It’s a huge industry these days, but the games industry has featured its fair share of characters – nutters, geniuses, eccentrics and the like – in the past. In the spirit of enlightenment, we thought we’d start a semi-regular feature in which we introduce you to some of the industry’s most enduring legends. First up, take a bow, Matthew Smith.
To describe Matthew Smith as a games industry legend is perhaps wrong – he’s more of a myth. In fact, he’s the industry’s equivalent of Syd Barrett: a wunderkind who went off the rails spectacularly. Although, unlike Barrett, he’s still alive.
By the time he was 20, Smith had created what were then hailed as two of the best games ever: Manic Miner (1983) and Jet Set Willy (1984). Anarchic, hilarious platform-style games for the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, they were vastly successful. Smith, naturally, was under vast amounts of pressure to follow them up, but the third “Miner Willy” game, generally touted as Willy Meets the Taxman, never saw the light of day – and Smith self-destructed and disappeared.
Already a somewhat eccentric character – one noted hobby which often saw him in trouble with police was building home-made motorbikes – Smith reportedly came off the rails. Unable to concentrate, as a result, he drifted off the development scene and disappeared, prompting all manner of deliciously exotic rumours. Such as changing his name by deed-poll to Matthew From-Earth.
Reports surfaced that he moved to a commune in Leiden, Holland – a hippyish sort of place which suited his communist, anti-establishment ideals – and was spending his life fixing bicycles. Adding to the Matthew Smith legend, the commune burned down, although there’s no suggestion that that was anything to do with him. It appears that he had already moved back to the UK when that happened.
Smith, it seems, is back in the UK now, although he clearly doesn’t want to be found. Reputedly, he’s still programming and has his head together once more – we’d love to see some new output from the man in these next-gen days, although the now-corporate games industry is a far cry from the Gold Rush-like cottage industry of the mid-80s. But the abundance of versions of Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy available for modern computers demonstrates those games’ enduring appeal. Come back Matthew: the games industry needs all the mavericks it can get.
Excellent!
The guy is a legend in his own time. I wore out the Q,P and space buttons on my spectrum playing JSW.
As an aside, does anyone remember Crash magazine for the spectrum? I remembering it having some excellent artwork and a great comic strip which I think was called The Terminal man by a guy I think was called Oly Frey, I could be wrong though. It seems like an age ago now.
It’s amazing how far thing have come. I feel sorry for my kids when they just shrug thier shoulders when I get excited about the waterfalls in Heavenly Sword or the reflections off the helmets in Formula 1. Maybe I’m just an old git who remembers the first bit of multi channel music on a spectrum game (which I think was marble madness?) but they don’t appreciate how far we’ve come in such a short space of time!
Comment by Dan (BBRodriguez) — Sep 28, 2007 @ 12:19 pm
48k rubbber key ftw!
here, re-live it:
http://www.crashonline.org.uk/
Comment by d33p — Sep 28, 2007 @ 12:47 pm
Here is an idea worthy of the Smithmeister himself, it makes for a very interesting idea form Pig Face on the uk PS3 forum.
Would anyone be interested in forming a gamer`s union?
We could vote on issues and action eg. boycotting a microtransaction if the majority of members considered it bad value or if they felt it had been purposely held back from the original game.
It would give us an official voice and unified courses of action to take when things were not going our way.
We could have delegates who meet up with sony execs and developers to put forward the members concerns and ideas.
I think we should all go for it.
Comment by Ton Capone — Sep 28, 2007 @ 12:58 pm
brilliant story, love it. more stories like this would be good. and yeah, crash mag!! awesome
Comment by Lee Swain — Sep 28, 2007 @ 1:39 pm
@ d33p,
Thanks for the link!!!!
I’ve come over all unecessary!
Cheers mate.
Comment by Dan (BBRodriguez) — Sep 28, 2007 @ 1:53 pm
You’ve got me thinking about Jeff Minter now and Attack Of The Mutant Camels!
Comment by Lee Richards — Sep 28, 2007 @ 3:07 pm
@ Lee - Jeff Minter is a genius!
Comment by Three Speech — Sep 28, 2007 @ 3:23 pm
Yep I met Jeff Minter at Waterloo Station told him I had copies of all his games cos I was a skint kid, shorty after that he started knocking stuff out really cheap - what a hero.
Also you all must see this:
http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/
Comment by MrJimmy — Sep 28, 2007 @ 4:41 pm
Very nice read. I look forward to the next one.
Comment by Wisdom Wanderer — Sep 28, 2007 @ 7:46 pm
Manic Miner would be a great title for PSN- it was my ever first game…ahhhhhh memories.trying to do each level perfectly-the start of a lifetimes OCD..I used to get Crash and later Zzap 64.I remember counting down the days til it came out and how destroyed i was if it was ever late.. The younguns dont know they’re born these days with all their HD online interweb gubbins
Wherever he is I just hope Matthew Smith knows how much entertainment and fun he gave to people through his game and how much of a legend he is. Manic miner started a lifelong obsession with me that im glad ive got- feel sorry for people with no obsessive interests to take their minds of lifes cruel realities of impending and ever encroaching slide into poor health and then the inevitability of death.
Comment by s-goat — Sep 30, 2007 @ 9:54 am
nice one mr jimmy and lads..made me smile about my mispent youth (and made me remember about all of the bloody hours i spent,typing a a 5 page program into my vic20/speccy to have one sodding typo bugger the lot!) ah well…kids dont know theyre born
Comment by seedaripper1973 — Sep 30, 2007 @ 6:52 pm
@ seedaripper - happened to me on my zx81. i spent hours typing on that flipping keypad to try and make a monopoly game, pressed enter finally and nothing happened. Gutted.
Comment by Three Speech — Oct 1, 2007 @ 11:08 am
@ seedaripper
It was even worse when you’d ever so carefully types hours of Machine code on the ZX81 ( 0 rem &^£%£$%”^” etc ) only to forget to save before attempting to run, D’oh !
Mind you, it was even more amazing when it actually did work first time
Comment by Neil — Oct 1, 2007 @ 1:47 pm
[[happy memories of tape to tape copying]]
10 print; PS3 FTW
20 goto 10
RUN
JetPac was my favorite, and Ant Attack.
Comment by mobiletone — Oct 1, 2007 @ 6:34 pm
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