One of the very first games I ever played on a home computer was a maze game called Labyrinth on the Sinclair ZX81. So when I wanted to learn Golang and delve a little deeper into terminal cli development, I decided to start with a simple maze game that could be run in a shell on the Linux command line. As you can see from the screenshot, the graphics could, at best, be describes as very basic.

While tidying the loft I came across my old JVC Mini DV Camcorder that I purchased in about 2001. I was looking to recycle an old, unused PC that was also in the loft when it occurred to me that the old PC had a firewire card installed. A quick check confirmed that the firewire card would not fit into my regular PC, so hanging on to this old PC for a while longer was my best chance of getting the footage off the old mini dv tapes.

One of my all-time favourite games is Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum. When Bug-Byte released Matthew Smith’s masterpiece in 1983 the bar was raised for quality gaming on the Speccy. Sure there were many, many excellent games released on the Spectrum (I’m looking at you Ultimate) but Manic Miner is still my go-to game when I need a retro gaming fix. Ever since I saw Mario64 on the N64 I wondered what a 3D version of Manic Miner or Jet Set Willy would look and play like.

These are a bunch of VS Code editing keyboard combinations that I find useful, but often struggle to recall. I’ll add more as I discover (and need) more editing features… Multi line select and edit. Highlight some text then use the keyboard combination below to select for simultaneous editing. MacOS: Shift + Cmd + L Windows / Linux: Shift + Ctrl + L Select cursor on mutliple lines Select a block of multiple lines.

Most of my recent (and not so recent) programming efforts have been in JavaScript that runs in the browser. I believed that with WebGL, the browser would become more relevant in gaming and graphics applications. Fast forward a few years and it’s clear that the vast majority of PC games are still downloaded and installed, just as they were decades ago. I decided to return to creating native games for the PC.

Matthew Smith, the author of the classic ZX Spectrum games Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy was at the Play Expo 2019 retro gaming event in Manchester to do a talk marking the 35th anniversary of Jet Set Willy. I was lucky enough to attend this event and had taken some of my old cassette covers with me, just in case Matthew was up for doing some signing after his talk.

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