"It's behind you!" The making of a computer game (jaren 80)

[CapTVK]

Prachtig verhaal (in boekvorm) geschreven door Bob Pape over het maken van de ZX-spectrum versie van "R-type". Het wordt af en toe wat technisch maar je krijgt ook inzicht in de handel en wandel van de games software industrie (Activision, of Mediagenic zoals ze zich toen af en gingen noemen).
De focus ligt op de ZX spectrum maar Commodore bezitters zullen ook een hoop geschiedenis herkennen. Zoals wat er met C64 versie van R-type (de programmeurs werden in een kantoor vastgezet om de C64 versie af te krijgen) en wat er met het spel "Katakis" (grotendeels een kloon van R-type) van Rainbow Arts gebeurde.

Je kan het verhaal (PDF) plus ander materiaal gratis downloaden van zijn site.

In April 1982 Clive Sinclair launched the follow up to his successful ZX81 home computer, The ZX Spectrum. In the ten years that followed over nine thousand commercial games were written for this iconic machine. This is the story of one of them.


Welcome to a site that's all about a book what-I-wrote called IT'S BEHIND YOU, which I'm sorry to say has absolutely nothing to do with theatres and pantomimes but everything to do with old computer games, or rather one in particular. Back in the 1980's and 90's I was what was used to be called a bedroom-coder and I made a living writing computer games for some of the simple home computers around at the time on behalf of established software companies in a self-employed or freelance capacity. IT'S BEHIND YOU is specifically about a game called R-Type I wrote back in 1988 for the then Sir-less Clive Sinclair's ZX Spectrum home computer when I was just starting out in the business and was employed (I use the term loosely) by a company called Catalyst Coders.

http://bizzley.com/