Wireframe – Issue 20, 2019

The eternal coders

Interface

wfmag.cc \ 45

In the early eighties, home computers were
so new that commercial programs were rare;
most owners were pushed into coding simply
because there was little else they could do with
their machines. Video games, thanks to Space
Invaders and its arcade peers, had already
captured the imagination of youngsters all over
the world. Lancashire local Anthony Ball was one
such pixel-eyed kid. “Next to the bus station in
Accrington, there used to be an arcade, so I’d go
in there while waiting for the bus and play video
games. Then, in Blackburn, I’d go to WH Smith
and read magazines like Byte, Compute!, and
Computer and Video Games.”
Interest piqued,
Ball acquired the
BASIC programming
cartridge for his family
Atari 2600. “It was
rubbish,” he recalls.
“But at school, they had a Research Machines
380Z which they kept locked in a store cupboard
because they were afraid of what might happen
if they turned it on.”
At weekends, Ball would journey into Preston
to experiment on the computers lined up in
the electrical store, Laskys. “The staff were
impressed and let me tinker around all day.
I guess it helped sell the computers.”
John Passfield, meanwhile, gives a perspective
from Australia, where the Sinclair brand was
nowhere to be seen. “I encountered my first
computer, a Commodore PET, loaded with the
game Colossal Cave Adventure,” he remembers.
“My mind was blown. I had to have my own
computer. I got a VZ-200 that Christmas and
began learning how to code from the manual
and computer magazines.”

FIRST EFFORTS
Passfield continues: “My very first attempt at a
game was pretty dismal. It was called Attack of the

Invisible Werewolf. You had to move a dot around

the screen until a random amount of time

passed and the message, ‘ You were killed by an

invisible werewolf’ appeared on the screen.”

Austin, having graduated from the scientific

calculator to the ZX Spectrum, via the VIC-20

and ZX81, realised machine code was the way

forward. “My first published game was Bunny

for Automata,” Austin

says. “It was written

99.9% in BASIC, but I

wrote a tiny piece of

machine code that

flashed the border

and made a terrible noise. While unimpressive, it

made me realise how much more powerful code

could be, so my next game, Pi-Balled, was totally

machine code. It was amazing how much more

you could get out of the Spectrum [with machine

code] compared to using BASIC.”

Austin got his break early in coding, thanks

to living so close to a software publisher.

For Passfield, opportunities weren’t quite so

convenient. “I grew up in a country town in

Australia, which was about as far away from the

computer scenes in England and the US as you

could get. In my town, I was the only kid making

games, and when my first game was published

in 1984, I kept it to myself because it was such a

nerdy thing to do!”

THE COMMERCIAL DAWN

“I remember it was all very exciting,” says

Middleton when asked about the video games

scene in the early-to-mid eighties. “All my friends

were playing games, and we got together

 The quirky Mastertronic hit

Universal Hero, written by

Stuart Middleton and friends.

“I’d go to WH Smith and read

magazines like Byte, Compute!,

and Computer and Video Games”

CODER PROFILE

STUART

MIDDLETON

FIRST PROGRAMMED ON

ZX81

SELECTED EXPERIENCE

Elite Systems,

Mind’s Eye, Rebellion,

FreeStyle Games

GAMES THEN

Universal Hero

ZX Spectrum

How to be a Hero

ZX Spectrum

Tank Attack

ZX Spectrum

RoboCop 3

Game Gear

GAMES NOW

Isle of Tune

iOS

Guitar Hero Live

iOS