Tipped off by a friend on Instagram (thanks Graham @gameygamer !) I trundled off to www.bizzley.com to see what the fuss was about. And what a treat I found. Bob Pape has written a book about converting the seminal scrolling shooter R-Type to the ZX Spectrum and if that wasn’t good enough, it is available for free download. What are you waiting for? Go and have a read of this humorous and informative account of life in the British software industry back in 1988.
From the site:
” 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. “