Code Like It's 198x

Jonathan 'Joffa' Smith

Ocean's Spectrum programmer: Hyper Sports, Green Beret, Cobra, Batman: The Caped Crusader

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Jonathan Smith, known as Joffa, wrote Spectrum arcade conversions and film licences for Ocean and its Imagine label from 1984, among them Hyper Sports, Mikie, Green Beret and Cobra. In 1987 he left with Paul Finnegan to form Special FX in Liverpool, where he wrote Firefly and Batman: The Caped Crusader. By 1988 his fellow programmers ranked him among the best on the machine. He later worked on console games, and died in 2010, aged 43.

Jonathan Smith signed his first Spectrum game backwards. The title screen of Pud Pud, which Ocean published and CRASH reviewed in April 1985, credited “s’htimS nahtanoJ”, and the magazine’s reviewer, baffled by a game about a creature eating puddings in Weird World, decided that its author “must be a very abnormal person, or even a relative of Matthew Smith (no offence intended)!” Within two years the same programmer, known as Joffa, had written Hyper Sports, Mikie, Green Beret and Cobra, and CRASH’s readers had voted him the third-best programmer of 1986. By the end of 1988 other programmers were naming him as the one they most admired.

Fast facts

  • Known as: Joffa. Your Sinclair introduced him as “Jonathan ‘Joffa’ Smith”.
  • Born: 1967. Died: 26 June 2010, aged 43 (secondary sources).
  • At Ocean and Imagine: Pud Pud (reviewed April 1985), Daley Thompson’s Super-Test (1985, with P. Owens), Hyper Sports (1985), Mikie (1986), Green Beret (1986), Cobra (1986), Terra Cresta (1987).
  • At Special FX: Firefly (1988) and Batman: The Caped Crusader (1988); the studio’s first game was Hysteria (1987).
  • Readers’ vote: third in CRASH’s Best Programmer award for 1986, with 7%.

Arcade games for Ocean and Imagine

Most of Smith’s Ocean work was conversion: taking a coin-op or a sports game and fitting it into a 48K Spectrum. After Pud Pud he co-wrote Daley Thompson’s Super-Test, the follow-up to Ocean’s Decathlon, credited in CRASH to “P Owens and J Smith”. Then came a run of Konami arcade conversions on Ocean’s Imagine label. CRASH gave Hyper Sports 92% and a Smash, Mikie, about a schoolboy dodging his teachers to deliver a message to his girlfriend, 93%, and Green Beret 88%.

Cobra, the game of the Sylvester Stallone film, followed at the end of 1986. CRASH made it a Smash with 93%, and its reviewers singled out the scrolling (“very smooth and fast”) and the sound, “the best on the Spectrum for years”. CRASH’s readers voted it into their Hotline chart, where it spent three months at number 2 in 1987. The Cobra entry has the details. Terra Cresta, another Imagine coin-op conversion, took 81% in February 1987.

In the CRASH Readers’ Awards for 1986 he came third as Best Programmer, behind Stephen Crow and Keith Burkhill. Your Sinclair made him the castaway in its desert-island feature, asking for his eight favourite games: “programmer of such classics as Green Beret and Mikie. He’s currently furthering the cause of world peace by working on Cobra and Terra Cresta for Ocean.” His list began with Ultimate’s Lunar Jetman: “You want a short snappy answer? This is a short and snappy game.”

Special FX

In September 1987 Paul Finnegan left Ocean to found Special FX, a development studio in Liverpool, and Smith went with him. Special FX’s first game, Hysteria, was published by Software Projects and took 78% in CRASH. Then the studio signed with Ocean. CRASH reported the arrangement in March 1988:

Special FX has signed a deal with Ocean to handle the business side of its releases, and this month’s Smash Firefly is the first under that arrangement. It follows a fling with Software Projects, which published Special FX’s Hysteria. And the Liverpool-based development house’s boss Paul Finnegan and Firefly programmer Jonathan Smith are both ex-Ocean men.

