A New Home
After a good long run on Blogger, the blog has a new home. Same content, same me. Just a cleaner setup that works better alongside my Substack, where I’m currently publishing a serialized …
Down t'Pit
I spent the summer of ‘82 as a trainee at the National Coal Board. Three thousand feet underground at Grimethorpe Colliery. Riding coal conveyor belts face-down. Shoveling slag. Wearing a …
The Locked Room
The school had finally gotten its hands on a machine, but it was kept in a locked room, strictly out of bounds unless you were enrolled. To qualify, you had to be in the top maths class. I cleared …
From Before the Industry to the First Decade
I’ve been working in the video game industry for more than 40 years. I’ve also been trying, in one form or another, to write this story for almost 25 of them. Early attempts here focused on the …
Westwood Studios Part 1 : 1993 : A Barnsley lad in Las Vegas
In December 1993, just before Christmas, we arrived in Las Vegas after a flight from Heathrow with a connection in Seattle. Taking time off from my job at Electronic Arts UK, Elsbeth and I were …
Electronic Arts UK : 1992 - 1993
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! John Betjeman, 1937 After the closure of Eldritch The Cat and after surviving the development of Under Pressure, I interviewed at Electronic Arts UK in Langley …
Eldritch The Cat Mk III : 1990 - 1991
Part 3 of the Eldritch The Cat story. Parts 1 & 2 are here and here. Jim Savage, Mark McCubbin, Dave Colclough, Steve Wetherill, Martin Calvert, Dave Collins New Digs Mark McCubbin had found …
Eldritch The Cat Mk II : 1989 - 1990
Part 2 of the Eldritch The Cat story. Part 1 is here, part 3 is here. During the development of Projectyle, Marc & I wanted to kick off another game to increase our studio’s cash flow and …
Nodes of Yesod : ZX Spectrum Next : Update #4
A Big Change Of Plans! Astro Charlie has a close encounter If you have read my previous updates, you’ll know that Nodes of Yesod for the Speccy Next is based on a C codebase. I’ve …
Wide Ranging Interview with the Retro Hour Podcast
Manic Miner to Command & Conquer with Steve Wetherill - The Retro Hour EP322 Check out the link below for a wide-ranging interview I did with Dan and Ravi at the Retro Hour podcast! Here are some …
Projectyle Music
The music was composed using a MIDI keyboard (don’t remember which one, but it was a Yamaha) hooked up to an Atari ST running the Quartet software. The ST version of the game used the standard Quartet …
Eldritch The Cat Mk I : 1988 - 1989
Steve Wetherill and Marc Wilding, the Eldritch Cats Eldritch The Cat Mark I After Odin, Marc Wilding contracted with Ocean to create the Amiga & Atari ST versions of the Army Moves game. Next, he …
Eldritch The Cat Bio a la Projectyle Poster
GENESIS OF AN ELDRITCH CAT OR TWO And so it came to pass that Stairways Nitespot for the Homeless did beckon them forth from the seclusion and safety of Software Projects, and they did partake of the …
Nodes of Yesod : ZX Spectrum Next : Update #3
In this third developer diary update for Nodes of Yesod: ZX Spectrum Next, I’ll talk about progress on the coding and tools side, and give a preview of progress on the art side. Coding Update In …
Denton Designs : 1988
“Colin, let’s take a day off from Denton Designs, get the train from Liverpool to London and clear up this Crosswize situation with Telecomsoft, face to face.” Crosswize was late. It …
Firebird : 1987
Cockneys Die!!! After Odin’s demise, I was left with decisions to make. After months of running on financial fumes to complete Sidewize, I had no significant monetary reserves; not to put too …
Chasing the raster on the ZX Spectrum in Sidewize
How did Sidewize accomplish the “raster-chasing” required to update the display 50 times per second? Read on! [note: jump down to The Results to see the videos, otherwise let’s dive …
Nodes of Yesod : ZX Spectrum Next : Update #2
This week I posted a poll on Twitter to find out which of the three presented graphics styles people would prefer for Astro Charlie, the protagonist in Nodes of Yesod, on the ZX Spectrum Next. The …
Nodes of Yesod : ZX Spectrum Next : Update #1
A ZX Spectrum Next, in its natural habitat A quick progress report on Nodes of Yesod for the Spectrum Next. The good news - I worked on it! I managed to spend a couple of evenings last week working …
Sidewize Scrolling Graphics Breakdown
Following on from the Odin Computer Graphics Part Two post where I mentioned Sidewize, I thought I’d delve into a little more detail on the construction of the Sidewize scrolling backdrops. …
Odin Computer Graphics Part Two : 1986 - 1987
Continued from part one. That Telecomsoft Deal On the strength of the commercial success of Nodes of Yesod and Robin of the Wood, Odin Managing Director Paul McKenna had convinced British Telecom (in …
Nodes of Yesod for the ZX Spectrum Next
The ZX Spectrum Next in the flesh! How it started In May of 2017, I committed to deliver a remade version of Nodes of Yesod as part of a £620K stretch goal for the successful (the campaign raised …
Odin Computer Graphics Part One : 1985
“Why don’t you come over to the Odin office and see what we’re up to with this Nodes of Yesod game?” said Stoo Fotheringham. And so I did. Nodes of Yesod | | “Welcome to …
Infinite Blocky Runner: A Game in 256 Bytes!
Here’s my entry for a Z80 coding competition I entered just a few years ago, in 2016! The challenge was to come up with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum game in 256 bytes without using ROM routines, so the …
Q&A with Retrogamer Magazine on Manic Miner Amstrad CPC
Manic Miner Amstrad CPC - Title Screen A quick follow-up to my Software Projects post - in January 2021 Retrogamer Magazine published a brief Q&A I did with Graeme Mason about Manic Miner on the …
Software Projects : 1984
**SOFTWARE PROJECTS** The first games I developed were for a British computer system produced by the ubiquitous (if you’re British, anyway) Amstrad plc: the Amstrad CPC-464. The games were …
Interview with El Mundo Del Spectrum circa 2012
Nodes of Yesod on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum ca. 1985 This is an interview I did with El Mundo Del Spectrum (original link in the Spanish language) in 2012. The interview mostly discusses my early …
Heart of Yesod: A Game That Wasn't
Eldritch The Cat team circa 1990. Left to right, Dave Collins, Mark McCubbin, Stefan Walker, Marc Wilding, and Steve Wetherill. Photo courtesy of Marc Wilding. Back in 2015, Frank Gasking approached …
EA Air Hockey: Creating the In-Game Graphics
As noted in the earlier post on EA Air Hockey, all in-game graphics were created in 3DS Max as 3D models and then rendered into 2D images and sprites. This eased the creation of game graphics and …
EA Air Hockey: Designing a One-Button Mobile Game
Note: This article was originally published in two parts on Gamasutra (now Game Developer) in 2007 and may be found here. Though I have made various edits for clarity and grammar, I’ve …
The Making of Heartland for the Sinclair Spectrum
Note: this article expands upon material I provided for the RetroGamer #129 article on Heartland. In 1986, Odin Computer Graphics Ltd published the game “Heartland” for 8-bit platforms such as the …
About
Check stevewetherill.com for more! I started out as a game programmer on 8-bit systems like the Sinclair Spectrum in the early 80’s. Since then I’ve worked on a wide range of systems in technical and …