won’t have you firing up Scramble, in order to play the games themselves you actually need the original game code that comes in the form of ROM images.

However this is where things can potentially get a little bit sticky, technically unless you actually own the machine you are intending to play then downloading the ROM’s is essentially a form of piracy. A few games have been released to the public thanks to the authors letting go of the original code, however some of the big names left in the arcade industry haven’t taken too kindly to seeing their classics springing up on desktops here there and everywhere. So remember folks if you are going to download the games then by law you really should own the original (and I know if you’re reading this you wouldn’t dream of doing anything that would contravene any piracy laws, he said with a knowing wink).

Moving swiftly on playing the games on a home computer is actually quite a pleasing affair. For the most part the games of yesteryear were simplistic efforts and in many cases simply using your keyboard will suffice. There are of course exceptions to the rule, some games had specialised hardware that a keyboard simply could never reproduce. It is not for example recommended that you try the “streaming” manoeuvre from Missile Command using your standard office hardware. You’ll wreck your fingers or the keyboard.

If you’re feeling adventurous however there are other options, these days there are a multitude of hardware resources for the budding gamer to build their own cabinet complete with authentic controls that do more or less feel like the real thing. If anything retro gaming has created a little cottage industry within the coin operated field so now you can stick the guts of an old PC in a cabinet and with a myriad of adapters and converters build a machine pretty much to your own specifications.

If you don’t fancy trailing down the road of self-discovery with a soldering iron there is a buoyant market for both original games and modern retro build cabinets available to buy in an “off the shelf” manner. In some cases they are more expensive but the reason for this is you are paying for the licence to the games you will be playing which means the games you are getting are essentially legitimate recreations (remember to check this with the manufacturer, not all suppliers work this way).

If you’ve got cash to splash and you fancy going for an original arcade machine be prepared to hunt around. The smaller arcade equipment suppliers can sometimes be helpful (so tracking down a copy of Coin Slot the industry magazine would be an idea), some of these suppliers have held on to old equipment and bartering might get you somewhere (but don’t hold your breath, they know the value of what they’ve got). Then of course there is eBay. However with all purchases of this age be warned a classic retro game will be twenty plus years old and in many cases often subject to the rigours of a hard life. As a result this can mean problems with reliability and repairs can be costly because certain components can be scarce.

In the end however there are plenty of options that allow you to revisit your youth (or discover how your older relatives spent theirs). And no matter how flash and beautiful today’s games might appear there is a lot to be said for the older generation. Often simple, and like I mentioned earlier definitely crude but in the end one hell of a lot of fun.