The BBC Micro version of Ultimate Play the Game's Lunar Jetman had only 9 bytes of free memory. Paul Proctor managed to squeeze the game into the Beeb's 32K RAM with some very clever programming. He was able to reclaim a big chunk of memory by shrinking the screen window.

I really need this SGI Indy briefcase! Imagine rocking up to a meeting or inteview with this. Totally awesome.

Here's a great video of the Retro Computer Festival 2025 event that @computinghistory.org.uk hosted last year. Myself, and lots of other game developers were there and you can see what we were showing the visitors! youtu.be/v5CJwTemw-Q?...

I'm still reeling at the price of RAM for a new PC. I wanted to install 64GB in my development machine. Ouch! That RAM will now cost more than the decent video card I had my eyes on. Apparently a lot of it is to do with AI. Please can everyone stop generating AI junk so I can get more RAM. Thanks!

I was browsing new PCs and didn't think it would be a problem finding what I wanted. I visited a few recommended sites with good Trustpilot ratings including Scan, Overclockers, PCspecialist. I fell at the first hurdle - the case. All I want to do is add internal DVD/Blu-Ray drives - for archiving!

Having fun with John Pickford's Spectrum Sprite Editor - as found on one of Fred's dev disks during my archiving testing process. I doubt anyone has used this since the early 1990s! It's really good and very typical of the tools we used for home computer game development in the late 80s/early 90s.

Whilst archving some disks I found a sprite editor for the ZX Spectrum by former Software Creations colleague John Pickford. This was used at Binary Design and other Manchester based game devs back in 1986. No idea how to use it! Maybe his brother, Ste,remembers @stepickford.bsky.social

More old game development disk rescue and archive work underway. The latest batch of 3" disks have had fewer errors than previous ones I've worked with. Fingers crossed it keeps that way!

How many of you can remember this iconic scene from 1970s TV ( UK )?

R Fred Williams' 2nd batch of game development disks have arrived and are now queued for archiving. These look much more interesting and may have one or two of his 'lost' games on them, along with source code for other titles. New York Warriors and several Dizzy games are written on the labels.

Paul Proctor wrote this BASIC program to display the MAP for his BBC Micro version of Alien 8. The start positions and locations of the various objects and Cryonaughts are all shown. I recovered this whilst archiving his old development disks. As you can see, the map is in the shape of a spaceship.

'Wake me up before you Go-Go' by WHAM! on the BBC Micro from 1984.

In 2022 I was finally able to reunite Paul Proctor with his BBC Micro development disks that he left with me back in 1986. He'd moved home several times and we completely lost touch. These contained the source code for Knight Lore, Alien 8, Lunar Jetman and Nightshade. All safely archived.

Mike Webb - programmer and co-designer of NES Solstice. I worked with Mike at Software Creations in the late 80s / early 90s. He was the Technical Director and genius who reverse engineered the NES, created his own dev kits for NES and SNES and wrote much of the early development software.

This video shows how we developed games for the NES at Software Creations. PC-ED was our in-house IDE that we used to edit/build/deploy/debug our game code on a PC. This demonstration shows me loading up the 6502 source code for NES Wolverine - May 1991. Object code deployed to NES target dev kit.

Some great news from R. Fred Williams about his missing game development disks - he's found them! Hopefully these include some 'missing-in-action' games that he worked on along with original source code for other titles. Looking forward to seeing them and hope we can extract all the data!

I've finished recovering and archiving R Fred Williams' development disks - Einstein, Amstrad & Spectrum. Unfortunately, we didn't find the 'missing' source code and games that Fred was looking for, however, he may have more disks hidden away! Many of the disks did have errors, which is quite common

Wow! Saw this today on eBay...must resist bidding! This takes me back to my childhood when kids were allowed a box full of chemicals and a meths burner to play with! I had this exact set in the mid 1970s. I spent most of the time throwing iron fillings onto the burner. Meths not included!

These are the original Spider-Man sprite frames for SNES 'Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge'. Recovered from my old development disks. Back then, in 1992, all of these frames were hand-drawn, pixel by pixel. No 3D modelling software was available to simplify this work or animate Spidey.

Back in the early 90s at Software Creations I designed a Portable Assembly Language ( PAL ) with the intention of using it to develop games for 32/64 bit consoles. The ideal being that this pseudo assembly would generate native code for multiple processors. You only needed to write the game once 1/2

Look at the size of that disk icon!

Had a great post-Christmas lunchtime get together with Software Creations friends today. We talked about Z80 code optimization techniques, Gameboy development - including 'Wide Boy', Isometric games, Unreal, NES Solstice, CRASH Live, Tatung Einstein, RARE's RAZZ board and lots more!

