A BBC conversion led to a wild ride in the 1990s, when Richard hopped between the publishers Domark, Psygnosis, Philips Media and MicroProse, working on games like Hard Drivin’, Microcosm and Mech Commander

Words by Lewis Packwood

How did you get into the games industry?

I think I was about 16, and there was a thing in Commodore User magazine: send in your high score on these Commodore 64 games and you can come and playtest this game up in London. So I sent in my high scores, and they called me up. It was Mega Apocalypse, which Simon Nicol had written, and Simon was there. So I started chatting with him, and when we got to the end of the day, I said if you need anyone to help out, give us a shout. And so I actually spent most of that summer down in Brighton playtesting Mega Apocalypse.

How did you end up converting Mega Apocalypse to the BBC Micro?

I’d been working at school with a guy called Russell Bradshaw, and I was like, “We could do a BBC Micro conversion of this. I’ll do the graphics and sound, and you code it.” So I called Simon, and he asked Dave Martin, who ran the publisher Martech. So at 16, I had my first contract.

Then you worked on Computer Maniac’s 1989 Diary, right?

I got a phone call from Dave Martin, and he said, “I’ve got a real problem. I need a BBC version of Computer Maniac’s Diary done in three weeks. Can you do it?” It was this crappy, interactive diary thing that they’d done for a book club. So I went down to WHSmith that afternoon, bought the Commodore 64 version, took it home, and went, “Yeah, I can do this, no problem.” Martech, who at the time were having financial issues, had done this deal with Domark, so John Kavanagh from Domark became my project manager. I knocked this thing out in three weeks by working through the night – I had a BBC downstairs and a BBC upstairs and was basically working on both, and Russell did some code for me as well. I got 1,000 quid for that. Although there’s a story around getting that 1,000 quid out of Dave Martin.

What happened?

After having not got my cheque from Martech – I’d been calling and calling, and getting no reply – I drove down to Hove where Martech was based. I sat in my car outside the office, and Dave came and got into his posh BMW, and I went and knocked on the window and said, “Hi Dave, I’m here for my 1,000 quid.” And he was like, “I can’t pay you right now, but it’s OK, Domark will pay.” So he got on his car phone, and he phoned Jeremy Bard at Domark, who was their CFO. So I drove from Brighton to London, and went to the Domark offices for the first time, and got my cheque. Then about a month later, John Kavanagh called me up and said, “Do you want to work for me?”

What did you do at Domark?

I went to work in Domark’s offices as a software assistant to John, which involved mastering games and playtesting, and doing customer returns, and answering the phones. People would send in their ideas or their demos for games, and I had to write replies to them. One of those games was an Amstrad CPC 464 cassette of a football management game that we absolutely fell in love with. So we wrote back to the kid who sent it in and said, “This is great, but it’s in BASIC. But keep it up and send us a new version.” So about six months later, we got an Atari ST disk and we were completely addicted to it – and that was Championship Manager.