Thursday 8 June 2017

Kids write the funniest things on Amiga computers in the '90s!

I was eight (I think) when my family got our first computer, so already past the point where my juvenile Deluxe Paint art and Wordworth stories could be considered adorable and unexpectedly amusing. Fortunately, I had younger brothers.

Hard drive wipes, dismantlings and floppy disk deterioration mean it's unlikely that any of our 32-bit digital catalogue survives today. In many cases – such as the case of my "epic" sci-fi animation series The Lost Alien and the exhaustive encyclopaedia I wrote to accompany it – this is for the best. But it was a shame to lose some of the funny kid stuff.

The story below is a reconstruction of the first thing my brother Chris ever typed/mashed when he was about five, using the largest blube font they'd allow him. It's about a monster called Chris, the Qeen and the Qeenie (apparently different people, though they both wind up in his oss).

CHRIS IS MY MONSTER QEEN I WIL EAT YOU I WIL EAT YOU I WIL LEAVE NOT A SPEK OF YOUR EYE NOT YOUR EYEBUL AND AT IS THE SMULST OF ALL HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AND DUBL HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA DID YOU THINK DID YOU DHJSFJHXERB4CI^%$&*&^%^%&%%%&############ DID YOU THINK IT WAS FUNY WHEN I SAID HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AND DUBL HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ???????%%%%%$SNJGCDJERBRBYRBYU99999999999)))))))))))))))))))))))) QEEN O YOU IN MY OSS WIV THE QEENIE AGDGNYUUU7U77UMMJJMNHGBGFNHNGHNG QEEN YOU HAVE POO ON YOU I WILL WASH YOU WIV MY WEEWEE PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS #####?)))))))))))))))))))))))))))%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999

Then there was Racist Pat, the hack of classic mail delivery simulator Postman Pat III that one of us made a few years later when we realised all the graphics for that game were stored as regular image files on the floppy disk and begging to be vandalised.

I'm not going to grass on who was responsible though, and to attempt an artistic reconstruction as a grown man who knows better would cross the line of decency that the original perilously straddled. We did much worse.