So, who is Jim?

Well I became interested in gaming back in the early 1980’s with the introduction of Asteroids in our local arcades. After spending far too much time (and money) on these machines I decided it would be better to invest in a computer. I bought a Sinclair 48k ZX Spectrum (the one with rubber keys) though quickly realised that there were no good versions of Asteroids on the Spectrum and could not afford the Acorn BBC-B which did have a good version at the time.

My journey into programming started with learning BASIC on the Spectrum, then after winning a competition to complete BugBytes game called Manic Miner I won a Memotech MTX computer and started to learn assembly language. Around the same time I teamed up with Antony and together we wrote our first game for the Memotech called Pot Hole Pete.

Shortly after starting a new job at Memotech I started a software company called Megastar Games whose sole purpose was to produce good quality games for the MTX series of home computers. We had fifteen available for the MTX with more in development but never released, many of them hitting the top slots in the user magazines. Despite the relatively small market available for the MTX series our games were successful and highly regarded.

My passion for game programming though remaining high has not been my main source of income since the Memotech days. I have worked in car sales both new and used cars and car parts departments, high pressure water cleaners as a technical sales person, then worked for Rover making of all things the rear seats for the Montego estate car. From Rover it was off to British Telecom as a repair engineer spanning fifteen years. Near the time I left I worked on a project called ‘Engineer’s Assistant’ which was to provide a laptop based ‘in the field guide’ to help the engineers when they came up against a difficult problem to overcome. I finally left BT in 2004 to set up my own computer repair business, this is currently my main source of income though I hope to be able to move away from this and more towards the software development.

I have been involved with quite a few different games over the years since those early days, working on the Commodore Amiga, Nintendo Gameboy Advance and Java games for the mobile phones running Symbian. Due to a reliance on getting someone to publish and market a game as there were no real alternatives available at the time sadly none of the game ever saw commercial release.

I have always maintained my interest in the games side of computing, despite trying many other things including training and qualifying in the late 1990’s in Massage and even dipping my toes into Psychology a few years back I always seem to keep coming back to games. It is what I have always wanted to do and now with the creation of the App store I am hoping to finally make this come true.

Jim