The final episode of imported Australian TV show, Neighbours airs today on channel 5 here in the UK and, considering I’ve haven’t watched an episode in over 20 years, I’m actually surprised at how sad I am about that fact.
Neighbours was a huge part of my childhood, as it was for many other people my age, and it was always something I looked forward to watching after school and then discussing in the playground the following day. I vividly remember things like the death of Daphne after a tragic car accident (I think that might have been the first regular TV character I ever saw die) and how my primary school was abuzz with excitement for an upcoming episode that would feature the wedding of fan favourites Scott and Charlene.
One storyline in particular has stuck with me all of these years, though, and that was the time Todd Landers got addicted to the video game Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins.
Judging by how young Todd is in the video clip I found, this storyline probably happened sometime around 1989/1990. It played out over the space of a couple of weeks and it showed Todd’s descent into video game addiction as he tried his best to get to the top of the leaderboard on Ghosts ‘n’ goblins so he could enter his name above someone named ‘Skinner’. To do this he lied to his family to get money for the local arcade and he even skived off school in order to play the game as much as possible.