it was all
he was allowed to drive.
There was a second market for selling software to customers directly that supplemented postal distribution. Micro Fairs – gatherings where hardware producers and small merchandisers sold
side by side in town halls and exhibition centres – had been around since the start of the electronics industry. But with the popularity of the 1981 generation of home computers, they shifted
up a gear. Like the postal market, fairs responded directly to the tastes of the consumers, but here the contact between customer and supplier was much more personal. Any new scrappy gadget or
software had a chance of success if it appealed to customers, so, very quickly, games proliferated at Micro Fairs. Amongst the first to see this were Charles Cecil and Richard Turner.
Charles Cecil was at Manchester University when 8-bit computers first bloomed. He had taken a conformist route: his degree was sponsored by Ford, which gave him training
and excellent prospects. At 18, his career had been mapped out for him, down to the car he would drive. But Cecil was keenly aware of the exciting new world of technology that lay just outside his
reach. He was grateful to Ford, but felt utterly trapped.
A fellow Ford trainee, Richard Turner, felt a similar technophile thrill, but he had enough electronics training to indulge himself. He disassembled the ZX80 ROM – the core instructions
that make the hardware work – and found himself on the inside track of the booming market for pre-written programs. Turner established a company called Artic, to sell his breakdown of the
ZX80’s workings at Micro Fairs. But he also wrote a sample game, a text adventure, to test his technology.
He asked his friend Cecil to make a follow-up adventure, showing him a classic by Scott Adams on the TRS-80 to use as a model. These two games became
Adventure A
and
Adventure
B
, and with typewritten labels and without a reviewer in sight, could not have been more anonymous. Yet they sold fantastically.
It became a very healthy business. The cassettes cost pennies, but sold for a fiver. Repeat buyers discussed the games in person with their creators, who were happy to hear feedback, and Cecil
added
Adventures C, D
and
E
to the line-up. Turner was living in Hull, and recruited his sister and parents to help copy and collate the packages for sale at the fairs: a
cassette, a typed label and lithograph in a plastic bag. No matter how many they produced, the run sold out, each cassette generating a few pounds of clear profit. They were heady times for Charles
Cecil: ‘We had an absolute ball.’
Although computer manufacturers were disinterested in amateur games-makers, they hadn’t ignored the market. After the launch of their computers they had each endorsed
publishers to issue a selection of games to flesh out their catalogues. These were the ‘professional’publishers, but only by the coincidence of their origin.
The manufacturers sold hardware, and having decent software available in smart packaging was as much about building their brand as it was serving the needs of consumers.
Some early titles were written by Acorn or Sinclair staff, but another bountiful source of software was the electronics enthusiasts who might previously have bought a Sinclair Radionics
soldering kit. Geoff Crammond was in his twenties, programming for Marconi, by the time computers reached the home. He had been tinkering with electronics since he was 14, making sound effects for
his electric guitar and building circuits to play around with the display on his television. He bought one of the first BBC Micros off the production line.
Already a programmer, Crammond took to it quickly – ‘the fact that it had BBC BASIC with built-in graphics was great’ – but he soon found his ambition outpaced
BASIC’s capabilities. He bought a book to teach himself 6502 assembler, again made easy by the machine’s accessible design. Given his background, he
he was allowed to drive.
There was a second market for selling software to customers directly that supplemented postal distribution. Micro Fairs – gatherings where hardware producers and small merchandisers sold
side by side in town halls and exhibition centres – had been around since the start of the electronics industry. But with the popularity of the 1981 generation of home computers, they shifted
up a gear. Like the postal market, fairs responded directly to the tastes of the consumers, but here the contact between customer and supplier was much more personal. Any new scrappy gadget or
software had a chance of success if it appealed to customers, so, very quickly, games proliferated at Micro Fairs. Amongst the first to see this were Charles Cecil and Richard Turner.
Charles Cecil was at Manchester University when 8-bit computers first bloomed. He had taken a conformist route: his degree was sponsored by Ford, which gave him training
and excellent prospects. At 18, his career had been mapped out for him, down to the car he would drive. But Cecil was keenly aware of the exciting new world of technology that lay just outside his
reach. He was grateful to Ford, but felt utterly trapped.
A fellow Ford trainee, Richard Turner, felt a similar technophile thrill, but he had enough electronics training to indulge himself. He disassembled the ZX80 ROM – the core instructions
that make the hardware work – and found himself on the inside track of the booming market for pre-written programs. Turner established a company called Artic, to sell his breakdown of the
ZX80’s workings at Micro Fairs. But he also wrote a sample game, a text adventure, to test his technology.
He asked his friend Cecil to make a follow-up adventure, showing him a classic by Scott Adams on the TRS-80 to use as a model. These two games became
Adventure A
and
Adventure
B
, and with typewritten labels and without a reviewer in sight, could not have been more anonymous. Yet they sold fantastically.
It became a very healthy business. The cassettes cost pennies, but sold for a fiver. Repeat buyers discussed the games in person with their creators, who were happy to hear feedback, and Cecil
added
Adventures C, D
and
E
to the line-up. Turner was living in Hull, and recruited his sister and parents to help copy and collate the packages for sale at the fairs: a
cassette, a typed label and lithograph in a plastic bag. No matter how many they produced, the run sold out, each cassette generating a few pounds of clear profit. They were heady times for Charles
Cecil: ‘We had an absolute ball.’
Although computer manufacturers were disinterested in amateur games-makers, they hadn’t ignored the market. After the launch of their computers they had each endorsed
publishers to issue a selection of games to flesh out their catalogues. These were the ‘professional’publishers, but only by the coincidence of their origin.
The manufacturers sold hardware, and having decent software available in smart packaging was as much about building their brand as it was serving the needs of consumers.
Some early titles were written by Acorn or Sinclair staff, but another bountiful source of software was the electronics enthusiasts who might previously have bought a Sinclair Radionics
soldering kit. Geoff Crammond was in his twenties, programming for Marconi, by the time computers reached the home. He had been tinkering with electronics since he was 14, making sound effects for
his electric guitar and building circuits to play around with the display on his television. He bought one of the first BBC Micros off the production line.
Already a programmer, Crammond took to it quickly – ‘the fact that it had BBC BASIC with built-in graphics was great’ – but he soon found his ambition outpaced
BASIC’s capabilities. He bought a book to teach himself 6502 assembler, again made easy by the machine’s accessible design. Given his background, he
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