Steve Wetherill

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 . He would kindly host us in his apartment for the duration of our visit. While the main purpose of our trip was to visit Mark, see Las Vegas, and attend Winter CES, I also had a tentative interview for an engineering leadership role at Westwood Studios. Although this wasn’t the primary reason for our visit, I was both excited and nervous about the opportunity. By the time we had collected our bags in McCarran (now Harry Reid) airport it was already dark, past 10:00PM. Mark collected us at the airport in his Chrysler LeBaron and suggested, “Let’s go to Walmart and get some bedding,” and so we did ...

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 internal software development; the appropriate title would follow, but for now, EA had a vacancy for a senior programmer, so a senior programmer I was. The internal development team was small, just myself, Stefan Walker (we meet again!), who was working on LHX Amiga, and Gary Roberts, who was working on the Amiga Port of John Madden Football.  Since I was a senior programmer, I had to do some senior-programmering, and it was determined that the bestest senior-programmering I could do would be a Sega Genesis port of the Amiga game, "Risky Woods." I was offered the opportunity to work on the FLOPS game, but I could...

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, close to Liverpool's city center. The renovated Brunswick Dock, further away from the city center, was divided into affordable office space. Mark's office was tiny and inexpensive, and it got us thinking: there are other, larger offices in the Brunswick complex; perhaps we could join forces and share a larger office space? And so it came to be that Eldritch The Cat moved out of my house to a new office, a windowless room in an otherwise decent building that was once an ancillary part of Brunswick Dock: Century Building Section 5, Brunswick Business Park, Tower Street, Brunswick Dock, Liverpool 3. And Then ...