Matthew Smith (games Programmer)
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Matthew Smith (games Programmer)
Matthew Smith (born 1966) is a British computer game programmer. He created the games ''Manic Miner'' and ''Jet Set Willy'' for the ZX Spectrum, released in 1983 and 1984 respectively. Smith left the games industry in 1988 and later moved to the Netherlands. He has since returned to the UK and has worked on some games as well as appearing at conventions and in documentaries. Early life Smith was born in Penge. His family moved to Wallasey when he was seven years old. Programming career 1980s He started out programming when he received a TRS-80 for Christmas in 1979. His first commercial game was a ''Galaxian'' clone for the TRS-80 called ''Delta Tau One''. He then went on to produce ''Monster Muncher'' on the VIC-20. Smith has said that he wrote Monster Muncher in 3 hours. He obtained a ZX Spectrum on loan from Bug-Byte Software Ltd. in return for a freelance contract for three games. The first of these was '' Styx'' in 1983 for which Matthew received £3,000. He wrote ' ...
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Penge
Penge () is a suburb of South East London, England, now in the London Borough of Bromley, west of Bromley, north east of Croydon and south east of Charing Cross. History Penge was once a small hamlet, which was recorded under the name Penceat in an Anglo-Saxon deed dating from 957. Most historians believe the name of the town is derived from the Celtic word ''Penceat'', which means 'edge of wood' and refers to the fact that the surrounding area was once covered in a dense forest. The original Celtic words of which the name was composed referred to 'pen' ('head'), as in the Welsh 'pen', and 'ceat' ('wood'), similar to the Welsh 'coed', as in the name of the town of Pencoed in Wales. The largest amosite mine in the world, in South Africa, was named Penge apparently because one of the British directors thought the two areas were similar in appearance. Pensgreene and the Crooked Billet Penge was an inconspicuous area with few residents before the arrival of the railways. A trav ...
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Commodore 64
The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness World Records as the highest-selling single computer model of all time, with independent estimates placing the number sold between 12.5 and 17 million units. Volume production started in early 1982, marketing in August for . Preceded by the VIC-20 and Commodore PET, the C64 took its name from its of RAM. With support for multicolor sprites and a custom chip for waveform generation, the C64 could create superior visuals and audio compared to systems without such custom hardware. The C64 dominated the low-end computer market (except in the UK and Japan, lasting only about six months in Japan) for most of the later years of the 1980s. For a substantial period (1983–1986), the C64 had between 30% and 40% share of the US market and two mil ...
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British Computer Programmers
British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, the English language as spoken and written in the United Kingdom or, more broadly, throughout the British Isles * Celtic Britons, an ancient ethno-linguistic group * Brittonic languages, a branch of the Insular Celtic language family (formerly called British) ** Common Brittonic, an ancient language Other uses *''Brit(ish)'', a 2018 memoir by Afua Hirsch *People or things associated with: ** Great Britain, an island ** United Kingdom, a sovereign state ** Kingdom of Great Britain (1707–1800) ** United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801–1922) See also * Terminology of the British Isles * Alternative names for the British * English (other) * Britannic (other) * British Isles * Brit (other) * Briton (d ...
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1966 Births
Events January * January 1 – In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa takes over as military ruler of the Central African Republic, ousting President David Dacko. * January 3 – 1966 Upper Voltan coup d'état: President Maurice Yaméogo is deposed by a military coup in the Republic of Upper Volta (modern-day Burkina Faso). * January 10 ** Pakistani–Indian peace negotiations end successfully with the signing of the Tashkent Declaration, a day before the sudden death of Indian prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. ** The House of Representatives of the US state of Georgia refuses to allow African-American representative Julian Bond to take his seat, because of his anti-war stance. ** A Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference convenes in Lagos, Nigeria, primarily to discuss Rhodesia. * January 12 – United States President Lyndon Johnson states that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there is ended. * January 15 – 1966 Nigeria ...
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Elite Systems
Elite Systems is a British video game developer and publisher established in 1984 as Richard Wilcox Software. It is known for producing home computer conversions of popular arcade games. Elite also published compilations of games on the Hit-Pak label and budget price re-releases on the Encore label. History Under the name Richard Wilcox Software, only one title was published: ''Blue Thunder'' for the ZX Spectrum, Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64. In August 1984, the group was relaunched as Elite Systems, expanding the team to include graphic designers Rory Green and Jon Harrison; programmers Neil A. Bate, Chris Harvey, Andy Williams and Stephen Lockley; administrators Paul Smith and Pat Maisey; and Wilcox's brother Steve handled sales and marketing. Its first release under the new Elite Systems label was '' Kokotoni Wilf'', which also carried the first of their anti-counterfeiting holograms on the cassette inlay card. By 1986, the company was developing many home computer license ...
