Ferrigno his wild green eyes in the television series
The Incredible Hulk
– and in the late seventies he
and his family settled in Vancouver.
In 1979, Canada was well within the shockwave of the arcade boom that was sweeping North America, and for the first time, two of Darling’s British-born sons, David and Richard, were
exposed to computer games. These proved immediately addictive, their impact so profound that even now David Darling can remember exactlywhere he found which games as a
twelve-year-old:
Pac-Man
and
Defender
on the ferry to Vancouver,
Gravitar
at a go-karting track.
As luck would have it, that year the Darlings’ Canadian school taught them computing for half a semester. Unlike at David Perry’s school in Northern Ireland, equipment was very
scarce, with one computer keyboard shared amongst thirty or forty pupils. School computing meant mind-numbing hours knocking out holes in punch cards and waiting your turn to see the results. But
David Darling already knew he wanted to do more, and negotiated with the teacher to stay late after class, stretching the time he spent with sole access until he was regularly there until
midnight.
Recognising the good fit between his son’s command of new technology and the needs of his own business, Jim Darling bought a Commodore VIC-20 – more advanced than any British home
computer at the time – and put David to work computerising the equations that matched a lens to an eye. His fee was a loan of the machine at weekends.
Like countless kids of their age, the Darling brothers found the technology as addictive as the games it could produce, perhaps more so. They persuaded a friend in the US to join in – he
crossed the border to pick up his own VIC-20 – and between them the three boys knocked out text adventures and clones of arcade space shoot-em-up
Galaxian
. They had vague plans to
publish, but they were still experimenting by the time the Darlings moved back to Britain to stay with their grandparents.
Feeling sorry for her itinerant grandchildren, the Darling brothers’ grandmother gave them a VIC-20, which they used to swap homemade games with their friend on the other side of the
Atlantic. It was a competitive but genuine correspondence – their cassettes prefaced the screeching computer noise of that week’s program with introductory audio letters to their
distant friend. And the choice of medium would lead to a highly profitable discovery.
David Darling had an entrepreneur’s eye. He noticed that the shops in the small town of Taunton had plenty of computers, but farfewer program cassettes. ‘We
suddenly realised that there was probably more demand than supply for the games,’ he says. ‘So we thought, why don’t we sell them?’
The boys called themselves Galactic Games, saved up their pocket money for months, and bought a half-page advert in
Personal Computer Weekly
. Their friend Tim had a father in marketing,
who devised a persona for their product – a ‘funny-looking Galactic Man with a big nose’ according to David. Britain was still in awe of the Stateside gaming scene, so their final
ruse was a gentle fib: ‘14 Great Games from America’ bragged the headline.
And suddenly they had a business. Orders, letters and cheques arrived, in greater numbers every month. ‘We didn’t know what to do,’ says Darling. ‘We had to go and find a
bank manager who would open a bank account, and find a solicitor.’ And the workload was shattering – the brothers stayed up all night hand-duplicating tapes, and each held ten minutes
of dissonant screaming.
By the time their father returned to join them in 1982, abandoning contact lenses to run his sons’ business, they had subcontracted and invested in infrastructure. David Darling sourced a
tiny duplication plant in the nearby town of Bridgwater, and could often be seen puttering through Somerset on a moped dangerously loaded with tapes. It had to be a moped, because at 16,
The Incredible Hulk
– and in the late seventies he
and his family settled in Vancouver.
In 1979, Canada was well within the shockwave of the arcade boom that was sweeping North America, and for the first time, two of Darling’s British-born sons, David and Richard, were
exposed to computer games. These proved immediately addictive, their impact so profound that even now David Darling can remember exactlywhere he found which games as a
twelve-year-old:
Pac-Man
and
Defender
on the ferry to Vancouver,
Gravitar
at a go-karting track.
As luck would have it, that year the Darlings’ Canadian school taught them computing for half a semester. Unlike at David Perry’s school in Northern Ireland, equipment was very
scarce, with one computer keyboard shared amongst thirty or forty pupils. School computing meant mind-numbing hours knocking out holes in punch cards and waiting your turn to see the results. But
David Darling already knew he wanted to do more, and negotiated with the teacher to stay late after class, stretching the time he spent with sole access until he was regularly there until
midnight.
Recognising the good fit between his son’s command of new technology and the needs of his own business, Jim Darling bought a Commodore VIC-20 – more advanced than any British home
computer at the time – and put David to work computerising the equations that matched a lens to an eye. His fee was a loan of the machine at weekends.
Like countless kids of their age, the Darling brothers found the technology as addictive as the games it could produce, perhaps more so. They persuaded a friend in the US to join in – he
crossed the border to pick up his own VIC-20 – and between them the three boys knocked out text adventures and clones of arcade space shoot-em-up
Galaxian
. They had vague plans to
publish, but they were still experimenting by the time the Darlings moved back to Britain to stay with their grandparents.
Feeling sorry for her itinerant grandchildren, the Darling brothers’ grandmother gave them a VIC-20, which they used to swap homemade games with their friend on the other side of the
Atlantic. It was a competitive but genuine correspondence – their cassettes prefaced the screeching computer noise of that week’s program with introductory audio letters to their
distant friend. And the choice of medium would lead to a highly profitable discovery.
David Darling had an entrepreneur’s eye. He noticed that the shops in the small town of Taunton had plenty of computers, but farfewer program cassettes. ‘We
suddenly realised that there was probably more demand than supply for the games,’ he says. ‘So we thought, why don’t we sell them?’
The boys called themselves Galactic Games, saved up their pocket money for months, and bought a half-page advert in
Personal Computer Weekly
. Their friend Tim had a father in marketing,
who devised a persona for their product – a ‘funny-looking Galactic Man with a big nose’ according to David. Britain was still in awe of the Stateside gaming scene, so their final
ruse was a gentle fib: ‘14 Great Games from America’ bragged the headline.
And suddenly they had a business. Orders, letters and cheques arrived, in greater numbers every month. ‘We didn’t know what to do,’ says Darling. ‘We had to go and find a
bank manager who would open a bank account, and find a solicitor.’ And the workload was shattering – the brothers stayed up all night hand-duplicating tapes, and each held ten minutes
of dissonant screaming.
By the time their father returned to join them in 1982, abandoning contact lenses to run his sons’ business, they had subcontracted and invested in infrastructure. David Darling sourced a
tiny duplication plant in the nearby town of Bridgwater, and could often be seen puttering through Somerset on a moped dangerously loaded with tapes. It had to be a moped, because at 16,
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