Steve Wetherill: Video Game Developer

Serialized Memoir: Chapter 4, The Zoo

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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!

A New Home

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 a paid Substack subscriber, drop a comment there.

Down t'Pit

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 Britain had closed.

I’ve spent forty years in the games industry, and the summer of ‘82 had nothing to do with any of it. Or almost nothing.

The Locked Room

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 and I. Because of that administrative quota, the class was summarily canceled.

From Before the Industry to the First Decade

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 missteps, and the slow accumulation of experience that actually defines a career.

Westwood Studios Part 1 : 1993 : A Barnsley lad in Las Vegas

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Electronic Arts UK : 1992 - 1993

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Eldritch The Cat Mk III : 1990 - 1991

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Eldritch The Cat Mk II : 1989 - 1990

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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 things we tried, but here goes with an accounting of a few more games that weren’t.

Nodes of Yesod : ZX Spectrum Next : Update #4

Wed, 25 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 there’s a big change of plans!

Wide Ranging Interview with the Retro Hour Podcast

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 Wilding and Stoo Fotheringham were teamed up to build the “Megatree” game, which was supposed to be Matthew’s next thing. So those guys were actually working out of the house that was owned by Software Projects that I was living in, so I would sort of pass them in the morning as I left to commute to the office, because I was working out of the Software Projects office, and then I would see them in the evenings when I got back.”

Eldritch The Cat Bio a la Projectyle Poster

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 toil. Wet did they sweat. Games by the score did they transcribe. Smashes by the Crash did they endure. Sizzles by the Zap did they survive. Nodes of Yesod, Robin of Woods, Heartland, Hypaball, et al, did they do. And thus, in the splendour of the Hall of the Goddess Beatrice, who sometimes goes by the name Busby, did mighty Odin come to grief. And so, crosswise into the wilderness, the vast ocean of nothingness where no armies move, were the two prodigals cast. Evil she-devils did they encounter, sent forth by the offspring of Hew, and that mischievous sprite Denton had designs on their souls. Many moons later, our two heroes chanced upon an unearthly feline being, an Eldritch Cat, deserted and abandoned by its owner, the wicked beast from the garden of England. The three, the three who are one, as friends would say, became one, and set sail for the Westward lands in a magical ship of the air, but they had to come back to finish Projectyle. And to this day it is said that in the stillness of the night, when the moon is full in the sky, when there is just one more match to play, that if one listens very carefully, one can almost hear the distant howling of an Unearthly Feline.

Eldritch The Cat Mk I : 1988 - 1989

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 Denton Designs that he and I decided to set out together and form the Eldritch The Cat dev studio. Initially, we worked out of my house on Crompton Drive in Croxteth Park, Liverpool 12, with graphics work contracted out. Marc brought Astaroth in under the Eldritch umbrella, and the next task was to find a project for me.

Projectyle Music

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 how it worked, introduced an incredible amount of distortion into the music, and the music was composed with this in mind – it was “balanced high”, meaning that for best results you had to crank the volume in order to hear everything. As I’ve always been a fan of distortion, this suited me fine.

Nodes of Yesod : ZX Spectrum Next : Update #3

Fri, 11 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 there. Let’s get spiraling!

Here’s a snapshot of Astro Charlie captured on the CSpect ZX Spectrum Next emulator. This image is composed of 6 x 16x16 hardware sprites (Astro Charlie needs 6 sprites because his animations are over 32 pixels tall and up to 32 pixels wide, needing 2 x 3 hardware sprites.

Denton Designs : 1988

Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

“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 was supposed to be completed in time for a Christmas 1987 release, but here we were in January 1988, and it wasn’t finished. Not quite. It needed to be finished. For one thing, I needed the final payment from Telecomsoft. I was running on fumes, financially. For another, I had, with Colin Grunes, started work at Denton Designs in January and was working double time trying to wrap Crosswize at night and be present for my new job at Denton’s during the day.

Firebird : 1987

Mon, 28 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 fine a point on it, I was skint. I did have an idea for a follow-up to Sidewize however, and I didn’t feel inclined to go into a full-time employed position again. There were a couple of local options. Gary Bracey @ Ocean pitched Colin and me on the Platoon movie license, but we declined because they wanted us to move to Manchester. I didn’t drive, commuting was out of the question, we couldn’t consider this option on the terms offered. We talked to Elite in Birmingham, who immediately offered us a deal when they saw the Sidewize demo, but like Ocean, they wanted to do licensed titles, and that didn’t appeal at the time (the schedules for licensed titles tend to have zero leeway, which is bad enough if you’re not being paid on milestones).

Chasing the raster on the ZX Spectrum in Sidewize

Mon, 21 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 mentioned that he had hacked an existing Spectrum emulator to do this, without going into specifics. This got me thinking about how I might do that for the “raster-chasing” games I’ve developed, specifically Sidewize and Crosswize.

