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IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT WILLY:  REVEALING EVERY OTHER GAME MATTHEW SMITH CREATED

21/2/2019

11 Comments

 
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A talented wunderkind who created two of the ZX Spectrum's most iconic games while still a mewling teenager, when Matthew Smith slid from public view for a decade and a half it allowed a legend to build up around him. He was labelled the Syd Barrett or JD Salinger of gaming, an alleged acid casualty who'd blown the small fortune he'd made from Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner. 

The reality is... Smith is far from the smelly, broken, hermit he has sometimes been depicted as. In recent years he's resurfaced on the Software Projects Facebook page - where he's lucid and articulate . He has also made appearances at conventions (including the upcoming Play Expo Manchester) and in documentaries, where he's been happy to discuss his experiences, and talk about plans he has to release new games.

Nevertheless, Smith made two near-perfect games, and then - essentially - disappeared off everyone's radar for the best part of two decades, during which he spent a stint in a Dutch commune. When he finally returned to Britain, and gained access to the Internet for the first time, he professed to being surprised and flattered at the number of websites there were dedicated to Babylon 5 (how much interest there was in him). 

However... Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy aren't the full story. We all know that Smith had been working on a third Miner Willy game - the long-lost Miner Willy Meets The Taxman/Mega Tree - but they weren't the only games he'd been responsible for.

Grasp your straps: here's a terrifying, whistle-stop, tour through his other, less remembered, works.
DELTA TAU ONE
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Written when he was barely out of short trousers, Smith's first commercially released game was a Galaxian clone for the TRS-80.

​Despite having a sort-of-cool title, Delta Tau One wouldn't win any awards for originality or prettiness, but it was a solid enough rip-off, and taught Smith the skills he needed to forge a career. Smith himself has described it as "average", claiming he made just £50 from the "13 or so" copies it sold. 
MONSTER MUNCHER
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Apparently coded in just three hours, Monster Muncher was - like Delta Tau One - a clone of an existing game, in this instance Pac-Man. Only a few hundred copies were ever released, but shortly after its creation Smith took a holiday to Italy, where he began scribbling down ideas for Manic Miner...
STYX
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Smith's first ZX Spectrum game was Styx - the beginning of a three-game contract with Bug-Byte Software. Styx was written the same year as Manic Miner, alonside a sprite editing utility - which was used by fellow coder Adrian Sherwin for The Birds And The Bees. 

It was a relatively unremarkable maze shooting game, but at least sported some of Smith's idiosyncrasies - featuring a climactic confrontation with the Grim Reaper, and a merciless level of difficulty. 

Smith's next two games would catapult him to stardom.
ANDRE'S NIGHT OFF
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Based around an idea which never made it into Jet Set Willy, Andre's Night Off was offered to Computer & Video Games as a type-in listing. With a title inspired by Fawlty Towers, the magazine described it thus:

"Andre the cook has waltzed off for the evening without leaving so much as a boiled egg for Willy to munch on! Anyway, our hero marches down to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich and comes face to face with the amazing technicolour man-eating pizzas! GASP! Can you survive the onslaught of these nasty little doughy monsters? Dare you open Willys' kitchen door?"
ATTACK OF THE MUTANT FLESH-EATING ZOMBIES FROM MARS
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For reasons unknown, Smith parked work on his third Miner Willy opus to develop Attack Of The Mutant Zombie Flesh Eating Chickens From Mars Starring Zappo The Dog.

Having originally started life as a game based upon the cartoon Road Runner - until the license fell through - it was a stark departure from the platforming of the Willy games, featuring Zappo running left-to-right, avoiding the titular zombie chickens.

Software Projects was confident enough of a release that ads appeared - heralding the new game from Matthew Smith - but at some point Smith lost confidence in the game, and withdrew it.

Software Projects handed the game to one John Darnell to complete and rework, and it was eventually released as the unremarkable Star Paws.

Cue Smith's wilderness years.
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SCRABBLE
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After Smith returned to Britain - reportedly having been sent home from the Netherlands for failing to keep his residency papers in order - he landed a job at Runecraft.

Few knew that the brain behind Jet Set Willy was also responsible for the 1999 Game Boy Color version of Scrabble - but it was indeed Smith's first game credit for 16 years. Unfortunately, Runecraft went into receivership shortly after its release, and to date it's the last published game Smith ever worked on.

The following year Smith clawed his way back into the spotlight via Iain Lee's Thumb Candy documentary. Suffice to say, the interview did little to dim his legend...
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11 Comments
Kieren
21/2/2019 12:25:59 pm

From people I've spoken to at Runecraft Matthew Smith did almost no work on Scrabble and was constantly AWOL or off his tits.

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King of Sass
22/2/2019 12:09:40 pm

It's kind of odd to think that a GBC game like Scrabble would need multiple programmers working on it. Aside from getting the graphics and the music done by people who know what they're doing, it seems like the sort of project someone could knock out in a weekend in their bedroom.

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Marro
21/2/2019 06:19:50 pm

You mean he's not a shambling wreck muttering about the "Mega Tree" and going round with a dead pigeon he calls "Minah Willy"? This is terrible news...

I remember Star Paws as an excellent game - at least on the Commie 64. It had a great sense of humour with the Acme style gadgets and some fast and fruity parallax scrolling.

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B3tan_Tyronne
22/2/2019 08:31:51 am

Should the day ever come that Matthew decided to create `Willy 3` say for the spectrum next or the pc and used kickstarter to get the backing, it would not surprise me if he raised the money for it in less than a week.

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P. Thomas Donnelly
22/2/2019 02:33:32 pm

Thank you for all your work and this little feature.

Though I used to read you every day, I'm new to Digitiser2000 and it's been steadily inserting itself... into my daily reading habits.

I got a lot of enjoyment from 'the Willy games' when I was a boy and recently have been watching play-throughs on the one youtube-enabled running machine in my local gym.

(Oftentimes I'm required to wait creepily for access to this machine as a young person takes his indoor stroll.)

I never knew anything about the man who made them, so am grateful to have access to a resource and community dedicated to remembering and celebrating that era.

With every best wish,
P. Thomas

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Tony
22/2/2019 04:19:34 pm

"I got a lot of enjoyment from 'the Willy games' when I was a boy"

Snigger.

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YorkshireKev
23/2/2019 08:51:22 pm

I'm not sure about monster muncher being one of Matts. Looking it up on WOS it's credited to Adrian Sherwin and Ian Robinson (http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0003252)

Is there a reference that links the game to Matthew Smith?

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YorkshireKev
24/2/2019 06:50:53 pm

A follow up to my previous comment about monster muncher. I now understand that the game was written for the Vic 20, not the spectrum. Apparently the game was never released as the company that was to publish it went bust. I think the cassette inlay shown in this post is for a different game with the same name.

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Matthew Smith
27/3/2019 04:44:49 pm

I wrote the VIC 20 version (in BASIC, in 5 hrs), Spectrum Games was the name of the company. It folded before too many people noticed that most of their products were pirated - and then re-emerged as Ocean.

Jon
4/3/2019 11:54:39 pm

"unremarkable Star Paws"

Nonsense, it was a very well reviewed game with excellent music.

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jayenne
26/4/2021 06:08:12 pm

You are still a gaming legend Matthew. no one could or would try to take that from you. MM & JSW are the only two games other than my ow ni even have on my iphone. Thank you for the music sir

Reply



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