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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
“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 …
A hosiery factory, an earthquake, and the interview that started it all. How a mailed-off ZX Spectrum demo and a Chinese lunch in Liverpool became my first games-industry job at Software Projects in …
Shoveling slag, eating pig lips, and a theft. Summer 1982 spent underground at a National Coal Board pit, then a year at university in Manchester falling apart: a dropout with no plan. Read Chapter …
A computer no one could touch, a lift that never stopped, and the Z80 chip. A school computer locked behind a forbidden door (the RML 380Z), a Paternoster lift, and the Z80 chip that would seed a …
Sheffield steel, Barnsley coal, and a very unstable compound. A working-class Yorkshire boyhood on Sheffield and Barnsley council estates, ending with a school chemistry-lab explosion and 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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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. …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …