3Dfx. Simply the best! I remember buying my first 3Dfx videocard - an Orchid Righteous 3D. Truly a game changer! Programmers could use the Glide 3D graphics API or battle with an early version of DirectX.

Apparently overclocking calculators is actually a thing! www.youtube.com/watch?v=seBm...

Preparing for the Retro Computing Festival ( Gaming Edition ) 2025 at The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge next weekend. Here's a Visual Code setup that allows me to build 'Galaforce 2' from its original 6502 source code and deploy the game to an emulator on a PC. Simple, quick workflow!

The development studio for 'X2: Wolverine’s Revenge' - Bruntwood Hall, Cheadle, Manchester (2002). This is where we developed the game - on the top floor, formerly the servant's quarters. I'm at the back popping up my head to see what's going on. That arched window is where we are located - top left

Here's a Sinclair Microdrive cartridge with a UK pound coin for comparison. We trusted these mini-magnetic tape loops with our valuable data in the 1980s. Totally insane! To be fair, they were actually quite reliable. The tape loop is 5 metres long and stores a minimum of 85 to 100KBytes of data.

VCR tape copying virus! Hilarious. I should have implemented a similar thing in my BBC Micro game protection systems.

In Blake 7, the flight computer of the Scorpio was in fact powered by an Acorn System 1. 6502 rules the universe!

Picked up my Sinclair Oxford 300 from the calculator doctor @breakintoprogram.co.uk . Dean was able to track down the fault and get it back up and running again. We also had time to have a catch-up and talk about the good old days. Many thanks, Dean!

Do you remember using these?

Quick, recover the data before the disk totally dies! Squeaky disks always get my heart racing.

Moldy disks - my pet hate! Especially when you have important disks to try and archive. This Aculab DASH-80 system disk is probably the only one in existence. I have managed to recover most of it after a lot of cleaning. A bit more work and I can hopefully fully recover.

You must watch this! The early history of ARM by Sophie Wilson, one of the co-creators of the ARM processor. www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8MW...

Two weeks to go....

Happy Halloween! Who remembers playing 'Ghouls' on the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron?

A signed print of the cover artwork for 'Acorn : A World in Pixels' by Ste Pickford @stepickford.bsky.social. Ste and I worked together on several games at Software Creations in the 1990s. I love this artwork. Can you identify all of the characters/games featured?

45 years ago, the arcade game PAC-MAN was launched in North America ( October 1980 ). It was an instant hit and soon became one of the most iconic videgames of all time. 100s of copy-cat versions were created for home computers, virtually all were un-licensed. One of my all-time favourite games.

I almost missed this anniversary! LEGO DC Super-Villains was launched in North America on the 16th October, 2018 - other regions shortly after. A great game and an amazing development team! I chose The Joker variation of the 'developer brick' for this game.

Way back in 1998 I was working on my first PC title, 'Incoming'. I was tasked with CPU & GPU optimizations and 3D card compatibility. Back then PC 3D cards were in their infancy and had lots of issues, mostly associated with their drivers. Sometimes we had to work around know problems with hacks!

Here's the letter I received from Superior Software after sending them an early version of BBC Micro 'Crazee Rider'. I'd only been working on the game for a short time so we were still working out which direction we should take. The original brief was a follow up to 'Overdrive', but with corners.

The Acorn Springboard, an ARM co-processor upgrade for the IBM PC in the form of an ISA card. I don't think many of these were actually produced and are certainly rarer than the ARM Evaluation System Second Processors which attach to a BBC Micro. Does anyone have one of these or ever used one?

The news section of Electron User kindly gave me some free publicity for Galaforce when it was launched. I think this was in the October 1986 issue.

Just got off a zoom call with an old friend from the Software Creations & Genepool days. Craig Houston and I worked on NES Wolverine, SNES Spider-Man / X-Men: Arcade's Revenge and X-2 Wolverine's Revenge. Great to have another catch-up. Photo shows me in blue jumper and Craig right at the back.

Huge thanks to @breakintoprogram.co.uk for fixing my broken Sinclair Oxford 300 calculator! Great to see it working again.

Happy 25th Birthday to the SONY PlayStation 2 which was launched in North America on the 26th October 2000. Over 160 Million PS2s have been sold during its lifetime making it the best selling videogame console ever. Image credits:- Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe Limited (SIEE).

Last year I met up with schoolfriends Paul Proctor and Andrew Farrow. Paul programmed the BBC Micro conversions of Knight Lore, Alien 8, Nightshade and other Ultimate games. Andrew helped him with the room mapping. Paul played Alien 8 for the first time in about 40 years! Book/game signing too.

A Silicon Graphics 'Indy' workstation. I used one of these for Nintendo 64 game development. A great machine with awesome OS. The N64 development board fits neatly inside the blue case. Such a shame SGI are no longer around. Great hardware, with a great price tag!

Once upon a time you needed one of these huge beasts, and a lot of money, to make a video. Dixons catalogue, circa. April 1986.

