I wish I had a 'programmer pad' when I was writing my 6502 and Z80 assembly language code. Instead I used sheets of ruled A4 paper kept neatly in a binder.

3 years ago, just before the UK went into lock-down, I was able to meet up with my old school friend, Martin Galway. We had many years of events to catch-up on, but spent most of it back in the 1980s. Atomic Protector for the BBC Micro was our first published game from 1983. Later we worked together on Galaforce and Crazee Rider, also for the Beeb/Electron.

A huge thanks to former Software Creations colleague Lorraine Starr for letting me post the personalised business card she was given by Shigeru Miyamoto in 1997. She received this card at the Nintendo Games Show in Japan when working on Mario Artist Paint Studio for the N64 DD.

The original Atari VCS/2600 joystick. A classic device. The plastic ring inside was prone to snap when a bit too much force was used!

I developed NES Silver Surfer on a PC using Software Creations' in-house IDE known as PC-ED - written by Ste Ruddy. It was a DOS application that featured a text editor and VERY basic debugger/monitor. Multiple 6502 source files were held in 64KByte banks. The target NES development card was plugged into the console and was connected to the PC via a bi-directional parallel link. This allowed us to assemble and download the game code/data to the target in one simple step - no need to program any EPROMs. A program ROM of about 32Kbytes could be assembled and transfered to the target within 60 seconds.

My 'A' level Computer Studies school book from 1982/3. We were taught 6502 machine code and how to hand-assemble our own code - for a Commodore PET. Mr Davidson was a great teacher. Fun times!