Last Online: 9/29/07
Simon Bradley
Long-time gamer and hobbyist developer, now also professionally involved with mobile phone games.
I am old enough to have played Space Invaders when it was new, and have been a gamer ever since. Currently I have a large collection of consoles and handhelds, but am way behind on the actual playing.
My particular thing, these days, is handhelds. I have a decent collection of reasonably recent handheld consoles, including the Neo Geo Pocket, Wonderswan, PSP, GBA, Pokemon Mini, Game.com, Gameking and GP32, and I also have the technology to develop for most of them.
I have a grand plan to port a single game, Cortex, to every format I can, but it is a very long range plan so I haven't got far. Choosing to do it in J2ME and then custom Pokemon Mini 8-bit Assembly was probably not the smartest way to portability.
I have also developed a game or two for PalmOS, and a few projects for the PC. The PC games are generally smaller projects or remakes, in GameMaker. I guess I just like working with simpler and more consistent systems. I have also worked on the Windows port of the DOS RPG creator, OHRRPGCE in FreeBasic (although I was originally intending to take it on to PalmOS, so it still hooks in to my handheld theme).
It's going to take me a while to build up my profile and add my games, since my home ADSL connection is being uncooperative. More soon.
I am old enough to have played Space Invaders when it was new, and have been a gamer ever since. Currently I have a large collection of consoles and handhelds, but am way behind on the actual playing.
My particular thing, these days, is handhelds. I have a decent collection of reasonably recent handheld consoles, including the Neo Geo Pocket, Wonderswan, PSP, GBA, Pokemon Mini, Game.com, Gameking and GP32, and I also have the technology to develop for most of them.
I have a grand plan to port a single game, Cortex, to every format I can, but it is a very long range plan so I haven't got far. Choosing to do it in J2ME and then custom Pokemon Mini 8-bit Assembly was probably not the smartest way to portability.
I have also developed a game or two for PalmOS, and a few projects for the PC. The PC games are generally smaller projects or remakes, in GameMaker. I guess I just like working with simpler and more consistent systems. I have also worked on the Windows port of the DOS RPG creator, OHRRPGCE in FreeBasic (although I was originally intending to take it on to PalmOS, so it still hooks in to my handheld theme).
It's going to take me a while to build up my profile and add my games, since my home ADSL connection is being uncooperative. More soon.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Personal Sites
These are generally smaller projects, often written in GameMaker or lately FreeBasic. I hope they are robust and fun, but they aren't intended to be very deep.
My first GM game, from 2003. Remake of a 1983 BBC Micro platformer.
My entry to the second RR Competition, in 2004. This time a puzzle game from the Atari ST.
Written in a day for the RR one-button mini-compo, and later slightly revised on the advice of Barrie "One Switch" Ellis for accessibility. It placed second, if memory serves.
Written (in C) for the first Cassette 50 tribute bad games collection, this is a remake of a very early BBC Micro game by Simon W Hessel. I did it an injustice by putting it up for Cassette 50, but this remake does have the distinction of being wholly inferior to the original.
The first in my trilogy of terrible games intended for the second Cassette 50 tribute, this takes the Track-n-Field mechanic to absurd lengths. Literally.
Just thinking about this one still makes me smile. I'm not sure I should take pride in Holdspace, but I do. This was my first FreeBasic game, and the second of the terrible trio.
Another quickie, for the April 2006 LD48. An 8-way top-down shooter which was never sufficiently finished. Written in FreeBasic.
The third terrible game was my 1-dimensional shooter. Back to GM for this one.
I have now written a PC version of this, for an Easter mini-competition. Written in FreeBasic.
I love working on more restricted platforms, with simpler environments. Fighting Windows configurations just destroys my soul.
I also love playing on handhelds, which have never particularly been blighted by PAL/NTSC problems or region lockouts.
Port of the 1984 ZX Spectrum classic by Mike Singleton. Not quite finished.
My first Palm game. In fact my first game of any description since I messed around with BASIC a bit in the early 80s.
This is an add-on for the commercial PalmOS game Kyle's Quest 2, and was not originally created by me, but I took it over and finished it off when the original author moved on to other projects.
Platforms don't come much more limited than the Pokemon Mini, with less than 4k of RAM and a 96x64 screen. My first assembly programming. The game itself is a sokoban type puzzler, a remake of my own mobile phone game.
Professional History
Reviewed some games semi-professionally in the late 90s, most notably in PSi2 magazine.
Attempted to start my own business in 2004 writing games for phones and PDAs. It didn't work out, but the experience proved valuable.
Started work in early 2006 for a leading independent mobile game developer, working on some big-name phone games. I'm not sure I want to include this content here without the approval of work, but I'll probably own up if anyone else adds them.
Attempted to start my own business in 2004 writing games for phones and PDAs. It didn't work out, but the experience proved valuable.
Started work in early 2006 for a leading independent mobile game developer, working on some big-name phone games. I'm not sure I want to include this content here without the approval of work, but I'll probably own up if anyone else adds them.
