It started with a hiss….

…we never thought it would end up like this. Welcome to The Snake Becomes The Key – a retro gaming blog for old archaic Amstrad computer games. A partnership by Christian Keeley and Stuart Hunt who, from a kinship for life depleting load times, a weird appreciation for shoddy movie tie-ins and probable permanent ear damage from dolphin language loading sounds, decided to visit every jumble sale over a period of two years to unearth a plethora of ancient Amstrad cassette tapes to re-live that pocket-money programming period.

You may wonder why we called this blog ‘The Snake Becomes The Key’ well, for any of you that check out YouTube, you’ll see that as well as clips of people wearing condoms made out of glass and Polish street fights, there’s quite a funny selection of video game themed videos, be it a parody, online review, or just an angry rant. By some strange chance, we accidentally clicked on a video showing a walkthrough for an old Atari 2600 game, based on the film Indiana Jones – by far the most dog-sick looking game we’ve ever encountered. The guy doing the commentating took the whole thing deadly seriously and narrated it in a portentous knowing tone….Jerk.

 It wasn’t until we finished watching his 15 minute master class that we realised the guy was actually a gaming genius. Amazed were we by how illogical the puzzles were and how he had somehow managed to crack the ingenious solution of walking in and out of two screens 8 times, like an OCD sufferer opening a door, to find a key, which, unless you spend weeks deliberating over every minuscule pixel on your television like a mental person, you would never find yourself. Why? because it’s a f***ing snake, something, which by video game convention, written into the syntax of perhaps every other video game, is something that will usually kill you. It’s like the programmers were literally trying rough you up for playing a video game. It’s kind of like the equivalent of keeping frozen food inside a DVD player – it makes no sense whatsoever.

 This experience had us thinking about the games we used to play when we were kids and how we could never finish them. Was it because we were shit at video games? Quite possibly, or was it because we didn’t have the insight and open minded approach which enabled us to consider that the snake becomes the key?

Anyways check it out, post us your comments and suggestions. We really hope you enjoy stepping back in time with us as we replay some old gaming gems from yester-year.

Stuart and Chris.