This is me — Matthew, or WOMBAT33R on the World Wide Web — at Monsters of Rock, Donington, 22 August 1992.
I’ve been playing games since 1984, starting out on the ZX Spectrum. Chequered Flag and Frank Bruno’s Championship Boxing were among some of the earliest games I remember playing, and gaming has been part of my life ever since.
Alongside games, there was always music — especially rock.
Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, I worked at Sudell Northern Ltd, manufacturing batter flour. I spent time working in the flour mill room with a guy called Peter, the boss’s son, who properly introduced me to Guns N’ Roses — along with a steady diet of Now That’s What I Call Music!
Somewhere amongst the flour dust, machinery and working days, GNR entered the soundtrack of my life and never really left.
After Sudell Northern, I joined the Army.
That particular chapter was considerably shorter.
Apparently, when it was all boiled down, I was something of a “bad apple.”
So military life and I went our separate ways.
But games stayed. Rock music stayed.
I can also remember travelling up to Fort William in Scotland with two friends, Graham and Ian, crammed into an old Volvo.
Before we went, Ian had bought an acoustic guitar from a guy called Mark, who lived across the road. It only had five strings, but that didn’t stop him.
He plucked and strummed that thing pretty much all the way there and all the way back.
It probably wasn’t technically perfect, and I’m not sure the missing string helped, but there was something about it — three mates, an old Volvo, a five-string acoustic guitar and a long drive to Scotland.
Looking back, music was always there somewhere.
Later on, Ian and a few other mates formed a band and started playing covers. I can remember them doing songs like Van Halen’s “Jump”, along with plenty of others that have somehow disappeared into the fog of memory over the years.
I might not remember every song they played, but I remember the feeling of it — mates making music, guitars everywhere, and rock music always somewhere in the background.
I also remember another mate getting a Roland keyboard on credit, which at the time seemed like a pretty serious bit of kit.
The funny part is, somewhere along the way, he ended up playing bass instead.
That was kind of how it was. People picked things up, swapped instruments, formed bands, learned as they went, and somehow music was always hanging around.
I did learn to play guitar myself, although never to any great level — probably somewhere below average if I’m being fair.
Truth was, I spent far more time playing video games, going out and partying than seriously thinking about joining a band.
As the years went on, friends drifted apart, relationships changed, and life took me down different paths.
Eventually, I started writing.
That led to The Games Ingredients, which became another way for me to create — writing about games, experimenting with ideas, getting into programming, and eventually building my own games and projects.
And somehow, after all those years — from the ZX Spectrum, battered guitars, rock records, old Volvos, gaming, writing and coding — music found its way back in.
Which pretty much brings us to where we are now.
WOMBAT33R.
Still gaming.
Still creating.
And now, finally, making the music I probably should have started making years ago.