Firefly took 92%. Smith’s next game was Batman: The Caped Crusader, with graphics by Charles Davies, which CRASH reviewed in January 1989 as “a finely-honed arcade adventure which is surely the best comic licence ever”, giving it 93%. Special FX also developed games by other programmers for Ocean, among them Jim Bagley and Charles Davies’ Gutz (1988).

The programmers’ programmer

In December 1988 CRASH‘s Phil King asked a group of Spectrum programmers to name the classic games and the programmers they most admired, and added up the answers. Smith came third in the programmers’ top five, behind the Ultimate team and Jon Ritman. Andrew Deakin put Cobra at the top of his games and named Smith as his most admired programmer: “he’s consistently produced playable games with excellent scrolling.” CRASH added that Smith was “currently working on the second Batman game”. Mike Lamb named him alongside William Wray and the Ultimate team, and another programmer chose him because “he’s so competent technically”.

Later work

Smith carried on after the 8-bit years, according to later secondary accounts. He wrote Recoil for the Atari ST (1989) and worked on Hudson Hawk (1991), then on console games with Software Creations, including Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge (1992), and with Warthog on Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003). He also produced the computer displays for the television comedy Red Dwarf on an Atari ST. He kept the habit Pud Pud had shown: he often wrote his name into his games as a mirror image, with “Jonathan” and “Smith” spelt in various ways.

Smith died on 26 June 2010, aged 43. Former Ocean colleagues and friends collected tributes to him on the World of Spectrum website.

Sources

  • CRASH issue 15, April 1985: Pud Pud review (Ocean, 48K, £6.95; the author’s name reversed on the title screen).
  • CRASH issue 22, November 1985: Daley Thompson’s Super-Test review (Ocean, £6.95, “Authors: P Owens and J Smith”).
  • CRASH issue 25, February 1986: Mikie review (Imagine, £7.95, “Author: Jonathan Smith”).
  • CRASH issue 35, December 1986, pp. 140–141: Cobra review (93%).
  • CRASH issue 37, February 1987: Terra Cresta review (Imagine, £7.95, “Author: Jonathan Smith”).
  • CRASH issue 38, March 1987: CRASH Readers’ Awards for 1986 (Best Programmer, third, 7%).
  • Your Sinclair issue 13, January 1987: desert-island feature with Jonathan “Joffa” Smith.
  • CRASH issue 45, October 1987: Hysteria review (Software Projects, “Authors: Special FX”).
  • Sinclair User issue 68, November 1987, p. 72: Hysteria review, programmers panel (“Jonathan Smith did the coding”; his softography, including Hyper-Sports and Green Beret for Ocean).
  • CRASH issue 48, January 1988: index of reviews (Hyper Sports 92%, Mikie 93%, Green Beret 88%, Terra Cresta 81%, Super-Test 76%, Hysteria 78%).
  • CRASH issue 50, March 1988: news, “Oceans of experience” (Special FX, Ocean and Software Projects); p. 12, Firefly review (Special FX, “Author: Jonathan Smith”, 92%).
  • CRASH issue 53, June 1988: Gutz review (Ocean/Special FX, Jim Bagley and Chas Davies).
  • CRASH issue 59, December 1988: Phil King’s poll of programmers (Top 5 Programmers; Andrew Deakin, Mike Lamb and others on Smith).
  • CRASH issue 60, January 1989: Batman: The Caped Crusader review (Ocean/Special FX, Jonathan Smith, graphics Charles Davies, 93%).
  • Chris Wilkins and Roger M. Kean, The History of Ocean Software (2013), pp. 34–35: Paul Finnegan and the founding of Special FX in September 1987, as cited in the Ocean Software entry.
  • Paul Hughes, “Jonathan Smith: a tribute”, in Wilkins and Kean, The History of Ocean Software (2013), p. 254: Smith as the programmer and artist of Cobra, Hyper Sports, Green Beret, Terra Cresta and Mikie.
  • “Jonathan Smith (games programmer)”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): dates of birth and death; later games; the Red Dwarf displays; the mirror-image name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Smith_(games_programmer)
  • “Jonathan M. Smith”, World of Spectrum tribute page, 2010 (web, secondary): tributes by Doug Burns and Mark R. Jones. https://worldofspectrum.net/tribute/jonathan-m-smith/

See also

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