Have you played… Geordie Racer?
Flying free, flying high, flashing wings across the sky
Oh, sweet BBC Micro, how I miss the floppiness of thy disks, how I yearn for the... hang on, no I don’t. I hated you. And I especially did not like Geordie Racer.
Geordie Racer was the impenetrable haven of the older kids in primary school who knew what foods to give to a virtual pigeon, and in which specific order said foodstuffs should be administered. It was an educational word 'n' numbers game based on an educational TV show in the UK, about a wee lad who gets into pigeon fancying. Oh sure, the Micro game had a bangin’ intro track, on par with the theme song of the show. And yes, it was quite intriguing to watch the pigeons flap onto the screen and tell you all about themselves.
“My name is Homer. I am fast.”
“My name is Bonny. I am strong.”
Well, my name is Brendan. And I am stupid.
In primary school I was too young to understand the nuance of both pigeon management and the surrounding vocabulary of pigeon management. Too green in the brain and fingers to grasp the necessity of feeding Homer the correct foods (first Honey, then Oranges, then Meat... so that the first letter of all the foods eventually spelled “H O M I N G”). And too afraid of arithmetic to do the sums that Star required to get her wings flapping. No thanks, pigeon game. It’s too much for me. I’ll go back to playing the weird Centipede clone, thanks.