He is also the son of someone quite famous.

This is a brilliant essay. Full of insights and perception. It makes excellent apéritif for Friday's iPlayer release of the two recovered Dalek's Masterplan episodes.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: the Dangerous Brothers have been banned from the last in the first series of Saturday Live, leaving Fry and Laurie ample time to demonstrate their flower arranging dance.

A new blog post about the surprisingly complicated story of SEGA in the UK. whereweretheynow.blogspot.com/2026/03/sega... #RetroGaming #RetroComputing #SEGA

New on my blog today, I explore the decision to use a negative image effect to represent Dalek gun blasts in #DoctorWho, and the prior history and associations of this effect in television and film: thehiddenplanet.substack.com/p/negative-c...

Yeowell / Hart

British label Mastertronic's approach to software, selling as cheaply and widely as they could, proved influential. In 1986, they took a year-old-port of a 2-year-old Spectrum bike game to #1 for a month. New post on the story of Speed King and Mastertronic: www.superchartisland.com/speed-king

New on my Doctor Who blog today, I look at the design of the Dalek city in 'The Daleks' and consider the rarely-acknowledged questions that the design raises: thehiddenplanet.substack.com/p/the-dalek-...

A follow up to last year's blog post on The Battle For Santa's Software. October 1983, BBC2's magazine programme Riverside went to Liverpool to interview the rich and successful team at Imagine and ask; are computer game programmers the new rock stars? whereweretheynow.blogspot.com/2026/03/mike...

Alan Davis

An amazing find. There will literally never be a better time to listen to this podcast before it goes nicely out of date. pca.st/episode/4ecb...

December 1991. Dave Gruisin reports from the tackily named InterTainment 91 where everyone was talking about The Machine. "...something coming from someone who's big enough to blow Philips and Commodore out of the water." 1/4 archive.org/details/theo... #RetroGaming #RetroComputing

“Now you listen to me, Miss Billings! You have not seen a thing here—do you understand? I’m not kidding about this, Miss Billings.”

After the success of Beach-Head, Bruce Carver was joined at Access Software by younger brother Roger, fresh from working on flight sims. So soon they they did the logical thing and made a golf game. It went quite well! New post on Leader Board: www.superchartisland.com/leader-board

The story of Rage Software. They and Psygnosis were the two main characters in the nineties Liverpool Software scene. whereweretheynow.blogspot.com/2026/03/rage... Includes a second special guest appearance from @jake74.bsky.social #Amiga #AtariST #PlayStation #RetroGaming #RetroComputing

New on my blog today, an article about the time Dennis Potter tried to get into writing for Doctor Who in the 1960s, what his story would have been about, and the other times he crossed paths with the series. Hopefully this will interest a few of you. thehiddenplanet.substack.com/p/when-denni...

I played Ghosts 'n Goblins in the arcade and at home on my Spectrum. I was rubbish at both.

10th July 1984. Imagine Software is wound up. The corporate dismemberment begins to try and recover some of their debit. The LIVERPOOL ECHO carried this advert giving people the chance to buy computers, desks, carpet cleaners, VHS tapes, and more. #ZXSpectrum #Commodore #RetroGaming #RetroComputing

ICYMI, my post this week was on Imagine's home computer ports of Green Beret (aka Rush'n Attack in some territories). Read about: - the extra-difficult C64 version - the extreme memory-filling of the Spectrum version - "Green Hat", "Green Bert" and other British magazine reactions to its hero

“Listen … you go tell Billy’s mother, and I’ll start looking for another old tire.”

George Pal's War of the Worlds The animated version of Animal Farm. Joe Macbeth Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (no one in the class was 18)

Liverpool people. Is there any chance you recognise these 1983 streets? They come from this BBC Archive report on the success story that was Imagine Software www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aV5...

New on my blog today, a (possibly slightly morbid) look at how an aspect of Terry Nation’s life – and death – is reflected in one of his Dalek Annual short stories: thehiddenplanet.substack.com/p/terry-nati...

