Matthew Smith (games programmer)
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Matthew Smith (b. 1966) is a British computer game programmer, best known for his games Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy for the ZX Spectrum, released in 1983 and 1984 respectively.
He was born in London, but his family moved around a lot finally ending up in Liverpool. He started out programming on a TRS-80. His first commercial game was a Galaxian rip-off for the TRS-80 called Delta Tower One. He then went on to produce a game on the VIC-20 called Monster Muncher.
He obtained a ZX Spectrum on loan from Bug-Byte in return for a contract to make three games. The first of these was Styx in 1983.
He wrote Manic Miner in just six weeks and it was an instant success. While many games at the time were quite basic and amateur, here was an addictive plaform game with in-game music (a first for the ZX Spectrum). The sequel, Jet Set Willy , took considerably longer to write and was an even bigger success. Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy are two of the most famous and popular ZX Spectrum games.
After the creation of Jet Set Willy he started work on The Mega Tree for publication by his company Software Projects. Unlike his previous two hits The Mega Tree was not developed for the ZX Spectrum but the Commodore 64. The project failed to gain traction and was abandoned three months into development. Two projects for the ZX Spectrum were also never finished; Attack of the Mutant Zombie Flesh Eating Chickens From Mars and Miner Willy Meets The Taxman.
Smith closed Software Projects in 1988 without completing any more programs and "vanished" for a while. He was living in a Dutch commune from around 1995 but was deported from the Netherlands in October of 1997 and returned to Britain. He subsequently "reappeared" on the Internet in the late 1990s. He said he was "surprised and flattered"[1] at the amount of attention and speculation he'd attracted on the internet.
In 1999 Smith returned to the UK industry by taking a job at Dewsbury-based computer game developer Runecraft. Unfortunately, the company went into receivership and thus only one new game (Scrabble for the Game Boy Color) appeared.
In 2000, he appeared on a British television documentary programme called Thumb Candy about the history of video games in which, in a brief interview, he discussed Manic Miner and his 1980's career with Iain Lee.
The 8-bit coding superstar of the 1980s is working on producing new games, and according to recent interviews he has been involved in mobile versions of his original games.