One of the challenges in my gaming youth was simply getting the damned hardware to do its's basic job.

Discuss the full article - Hard wearing hardware by cyke below...

Looking back now, it's ridiculous.

I must have had, literally, a thousand games for my Commodore, and only about 10 of them ever fucking worked. Admittedly, most of them were copied off my mates, so they'd actually work for the first level or so and then pack in.

Pissing about with the volume level just to get the tape to load. Wasting whole days of your summer hols just trying to get the game to work so you could have one go. After excruciating hours getting it to work, playing it and getting on to the second tape, only to find it was fucking broken.

Would the shops take the cunting things back? Would they fook. Had it for weeks by then, they didn't want and couldn't sell a tear-stained tape stinking of desperation and hope.

Mind you, saying that, they were incredibly robust. My little brother dumped an entire bottle of talcum powder onto my C64, and the tape player. Carried on working regardless. Fucking tank! Couldn't do that with a PS3!