Take a look at this great video by the Slow Mo Guys. They explain how arcade game displays work - regular CRT and also Vector based ones. Without doubt the best explanation I've ever seen. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJVp...

Just under four weeks to go until the Retro Computer Festival Gaming Edition weekend! I shall be exhibiting alongside fellow Software Creations game developer @breakintoprogram.co.uk so please come along and say hello. I shall be showing how BBC Micro games were developed back in the day.

Any druids out there need a BBC Micro? Or maybe it's one for any fans of hieroglyphs? Or perhaps it's just made up!

We were working on a SNES 'Taz' game at Software Creations in about 1993/4 and all that remains of the game are these three Taz sprite frames. That may change if I uncover any other artwork. I believe these were drawn/animated by Andy Wilson ( RIP ). Andy is at the front in the photo.

PKXARC that's a name I've not heard in a long time. Along with ARJ, RAR and LZH format files.

Over 40 years ago we played 'Hopper' on the BBC Micro/Acorn Electron and 'Frogger' in the arcades. Today it's become 'Crossy Road' for mobiles and tablets. There was a rumour that 'Hopper' was named after Andy Hopper, a senior employee at Acorn Computers in the early 80s. Very likely a myth!

When you saw the Acornsoft MODE 7 loading screen you knew you were about to play a great game! A sign of quality. In 1986, Acornsoft and Superior Software joined ranks and games were released with both companies names present on the packaging.

31st December, 1989 ( New Year's Eve ) and I was finalising the CES demo of NES Silver Surfer. It was an early build of the game featuring only 6 playable levels. This document describes a cheat-mode you can activate to make the Silver Surfer invincible! This was removed in the final release.

I have a BBC Master 128 with USB, IDE and an internal HD. I have also added a Rasberry PiCoPro to it so I can run ARM, 32016, Z80 and 80186 code on it! It's great that people keep old hardware alive by making cool stuff like this!

Are you old enough to remember these connectors? The joy of climbing under your desk looking for loose connections when the network disappears! Image from flylib.com/books/en/1.1...

Probably the best, fastest 8-bit computer I've ever used. A Master Turbo ( 4MHz 65c102 ) + 28MByte Hard Drive. Perfect for BBC Micro game development. Made obsolete with the arrival of the Acorn Archimedes range in June 1987. That jump from 8-bit to 32-bit was massive!

Microsoft ends support for Windows 10 today, October 14th 2025. Windows 11 doesn't work on 3 of my PCs due to CPU incompatibilities. However, I shall keep running Win10 on them now as they are used for lots of retro related stuff. I know I can 'force' an upgrade, but they may break in the future.

42 years ago 'Atomic Protector', for the BBC Micro, was published by Optima Software. A sister company of Database Publications, the people behind 'The Micro User'. The development team was myself and Martin Galway - this was our very first published game. We were 17 and studying for our A-levels.

This is pure gold. A who's who guide to the staff at Sinclair Research Limited, from 1984. Photos and details for everyone at the various offices around the UK. There's some great hairstyles and clothing - you have been warned! www.sinclairql.net/downloads/19...

This is a typical day at the office when you are a graphics programmer. 'Spammy polys' that need debugging to see what the heck has gone wrong with the shaders! Usually easy to track down if you have a decent GFX debugger / capture system.

The 'alternative' 6502 mnemonics where letters are added to the standard mnemonic to specify the addressing mode - eg LDAIM 100 This format came about because existing macro assemblers could be easily adapted to support the 6502 processor. MOS, the makers of the 6502, didn't support this format.

"Mutant Hunter / Ghostmaker" design and renders from the development disks for "X2 : Wolverine's Revenge". Original design artwork by Han Randhawa.

It's always fun reading through old computer magazines. This issue of creative computing is from January 1979 - published in the USA. I love the adverts.

One of my favourite consoles, the Hudson Soft / NEC PC-Engine! Known as the TurboGrafx-16 in North America where, for some reason, it was re-housed in a large, ugly dark coloured case! Games were sold on slim HuCard cartridges and also CD-ROM, if you purchased the external drive. R-Type was amazing!

I wonder how many people have heard of the Bally Astrocade ( AKA Bally Computer System ). Initially released in 1978. It has a really novel controller and is powered by a Z80 processor. Sadly, it didn't have the success of the Atari VCS/2600. Only 41 cartridge based games exist for it.

One of the most difficult BBC Micro books to obtain. Is there anyone out there that has a copy? I managed to get an ex-library copy that was re-bound. Curious to know how many are actually around. It was withdrawn from sale for legal reasons - it contained an annotated disassembly of BBC BASIC.

NES Silver Surfer review in Electronic Gaming. Difficulty rating AVERAGE. Yes, Average!

More digging in my old BBC Micro and Acorn Electron development disks. This time I've finally managed to re-produce the workflow used to get the sprite editor working. My friend Paul Proctor used the Computer Concepts Graphics Extension ROM to create the sprites for the Electron version of Galaforce