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Retrogaming
Retrogaming, also known as classic gaming and old school gaming, is the current playing and collection of obsolete personal computers, consoles, and video games. Usually, retrogaming is based upon systems that are outmoded or discontinued, although ported retrogaming allows games to be played on modern hardware via ports or compilations. It is typically for nostalgia, preservation, or authenticity. A new game could be retro styled, such as an RPG with turn-based combat and pixel art in isometric camera perspective. Retrogaming has existed since the early years of the video game industry, and was popularized with the Internet and emulation technology. It is argued that the main reasons players are drawn to retrogames are nostalgia for different eras, the idea that classic games are more innovative and original, and the simplicity of the games. Retrogaming and retrocomputing have been described as preservation activity and as aspects of the remix culture. Etymology The first ...
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Thumb Candy
The United Kingdom has the largest video game sector in Europe. It has the second largest video game market in Europe after Germany and the sixth largest globally. The UK video game market was worth () in 2021, a 2% increase over the previous year. Many major video game franchises are developed in the UK, including ''Grand Theft Auto'', ''Tomb Raider'', '' Burnout'', ''LittleBigPlanet'', '' Wipeout'' and ''Dirt'', making Britain the third largest producer of video game series behind Japan and the United States. The best-selling video game series made in the UK is ''Grand Theft Auto'' (primary developed by Rockstar North in Edinburgh, Scotland), which has sold over 150 million copies as of September 2013; the most recent instalment ''Grand Theft Auto V'' became the fastest-selling video game of all time by making $815.7 million (£511.8 million) in sales worldwide during the first 24 hours of the game's sale. Another major British contribution to the game industry was the ZX S ...
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Runecraft (company)
Runecraft (later renamed Gamezlab) was a British video game developer based in the United Kingdom. The company was founded in April 1997 and mostly developed games based on licensed properties. History In 2002, the company was commissioned by the BBC to develop a fighting game engine for the company's upcoming ''FightBox'' game show project. However, various financial issues, mismanagement, and other problems caused Runecraft to go bust at the end of December 2002. To keep the show alive, BBC Worldwide acquired the developer and a small number of its staff, and renamed the developer under BBC's core-publishing brand "Gamezlab". Following the failure of ''FightBox'' and the completion of the tie-in games, In February 2004, Gamezlab were commissioned to develop a video game based on BBC's '' Spooks'' TV series for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Ea ...
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Video Game Developer
A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with employee responsibilities split between individual disciplines, such as Video game programmer, programmers, Video game design#Game designer, designers, Game art design#Video game artist, artists, etc. Most game development companies have video game publisher financial and usually marketing support. Self-funded developers are known as independent or indie developers and usually make indie games. A developer may specialize in specific Game engine, game engines or specific video game consoles (such as Nintendo's Nintendo Switch, Switch, Microsoft's Xbox Series X and Series S, Sony's PlayStation 5), or may develop for a number of systems (including personal computers and mobile devices). Video game developers specialize in certai ...
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Dewsbury
Dewsbury is a minster and market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire, England. It lies on the River Calder and on an arm of the Calder and Hebble Navigation waterway. It is to the west of Wakefield, east of Huddersfield and south of Leeds. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, after undergoing a period of major growth in the 19th century as a mill town, Dewsbury went through a period of decline. Dewsbury forms part of the Heavy Woollen District of which it is the largest town. According to the 2011 census, Dewsbury had a population of 62,945. History Toponymy The ''Domesday Book'' of 1086 records the name as ''Deusberie'', ''Deusberia'', ''Deusbereia'', or ''Deubire'', literally "Dewi's fort", Dewi being an old Welsh name (equivalent to David) and "bury" coming from the old English word "burh", meaning fort. Other, less supported, theories exist as to the name's origin. For example, that it means "dew hill", from Old English ''d ...
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Video Game Industry
The video game industry encompasses the development, marketing, and monetization of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide. The video game industry has grown from niches to mainstream. , video games generated annually in global sales. In the US, it earned about in 2007, in 2008, and 2010, according to the ESA annual report. Research from Ampere Analysis indicated three points: the sector has consistently grown since at least 2015 and expanded 26% from 2019 to 2021, to a record ; the global games and services market is forecast to shrink 1.2% annually to in 2022; the industry is not recession-proof. The industry has influenced the advance of personal computers with sound cards, graphics cards and 3D graphic accelerators, CPUs, and co-processors like PhysX. Sound cards, for example, were originally developed for games and then improved for the music industry. Industry overview Size In 2017 in the United Stat ...
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