Past Game Designs Work
Designing and programming games is something I did fulltime from 1984-1993 (with a gap at British Aerospace 1990-1992), then I moved to Microprose UK. I was there 1993 until the US arm of Microprose ran out of cash and were taken over by Spectrum Holobyte at which point the Manchester and Leeds development offices were closed. I'd met Bill Stealey but not Sid Meier.
Before that I'd programmed games- wargames on ZX Spectrum/CBM 64/MSX/Amstrad/MSX at Choice Software in Carrickfergus and Icon Design in Manchester before moving to Blackpool to design and program postal games at KJC Games. I had developed and run Casus Bellin in 1986- I was very lucky to be given a publicity spot in Computer & Video Games mag so when it launched it got 900 players! I made a bad business decision and lost control of it (moving to England to start a new job at Icon Design dsidn't help). When I regained control a year later there were only a 150 players left. At that point a new version called Warlord was developed and KJC Games ran it.
I'm now developing an online game part-time.
Here is a list of game I wrote, at Choice Software when I was a partner there from 1984-1986 or at Icon Design in Prestwich, Manchester in 1987. They were partly Lothlorien. The first three were original designs (well Dark Empires was my stab at the classic Empire!) the others were paid conversions by companies like Bug Byte, Lothlorien and PSS. All games were written in Z80 or 6502 assembler using home brewed development tools and nO debugger in around 8-15 weeks!
Original Designs |
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Games List |
CBM 64 / Spectrum/ Both |
URL |
| Johnny Reb II | Both (Choice) | World of Spectrum Links |
| Battle of the Bulge | Both (Choice) | Crash Magazine Online (Review) Design Notes |
| Dark Empires | Both (Icon Design) | Lemon 64 |
| CityFighter | CBM 64 (Choice) | Link on World of Spectrum but game is lost. The Spectrum Cassette inlay is here. |
Conversions |
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| Birds and Bees II | CBM 64 | Lost I think... |
| Theatre Europe | Spectrum/Amstrad CPC 464/MSX | Link to Spectrum version |
| Fire Ant | CBM 16 | Link to CBM 64 version |
Links to many of these games on the Spectrum at World of Spectrum (Enjoy!)
Postal (Play By Mail Games) I wrote
| Game | Type of Game | Links |
| Casus Belli | 16 Player Wargame based on Empire | Lost.. |
| Star Cluster | 16 Player Space conquest game. Originally called Pleides Cluster. Not related to a still run game called 'Star Cluster'! | |
| Warlord | 100 Player Wargame (developed from Casus Belli) | One Fan's View! |
| Quest | 1,000 Player Fantasy Game. Inspired by the Ultima games. I did the original design/software but others have extensively added and changed it since 1990... It is still run and extensively modified by KJC since I left in 1990. (Historical fact- I added Horses in, in 1996!) | KJC Games |
What makes a good game? I guess the acid test is whether its enjoyable, whether people will pay good money for it. I don't for example like the sims but its incredibly popular. I used to like the Civ games, but started going off them when they went isometric with Civ II but I tried Civ III and it rocked! Civ IV is even better.
Game Design Commissions
As well as computer games, I have deisgned wargames and card games. I love playing Board Games- not the dire 'Family Games' so prevanlent in the UK that come out once a year at Christmas but the German games- intelligent challenging and most of all fun games.
I am available part time for game commissions. I'm not an artist but a game designer- producing the rules, mechanics etc on a variety of themes
