Recent content on Steve Wetherill: Video Game Developer
Founding Eldritch The Cat, a broke summer in Spain, and a first deal with Electronic Arts How I co-founded the studio Eldritch The Cat and signed with Electronic Arts in 1988 to build Projectyle (working title Scrollerball) for the Atari ST and Amiga. Read Chapter 13: The Computer, the Costa Brava, and the Contract over on Substack. Free to read, or support my writing with a paid subscription if…
A reckoning in London, too many projects at once, and the company born from the wreckage I join Liverpool studio Denton Designs, finish Crosswize, build Foxx Fights Back on the ZX Spectrum, and found Eldritch the Cat. Read Chapter 12: The Confrontation and the Cat over on Substack. Free to read, or support my writing with a paid subscription if you like it!
The contract, the VIC-20, and the getaway car. Broke after Odin folds, I sign with Firebird to build Crosswize, the ZX Spectrum sequel to Sidewize, and fly to MicroProse in Baltimore. Read Chapter 11: Sometimes The Magic Works over on Substack. Free to read, or support my writing with a paid subscription if you like it!
Chasing the raster, glimpsing the future, and a critical disagreement. As Odin collapses, I finish the 50fps Spectrum shooter Sidewize unpaid, glimpse the future in the Amiga, and shop the studio to Ocean. Read Chapter 10: The Future That Never Was over on Substack. Free to read, or support my writing with a paid subscription if you like it!
Ten games in twelve months, Bertie Big Boy, and the Forbidden Amigas. Odin signs a six-figure Firebird deal, ten games in twelve months, we ship Heartland to a Crash Smash, and I meet the Amiga for the first time. Read Chapter 9: The Firebird Factory over on Substack. Free to read, or support my writing with a paid subscription if you like it!
A reskin, some side quests, and the second album problem. At Odin we reskin Nodes of Yesod into Arc of Yesod, port it to the doomed Elan Enterprise, and ship Robin of the Wood to a 94% Crash Smash on the Spectrum. Read Chapter 8: The Clone, The Flan, and The Forest over on Substack. Free to read, or support my writing with a paid subscription if you like it!
A Crash Smash, business trousers, and a dubious charge. I join Odin Computer Graphics in 1985, finish the Crash Smash hit Nodes of Yesod on the ZX Spectrum, and sleep under desks. Read Chapter 7: The Astronaut and the Sleeping Bag over on Substack. Free to read, or support my writing with a paid subscription if you like it!
In trouble with the law for stealing my own trousers Locked out of my own house, I break back in with a van and my boss, and the police turn up for entirely the wrong crime. Read Chapter 6: The Holt Road Heist over on Substack. Free to read, or support my writing with a paid subscription if you like it!
“The cavemen didn’t need paintbrushes.” Tommy Barton, 1984 Life in the Zoo at Software Projects in 1984: a menagerie of donated computers, a Tatung Einstein boot-disk disaster, and learning on the job while trying not to be found out. Read Chapter 5: The Caveman and the Pirate Ship over on Substack. Free to read, or support my writing with a paid subscription if you like it!

 Coding in a hosiery factory, an earthquake, and the interview that landed me my dream job at Software Projects, creators of Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy. 
 Read Chapter 4: The Zoo over on Substack. Free to read, or support my writing with a paid subscription if you like it!

 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 memoir covering forty years in the games industry. 
 The posts and images are all here, but if you spot anything broken, I’d love to hear about it. Find me on Mastodon , or if you’re…

 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 bright yellow hard hat in a sea of white. 
 It was a world already disappearing, though none of us knew it yet. Two years later, the miners’ strikes would begin. By 2015, every pit in…

 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 that hurdle, but the school then required at least five students for the course to run. Out of a year of around 120 kids, including twenty-odd in the top maths set, only two signed up: Alan Dolby…

 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 output: the games, the companies, the platforms, the tools. Useful, perhaps, but incomplete. Over time, my attention shifted toward the personal side: the uncertainty, the improvisation, the…

 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 visiting my former business partner from Eldritch The Cat Ltd , Mark McCubbin. Mark had moved to Las Vegas earlier that year to work at Westwood Studios on games like Hand of Fate and Lands of Lore .…

