Like many skinny boys my age, the first computer book I ever read looked something like this:

Looking back, it's easy to be cynical about these titles. Each book contained a whole selection of games. You'd get a few pages of code (a lot to type on a ZX Spectrum keyboard at the age of 9), virtually no explanation, and a lavish watercolor picture supposed to illustrate the game play.

When you'd got the whole game typed in, you'd run it and discover that the game consisted of a few lines of plain text. Most of them didn't even use color.

One game I remember was called "Archery". I was excited to type it in -- the watercolor was really stunning for that one. The game play looked like this:

. . . .0. . . . . . .

The "player" had to quickly hit the number corresponding to the position of the 0 (which was supposed to be an archers head poking out between the turrets of castle).

It was thrilling. Being able to write a game myself, I knew I was on the bottom rung of a very long ladder that lead all the way to Jet Set Willy.

I feel rather nostalgic that tools like Unreal Developer Kit and Unity3d are now free, and available to any 9 year old who wants to download them. Exploring and playing around with the tools and techniques that bring you the games you love to play is a great experience... and I'm happy that a new generation of kids (as well as the rest of us) are going to get that chance.