@haitchfive it’s a good question. Stream of consciousness follows. It was a hope born of possibilities. I’d found something I truly believed I could participate in professionally. It was truly an exciting time in the world of home computing and video games. I’d catch the red Yorkshire Traction double-decker bus into town, 8 pence in 1983 money, and go to WH Smith (and to a lesser extent Boots) with a feeling of palpable excitement in anticipation of what may present itself on the shelves (no internet of course). And all the while I was working into the wee small hours each night, with the infinite energy of youth, trying to build something of my own. I’ve written about reverse engineering the games of the day by disassembly, but there was also a lot of visual “disassembly” happening too. Lunar Jetman scrolls smoothly because it’s not really scrolling much at all. A lot of observation about the tricks needed to pull off impressive graphics. By the time I was applying to companies with my own demo, I already had interrupt driven sprite routines and smooth scrolling platforms (à la platform games) on the Speccy. I’ve written before that several of the sprites in the demo I’d sent to Software Projects made it into Jet Set Willy 2. And I suppose for me it was even more important that I pulled myself up by the bootstraps and course correct after dropping out of university, so that inspired some “hope” too.