 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 (near Slough), where I ultimately started in January 1992 as “Senior Programmer,” reporting to Director of Development Joss Ellis. 
 I was to be responsible for all…
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 himself an office in the Brunswick Docks, part of Liverpool’s docklands. The docklands saw new life following the significant renovations undertaken in the Albert Dock,…
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 fill Marc’s plate after Astaroth was completed. We tried several things, none of which saw the light of day or exist in any shape or form today. It is difficult to recall the exact order of the…
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 discussed details of my progress in that direction in previous posts, tool selection, and various other considerations. 
 I have to share with you that I’ve had a rethink and…

 
 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 examples of topics covered: 
 On Matthew Smith and the “Megatree” game 
 “Matthew also, toward the end of my time at Software Projects, he and Marc…
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 wine, and they did partake of more wine, and they did partake of the curry. And lo, the great god Thor did appear, luring the young Innocents into the house of the omnipotent Odin. Long did they…

 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 successfully pitched Hewson Consultants with an original game of his design called Astaroth for the 16-bit platforms. It was while Marc was completing Astaroth and after I had left…
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 player (which tricked the AY sound chip in the ST into playing back 4 channel PCM audio by setting the volume registers very fast in order to generate a waveform). The Quartet player, by virtue of…
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 previous posts, I have mentioned the sprite exporter tool that I’m working on and that once I had “something on-screen”, progress would ‘spiral out’ from…
Expanded and superseded by Chapter 12: The Confrontation and the Cat on my Substack memoir.
Expanded and superseded by Chapter 11: Sometimes the Magic Works on my Substack memoir.
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 in!] 
 Twitter user Ville Krumlinde mentioned in a Twitter comment that he had captured the screen draw update sequence for a number of Spectrum games and recorded the updates to video. He…
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 images, and the poll results, can be seen below: 
 
 Which style do you prefer? 
 — Steve Wetherill (@stevewetherill) February 15, 2022 
 
 With 384(!) votes in total, the clear poll…

 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 on (or more accurately, toward) the game. I am in that preparation phase where I think I have a handle on how to do things, but can’t do those things until the other things are done.…
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. Sidewize actually does run at 50 frames per second with zero flicker, on real hardware (issue 2 Spectrums, at least). YMMV on emulators, since this game is running really close to the metal! Back in 1987,…
Expanded and continued in my Substack memoir, beginning with Chapter 7: The Astronaut and the Sleeping Bag.

 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 £723,390 in total!) first ZX Spectrum Next Kickstarter campaign, something Victor Trucco (originator of both the ZX Spectrum Next design and the TBBlue predecessor) tweeted about: 
…
Expanded and continued in my Substack memoir, beginning with Chapter 7: The Astronaut and the Sleeping Bag.

 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 entire game is self-contained - input handling, rendering, data, code, everything. For reference, 256 bytes is about the size of this ray gun sprite, which is 16x16 pixels at 1 byte per pixel…

 
 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 Amstrad CPC. The Q&A, reproduced below, largely correlates with my previous post and mentions a couple of specific details not covered there. 
 Retrogamer: How did you come to work on…
Expanded and superseded by Chapter 4: The Zoo on my Substack memoir.

 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 Sinclair Spectrum career and goes into my then-current (circa 2012!) work toward the end of the article. 
 Interview with JMV at El Mundo Del Spectrum , May 21, 2012 
 EMS :…

 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 me about doing a piece on the “game that wasn’t”, Heart of Yesod , for what would become his excellent book, The Games That Weren’t . This is a somewhat…
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 animations for the myriad target devices. 
 
 The moving objects, which were basically the “puck” (seen here) and the “mallet” were also created in 3DS Max. In this way, I…
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 maintained the original two-part demarcation (albeit condensed into one post). EA Air Hockey (yes, that EA, Electronic Arts ) shipped in 2006, and as noted this article was originally published in 2007; as…
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 creative roles. Throughout my career, I have always done programming work, most recently in Go, PHP, JavaScript, ActionScript, C/C++, C#, Java, and Objective C, with bits of Python thrown in for…
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 creative roles. Throughout my career, I have always done programming work, most recently in Go, PHP, JavaScript, ActionScript, C/C++, C#, Java, and Objective C, with bits of Python thrown in for…

 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 Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64, and Amstrad CPC. Colin Grunes was responsible for art, level design & background lore. I coded the Spectrum and Amstrad CPC versions and contributed to…