A follow up to the Psygnosis article, with a look at founder Dave Lawson and his short-lived company Kinetica. whereweretheynow.blogspot.com/2026/02/dave... #Amiga #AtariST #RetroGaming #RetroComputing

Ron Smith

My post this week was on Silent Service. Read about: - how MicroProse and Sid Meier got their start and then made it in the UK too - why they decided submarine warfare would make for a good game - the advantages of hiring a real artist www.superchartisland.com/silent-service

Speed Chess -solved! (But not by me). The source for the chess footage was identified in 2021 at the Atari Age forum forums.atariage.com/topic/326611... It's called Tolinka, a chess "visual recorder" that could record and display games using a modified cassette tape recorder and a television. 1/4

Do you know any of these winners?

On my blog today, I take a (rather silly) look at Terry Nation’s ‘Dal to Lek’ anecdote and consider which book spines might really have been useful to him in naming the Daleks, riffing on a thread in my upcoming Black Archive monograph. thehiddenplanet.substack.com/p/dal-to-lek

In 1985 Ian Hetherington and Dave Lawson built Psygnosis from the ashes of Imagine Software. This is the story of what happened next, with a special guest appearance by @jake74.bsky.social whereweretheynow.blogspot.com/2026/02/psyg... #Amiga #AtariST #PlayStation #RetroGaming #RetroComputing

I may not know much* about art but I know what I like. *or, indeed, anything.

Post the first game you actually completed! Ant Attack. Once I'd got to grips with the awkward controls the game was difficult enough to be a challenge but short enough for my 13 year old attention span.

Batman and Head Over Heels were probably the high water mark for Ultimate-style 3D games. Another great article from Super Chart Island.

A new blog post about Sony in the UK. Basically, lots and lots* of PlayStations got sold. whereweretheynow.blogspot.com/2026/01/sony... #RetroGaming #RetroComputing #PlayStation * and lots and lots, and then some more.

Bomb Jack's arcade action wasn't especially cutting edge by the time it reached home computers in 1986. It still translated well enough to become UK #1, and then did so again in 1988. New post on some impressive design plus the allure of a £2 price tag: www.superchartisland.com/bomb-jack

Unlocked! I look at Namco's brutal, cool spy shooter Rolling Thunder, and discuss what it, and many other games, owe to SpartanX/Kung-Fu Master. On Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/rollin...

Slightly diminish a game. Resident Ignoble

#Discourse2000 returns with the best #2000AD story yet as Judge Dredd goes epic in a story about horror, history, Britain's idea of America and what it means to be "THE LAW" - join me for a saunter across THE CURSED EARTH freakytrigger.co.uk/wedge/2026/0...

Steve Dillon

The story of Adventure International in a blog post that covers a period from 1980 to basically today. That's 45 years and not three, like I thought when I started writing the article. whereweretheynow.blogspot.com/2026/01/adve... #Amiga #AtariST #Commodore #ZXSpectrum #RetroGaming #RetroComputing

I loved Starquake. One of a handful of games good enough to rival the those made by Ultimate at their height. Also, one of the few Spectrum games I finished without cheating* * assuming that using a map printed in CRASH wasn't cheating.

Brett Ewins

“Get, you rascal! Get! … Heaven knows how he keeps getting in here, Betty, but you better count ’em.”

OH CWIPES! #Discourse2000 is heading for the Cursed Earth, but first we have to discuss the first ever Judge Dredd spin-off strip, WALTER THE WOBOT: FWIEND OF DREDD. Can #2000AD handle single page gag strips, and does Dredd need supporting characters? Find out! freakytrigger.co.uk/wedge/2025/1...

Ron Smith

Speed chess! The 1979 Blake's 7 episode Gambit uses footage from a computer chess game but which one? The otherwise definitive Blake's 7 Production Diary just describes it as “an electronic chess board game.” Can anyone identify it? www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yN_... #Blakes7 #Atari #RetroGaming 1/2

40 years ago, CRASH featured this terrific Oli Frey Xmas cover. Just absolutely terrific. And BTW, that £8000 worth of prizes translates to £25,000 in today's money. Holy freakin' crap!