From the archive: Martin Amis on arcade games

Martin Amis discovered Space Invaders at a bar near the railway station in Toulon. The console had been installed in the corner and resembled a fridge, and as soon as Amis slotted in his first coin he fell head over heels. 'I knew instantly that this was something different, something special,' he explains. 'The bar closed at 11 o'clock that night. I was the last to leave.' Amis is recounting this three years later, in the Observer Magazine's 19 September 1982 cover story.