In February 1990 CRASH put a platform game called Egghead on its covertape and asked who its author thought he was. The answer was an 18-year-old, Jonathan Cauldwell, who had been writing and selling his own Spectrum games since 1987 under the name Graphix Wizards. He duplicated the tapes himself, designed and photocopied the inlays, and posted copies to clubs and fanzines for review. “It’s hard work,” he told the magazine, “but it’s been great fun so far!” He hoped for a career in software. He kept writing Spectrum games long after the magazines had gone, and eighteen years after Egghead he released the tool that hundreds of other people have since used to write theirs.
Fast facts
- Machine: ZX Spectrum, and later the Amstrad CPC and other 8-bit computers.
- First label: Graphix Wizards, his own, from 1987.
- Best-known games: the Egghead series, beginning with Egghead on CRASH’s covertape in 1990.
- Covertape games: for CRASH, Your Sinclair and, by his own account, Sinclair User.
- Tools: Platform Game Designer (2005) and Arcade Game Designer (2008).
The covertape years
CRASH had been asking for games like his. Its December 1989 issue told readers: “If you’ve written a game you think is completely wizzo why not share it with the Speccy world??” If a game “passes the reviewers’ test”, the magazine promised, “we’ll put it on the Power Tape so thousands can enjoy it!” Egghead followed two months later, a 40-screen platform game “in a style not unlike Manic Miner”, as Cauldwell later described it. CRASH thought he had “started the same way the Darlings did before CodeMasters”, a reference to the Darling brothers, who had founded Codemasters.
The sequel came at Christmas. “It’s ten months since the first Egghead game appeared on the Powertape label,” CRASH wrote in December 1990, “and due to overwhelming popular demand, programmer Jonathan Cauldwell has brought the little fella back to life in a smashing game that’s bigger, better and harder than the original.”
Your Sinclair took up his games too. In November 1992 its covertape carried Haunted House, “just about the most spankily-programmed reader game we’ve seen for quite a while”, and the magazine reported that Cauldwell had “had his rather large talents recognised by the industry” and was writing games for a company called Beyond Belief. Through 1993 Your Sinclair ran more of his games, Pipework in July and Megablast in August, introducing him as “a programmer whose name you’ll recognise”. By September it noted that he “recklessly insists on writing new games for the Speccy at a rate of knots”.
After the magazines
Cauldwell did not stop when the magazines did. “After the final Spectrum magazine closed down in the summer of 1993 I continued to write games for the machine,” he told Retro Gamer in 2005. Early in 2003 Simon Ullyatt asked on the World of Spectrum forums for programmers to supply a new publisher of 8-bit games, Cronosoft. Cauldwell had just finished Egghead in Space, the third game in the series, and it became Cronosoft’s first release. Cronosoft published more of his games on tape at budget prices, among them the R-Type-style shooter More Tea, Vicar?, Gloop! and Fun Park, a 16K game inspired by Theme Park that was being ported to the Amstrad CPC in 2004. Others, such as Jurbomania, a Rally-X-style driving game that ran even on a 16K Spectrum, he put up for download on his own website. Retro Gamer called him “probably the best-known active home-brew programmer currently around” and wrote that he “deserves a medal, for services to the Spectrum scene”. Citing the World of Spectrum archive, he said in 2005 that only the Shaw brothers had written more Spectrum games.
Game designers
In mid-2005 Cauldwell released Platform Game Designer, in two versions: one for games of flip-screen rooms like Jet Set Willy, the other for single-screen games like Manic Miner. Retro Gamer called it his most successful recent product.
Arcade Game Designer, first released in 2008, went further. It lets an author who has never written Z80 assembly build an arcade game from sprites, scenery blocks and screens, with short scripts for what everything does, and turns the result into a game that runs on a real Spectrum. Cauldwell gives it away and takes no royalties on the games made with it. In 2017 the free magazine ZX Spectrum Gamer called it “the superb Arcade Game Designer by Jonathan Cauldwell” and said it “has been the glue behind many a recent Spectrum homebrew titles”, reporting that a version for the ZX Spectrum Next was in development. The magazine’s own cover game in 2018, Aeon, was “made mostly in Jonathan Cauldwell’s Arcade Game Designer”. Its Windows successor, the Multi-Platform Arcade Game Designer, builds games for the Spectrum, the Amstrad CPC, the MSX, the BBC Micro and other machines. The Spectrum Computing database credits AGD with more than 400 games.
Sources
- CRASH issue 71, December 1989: the “CRASH Talent Token” invitation to send in games for the Power Tape.
- CRASH issue 73, February 1990: Egghead on the Power Tape, with a profile of Cauldwell (Graphix Wizards since 1987, aged 18, the Darlings comparison).
- CRASH issue 82, November 1990: Egghead 2 announced for the Christmas issue. Issue 83, December 1990: Egghead 2 on the covertape (“ten months since the first Egghead game”).
- Your Sinclair issue 83, November 1992: Haunted House on the covertape, and Cauldwell’s work for Beyond Belief. Issue 91, July 1993: Pipework. Issue 92, August 1993: Megablast. Issue 93, September 1993: Squamble, Shove Off and a compilation of his games.
- Retro Gamer issue 7, 2004: More Tea, Vicar? from Cronosoft. Issue 9, 2004: Fun Park for the CPC. Issue 14, 2005: Platform Game Designer announced (two versions, £4.99 each). Issue 17, 2005: review of a Cronosoft game (“deserves a medal”). Issue 19, 2005, p. 100: profile and interview (Egghead in 1989, the three magazine covertapes, the summer of 1993, Cronosoft and Egghead in Space, Platform Game Designer, the Shaw brothers; Jurbomania on his website). Issue 20, 2005: Gloop! review.
- ZX Spectrum Gamer issue 4, May 2017: “What Dreams May Come” (AGD as “the glue”, the Next version). Issue 5, April 2018: Aeon.
- Jonathan Cauldwell, “Arcade Game Designer” and “Multi-Platform Arcade Game Designer”, itch.io download pages (web, secondary): free, no royalties, target machines. https://jonathan-cauldwell.itch.io/arcade-game-designer and https://jonathan-cauldwell.itch.io/multi-platform-arcade-game-designer
- Spectrum Computing, “Arcade Game Designer” (database, secondary): released 2008, games made with AGD. https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/20176/ZX-Spectrum/Arcade_Game_Designer