From the archive: Martin Amis on arcade games

An Observer Magazine cover story from September 1982 sees the novelist, 33, turn his attention to a ‘global addiction’Martin Amis discovered Space Invaders at a bar near the railway station in Toulon. It was 1979. 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’