u/superchartisland

I've written about the making of Ocean's conversion of Konami's Combat School, and how it was covered in the games press of the time. Read about how the keyboard player from Marillion enjoyed the game and how Your Sinclair's editor won a Combat School competition by being "completely skillo"

Something slightly different for my latest post - tracing changing trends in compilations via Ocean's collection of sports games Game, Set and Match. Any Spectrum compilations that stand out in your memory?

For the latest post on my blog on the history of each game to reach #1 on UK sales charts, I've written about Joe Blade. I learned about its designer Colin Swinbourne's milk habit, and how Interceptor Software boss Richard Paul Jones was too capitalist for Jeff Minter. You can read about those, plus me admiring the construction of a really well-designed game

I've written about the early career of the Oliver Twins, and their first UK #1 game. From adapting Basic listings to work on their Dragon 32, to winning a TV programming competition, to a breakthrough with a racing game which may have owed a bit to Atari.

I've written a new post about the history of Renegade and how Ocean made the Spectrum (and other home computer) versions of it. It was really helpful for this one that Mike Lamb wrote a detailed article about his development process for Sinclair User at the time, which is an interesting read. Apparently he made it more difficult at the last minute in response to reviews saying it was too easy!

An interesting old interview by a fellow developer.

Eno: Man, I want to join the Mario team and make a Mario game myself. (laughs)

Miyamoto: Why don't you? (laughs) You praise the camera quite a bit, but we get a lot of users saying it moves around chaotically on its own and makes the game hard to play, or that they could design a better camera themselves. It turns out people who know absolutely nothing about 3D are the ones who tell me the camera is interesting, so I'm glad for that at least.

Pixels & Polygons has a quick look at some of the earliest titles that let players on different consoles play against each other, with Capcom vs. SNK 2 getting there before Final Fantasy XI

I've been writing histories of every game to have reached #1 in the UK sales chart, and this week I got to Run for Gold, the first one I had never heard of at all before. I wrote about the story of its developers Five Ways Software, an educational software company set up by a maths teacher, and how they went from games like Punctuation Pete to a middle distance running simulator. Anyone rememeber this game?

My latest blog post is on the history of Milk Race. I look into how a developer that started as a war game specialist end up making a game about a cycling race, why their game climbed to #1 in the UK sales charts months after the real life race finished, and what it all has to do with the price of milk.

Decades before the likes of The Sims 2: Ikea Home Stuff and Mercedes-Benz × Mario Kart 8, Access Software were pioneers in licenced expansion packs. They made a pretty good golf game too! My latest post, on World Class Leader Board

I've written about the history of The Last Ninja. Mark Cale and System 3 set out to "take the square cursor blob from Adventure on the Atari 2600 and turn it into a fully interactive 3D adventure". With a ninja theme. I looked at the less than straightforward path of its development, and the reception it got back in 1987.

I've written about the making of Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior and had a wider look at Palace Software's links to the 'video nasties' moral panic of the 1980s, and what happened when games started to be potentially subject to age ratings. I also took a look at all the complaints generated by the covers of both the game and of the Crash issue that featured it.

My latest post is on the early career of David and Richard Darling, and how they became a crucial part of Mastertronic then gave it up to launch their own rival company. Things started pretty well for Code Masters when their first game, BMX Simulator, hit #1 in the UK charts

In 1983, sixteen-year-old Spectrum adventure game programmer John Pickford gave a list of dislikes including "younger brothers who hog his computer and constantly beat his scores at arcade games". Four years later, John and his brother Ste designed Feud, and their game about feuding wizard brothers hit the top of the UK charts. I've written about how they got to that point

A newly translated interview from 2023 with two legendary game composers

I've written about the history of the home conversion of Gauntlet by Gremlin Graphics and U.S. Gold, and the wave of similar games at the same time including Dandy and Druid.