This is the book I used to learn Z80 machine code programming on my Nascom 2 - so well written. I spent countless hours thumbing through this. I didn't have the luxury of a Z80 assembler to use so I had to hand-assemble the code and type it into memory in hexadecimal. Thank you, Graham Wilson.

I found these AI generated images from about 4 years ago. I was trying out the latest craze. I hate to think how much power has been wasted over the years generating this stuff. I guess it helps tech companies stay 'relevant' and keeps share prices high. I do wonder how long before the bubble bursts

In December 1987 'The Micro User' magazine was helping Acornsoft off-load surplus stock. Games and Languages were sold off at very reasonable prices.

If you ever developed for the Sony PS2 this book will bring back happy memories!

Two more great books to add to the library.

My French teacher said my 'mind was constantly on other things - computers'. Yep, it sure was, and still is! Sorry, Miss Nicholls. Anyone else out there with memorable school reports?

On Christmas Day we lost another gaming legend - David Rosen, Co-founder of Sega. He was responsible for the huge success of the Sega arcade games and the Mega Drive console. Thank you for your amazing work. RIP.

More great work from Mark Moxon. This time it's BBC Micro Sentinel that has been disassembled, annotated and made into buildable source code. Deep dives coming soon too. Looking forward to reading through all this. Geoff Crammond's code has been thoroughly dissected after almost 40 years!

This is the first time I've seen the Japanese manual for NES Solstice. I really like it. One of Software Creations' best know titles. Created by my former colleagues Mike Webb and Mark Wilson. Music and SFX by Tim Follin. Crafted in lovely 6502 assembly language.

Paul Proctor's BBC Micro 'Cookie' development disk. A conversion of the 'Ultimate Play The Game' Sinclair Spectrum classic that was never officially released. However, a disk copy of it was leaked at some point and it spread around very quickly.

RIP Stanley Baxter. This BBC Micro advert was a classic. www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPdx...

This rarely seen BBC Master 128 luggable recently sold on eBay. It's a custom build by Paxton Instruments and includes dual 5.25" drives and a green screen monitor. All of the original connectors/ports have been preserved on the back of the unit. This one is also fitted with an SD card device. HEAVY

Lurgy has now almost gone. Back to disk archiving and hopefully discovering some lost gems from the 1980s. These game developer disks were sent to me by R. Fred Williams who worked at Big Red Software and Binary design in Manchester. We bumped into each other at the Retro Event in Cambridge recently

Loving this look! ASCII RPGs for the win!

The BBC Micro is 44 years old today, Happy Birthday! However, many customers had to wait until early 1982 for delivery of theirs due to limited supply availability before Christmas. During its lifespan just over 1.5 million were sold - exact figures are not known. I still have my original one.

One of the best, original home computer games. Ported to so many different computers. Made by A&F Software, the name taken from the initials of the company's founders, Doug Anderson and Mike Fitzgerald

The lead-up to November is always a busy time for game developers. You have to get your games on the shop shelves in time for Thanksgiving. If you missed this holiday then you would lose a huge amount of potential sales. Here's a few of the ones I worked on with incredibly talented teams.

Don't miss this one. Steve Furber's 'From little Acorns to building brains' talk. Part of the ARM at 40 anniversary celebrations. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeQn...

@breakintoprogram.co.uk I have found it. Knew I had a spare somewhere, and it’s ’beige’ too. 1.44Mb. It’s yours!

Huge thanks to the lovely staff at @computinghistory.org.uk for being perfect hosts for RetroFest 2025 ( Gaming Edition ). Massive thanks also to @shortcircuit.org.uk for organising everything and making the event such a great success. Same goes to the amazing exhibitors who made it all possible.

Great to meet Andrew Barnabas ( composer ) at the retro event in Cambridge on Sunday.

BBC Micro Galaforce can be found in the Power Up exhibition at the Science Museum in London - and Manchester! I feel very old now knowing that my work is in museums....

Oooops! Look what followed me home from the Retrofest gaming event. I guess I have a new PET to look after. Needs some work doing to it before it's ready to go! The first computer I ever used. Thank you, Chuck Peddle.

Great to meet some wonderful people at the Retro Computer Fest 2025 event in Cambridge!

Had a very busy first day at @computinghistory.org.uk for the retro festival gaming edition event. Great speaking with so many people about the BBC Micro and gaming in general. Thanks to those who said hello. One more day to go. Thanks to @breakintoprogram.co.uk for the company and transport.

Remembering my great-grandfather, William George Edwards who lost his life on 27th March 1915. Chief Engineer on the SS "Aguila", attacked by a U-boat. His son, my grandfather, was just 9 at the time. #lestweforget

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...