Nodes of Yesod : ZX Spectrum Next : Update #2

Fri, 18 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 winner is option A at 55.5% of the vote, with option C a strong runner-up at 33.9%. In fact, there was a fair bit of feedback in the discussion thread where people said they liked option C, but perhaps it could be ramped up a little, adding some subtle shading, so that it wasn’t the full-blown “Amiga-esque” style shown in option A, but something more retro and perhaps 8-bit looking.

Nodes of Yesod : ZX Spectrum Next : Update #1

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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. Such as having some data in a useful format.

Sidewize Scrolling Graphics Breakdown

Sun, 13 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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, with a Speccy connected to the typical RF connector on the TV, this was truly a joy to behold!

Odin Computer Graphics Part Two : 1986 - 1987

Wed, 09 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 the shape of Telecomsoft, aka Firebird - I’ve used the names interchangeably in this post) to pay us a (middle, UK pounds) six-figure fee in return for 10 games (or equivalents, with ports counting as half a game), which were to be delivered over the space of 1 year. It was a lucrative deal for us, but very aggressive obviously. That’s about all there is to say about this deal right now, but it was to flavor just about everything Odin did from this point out.

Nodes of Yesod for the ZX Spectrum Next

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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:

How it’s going

Let’s talk about that.

In between May 2017 and the date of this post I have made not one but two major job changes, entailing moving between cities hundreds of miles apart. Twice. Perhaps understandably, the side-project of creating a remake of Nodes took second place to these new IRL priorities. Yeah, excuses. Pretty good ones though, as these things go.

Odin Computer Graphics Part One : 1985

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

“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 Nodes of Yesod, from the Odin Computer Graphics team!”

As I read that, I hear the Nodes of Yesod music (by Fred Gray) start to play in my head!

When I started at Odin, the game Nodes of Yesod was already underway, plenty of the cool graphics (Astro Charlie, etc) had been created, and there was a playable demo (on Spectrum, possibly on C64) already. I have an indelible memory of that somersault animation on that bright blue moon’s surface.

Infinite Blocky Runner: A Game in 256 Bytes!

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 (256 colors):

Q&A with Retrogamer Magazine on Manic Miner Amstrad CPC

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 Manic Miner?

Steve: I was nominally working on Manic Miner from the day I was hired; however, Software Projects couldn’t figure out which platform. We looked at the Tatung Einstein, the Spectravideo, and MSX, but for whatever reason, those did not get off the ground. When the Amstrad CPC came out, tools and documentation were readily available (I spent hours poring over the Amstrad technical docs) and I was finally able, along with partner in crime Derrick, to get started.

Software Projects : 1984

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Updated and expanded: This period is covered in greater depth in my Substack memoir — Chapter 4: The Zoo.

**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 “Manic Miner” and “Jet Set Willy”, both “ports” from the original Sinclair Spectrum versions.

I had spent the second part of 1983 without gainful employment after discontinuing my Electronics & Electrical Engineering studies at Manchester University after the second year. I was putting the Z80 programming I’d learned at college to use in an attempt to create machine language games on the Spectrum. I had obtained the Spectrum initially to pursue my interests in electronic music (it was easy to cobble various hardware bits onto the Spectrum expansion port). Still, the availability of games for the system was too tempting, and inevitably, I ended up spending more time playing games, disassembling games, etc. I burned many, many midnight hours poking away at the “dead flesh” keyboard on the Spectrum, loading the OCP assembler and source code from cassette tape, watching it all die horribly in a spectacular sequence of rainbow attributes, black screen, white screen,

Interview with El Mundo Del Spectrum circa 2012

Fri, 21 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 : Thanks for your time. It’s a pleasure to have the opportunity to interview you.

Heart of Yesod: A Game That Wasn't

Mon, 17 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 meta post then, a making-of-the-not-making-of, as I share with you Frank’s Q&A that was used in his preparation for the piece in his book. I’ve also included a transcription of the original pitch document that accompanied the tech demo that I created for Heart of Yesod, along with scans (courtesy of Colin Grunes) of the dot-matrix printed originals.

EA Air Hockey: Creating the In-Game Graphics

Sat, 15 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 was able to generate objects that were apparently moving in 3D space with the correct perspective.

EA Air Hockey: Designing a One-Button Mobile Game

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 such, it uses the mobile development vernacular of the period (pre-iPhone remember) such as BREW, J2ME, and so on. Yes, there were mobile games before the iPhone! For about 6 years before the iPhone App Store opened in July 2008 my company, Uztek Games was doing game development for mobile devices, fragmented and awful how they (some of them) may. There were basically no (usable) touch screen phones during this period, hence the focus on a one-button game design. Eurogamer reviewed the game at 8/10, IGN reviewed the game at a clearly finely grained 7.6/10.

About

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 good measure. I have also designed and produced a number of games over the years. The list below is an abbreviated softography. On these titles, I was involved variously as technical director, programmer, designer, producer, and in some cases all of the above:

About

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Check stevewetherill.com for more!

The Making of Heartland for the Sinclair Spectrum

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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 gameplay design. Keith Robinson coded the Commodore 64 version.

Initial Development