WhenI was a kid, it was de rigueur to take ‘things’ into school to boost your social standing. For a while, bizarrely, it was books about Bruce Lee. God knows what a bunch of tenyear-olds who had never seen Enter The Dragon got out of looking at pics of Lee. I suspect it was the visceral thrill of knowing that he was the star of X-rated movies and was therefore inherently naughty. Of course, the boasts that ‘my dad could beat Bruce Lee’ rang throughout the playground. How much would I have loved to see a bunch of middle-aged Seventies dads scrapping with the Little Dragon.

There were other short fads – Rubik’s Cubes, Looby Loos – but the longest-lasting was the handheld game. The first handheld I remember being brought in was the Tomy Digital Derby Auto Raceway. A black box with a tiny steering wheel that moved a small car left and right. I just went and watched a video of it, and it is WAY cooler than I remember. Cars would come up behind you and you had to avoid them. I’d forgotten you could change gears which made you move faster. Yes, the noise was migraine inducing, but it was so exciting. It felt like having an arcade cab in your hands. Paul Francis brought this in and for a while, he was king of the playground as we all gathered outside the toilets to have a go.

I needed a piece of this cool pie. At some point, I don’t remember when, I got given the Donkey Kong II Game & Watch. Whereas Digital Raceway was just a black box, and looks a little plain today, DKII was and still is a design classic. One of the series of flip-top dual screens, the brown and cream colouring really made it stand out. Go and have a look now, you would want one of these on your shelf. A real work of art and so much better looking than the original Donkey Kong handheld – that orange case used to make me nauseous.

I spent so long on this game, although I’d be hard pushed to tell you what you had to do. In many ways, it didn’t matter. Once I brought this into school, I was king. King Kong if you will. Kids would be gathered around me all break desperate to have a go. I do vaguely remember at one point charging kids a penny a pop. An awful, early example of me Gonching (check out Gonch from Grange Hill. The verb to Gonch comes directly from him).

Of course, this infamy couldn’t last, and I was eventually knocked off the throne by the son of the caretaker who somehow brought an actual CB radio into the school playground. Anyone who grew up in the late Seventies will remember just how thrilling CBs were. If you don’t believe me, go and watch Stranger Things and see how important they are to the world of Hawkins.

You can now get handhelds that hold 50,000 games. That’s cool, but they will never be as thrilling as a chunky, brown and cream clamshell box from the Game & Watch series.

“Yes, the noise was migraine inducing, but it was so exciting