Carleton Handley

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes was such a good game I’ve bought this without knowing much about it. £11 and change feels a real bargain.

Cheers. I did do APB yeah. My final C64 game before applying at Ocean was Rugby: The World Cup though. A real duffer.

They were on Palatine Rd in Withington when I worked there. Right next door to The Christie. I joined Creations from there. I think everybody worked at at least three of the Manchester devs, like a merry go rooms of developers.

Binary (Lothlorien) ran the YTS I started on.

He’s rocking that 80s look.

And Ocean were a class above anything I was doing back then.

I had an interview with Gary Bracey I think. It was a pretty chaotic meeting with him on the phone to others 70% of the time. I think it was probably after this photo to be fair, when the C64 was dead.

I went for an interview as a #C64 dev at Ocean after I left Walking Circles. I don't think I even heard back from them and ended up getting a job at Tiertex. This photo reminds me of how young nearly everybody working in computer games was in the 80s.

Rochdale cinema only had three screens and you often didn't get in to the show you wanted. We queued for ages for BTTF only to be turned away. Went in to see The Goonies instead. I don't even think we'd heard of it at the time, what a treat.

Grid Pix Advent (C64) by Thalamus Digital Publishing Ltd. A **FREE** Xmas version of Grid Pix

It's that time of year. Get you thinking Santa hats on an try to solve the 24 Christmas Picross puzzles in my free #C64 game Grid Pix Advent.

thalamusdigital.itch.io/grid-pix-adv...

Back in the day I bought so many issues of the Official PlayStation Magazine just to try out the demos. It’s even easier to try stuff before you buy these days. Obviously I’d recommend Millie & Molly but there’s lots of good stuff here.

This Spitting Image news is from Dec '86, when I was still a schoolboy. It took them a long time to find a publisher because I started coding the #C64 game in the second half of '88. I think the only reason Domark ended up with the licence was over the controversy of Split Personalities.

What a thoroughly lovely thing to do. It looks in pretty good nick in the later video as well, better than mine was in the 80s. I had some Kit-Kat foil as a fuse for a start. #C64

What an amazing job Chun and his wife did to make M&M the game it is. I don't think either of use thought it would lead to having this kind of swag. A signed copy of the #C64 disk version as well, rare. 😜

Is that a thing? Amazing.

Thanks. I assume you mean the new stuff rather than my 80s/90s output! ;)

Exactly how I treat it. I was a games dev for 30-odd years and I miss it sometimes. That's when I dig out the #C64 dev tools. Unless you're very lucky there's no way to monetize but I'm very pleased people can enjoy my games. Some even saw a physical release, and now in the shops via the C64 Black.

YouTube video by PlayStation Super Life of Pixel – Announce Gameplay Trailer | PS4, PS Vita

Yeah, it's a nice community. Back when that interview was done the Vita was a viable platform, I wasn't thinking of hombrew. Super Life Of Pixel was probably the kind of thing I had in mind.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQek...

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The irony of this RG answer is that I made more money from selling #C64 games on carletonhandley.itch.io than I ever did from the App Store. That said both amounts were low. I didn't give up the day job.

I was reading an interview I did for @retrogamermag.bsky.social back in 2015. @merman1974.bsky.social asked this question. Obviously I changed my mind from the answer given. I think I’ve written 8 #C64 games since then.

The only thing I remember doing was being tasked with writing a BASIC program that took a date and gave you back the day of the week it was on. There wasn’t much teaching as I recall. I probably only did 12 visits or so. I did get some certificates about proficiency in typing and stuff!

The YTS was much maligned but it worked out really well for me. I think software development was much simpler back then, so a course like that could be done. These days you'd need a Uni course I think.

And no, I didn't have any success getting FIFA GG for a sensible price.

I don’t think so. I spoke about it briefly in my Retro Gamer interview (issue 140). It was an amazing break to get onto it and has basically given me the career I have to this day.

I was given this poster along with other goodies at my YTS job interview with what became of Design Design. Quite exciting for a 16yo with no idea of what to do with himself having left school.

The picture is of Ellesmere Port and was hastily taken by one of team from a nearby bridge.

My first job was at what was formerly Design Design. We worked on another game which was submitted to the Crash competition Kat Trap won. It was called Sewer but was never completed. We also had loads of the other entries in a big folder which were fun to read through. I'd love to see those again.

Yeah, I don't think we thought of it at the time. People loved the level 64 Easter egg though. Maybe for M&M2 ;)

The game Millie & Molly with a skull layout and dancing skeletons.

Bonfire Night was my favourite night of the year as a child. Fireworks, treacle, parkin, flapjack, black peas (Google it) and a big random fire topped with a guy dressed better than me. Halloween has rather usurped it now though. Probably for the best considering the dangerous stuff we got up to.

Cheers. It was a fun game to work on. We had the arcade cab in the office but even then none of us got very good at it. A rock hard game.

Nice to make into onto this list with my best received #C64 game of that era. And my only Zzap Sizzler back then. It was also a Oli Frey front cover. There are things I'd change now but it's a good effort.

I like the Wilmslow Half if you're near there. Nice flattish route and a good atmosphere. It being my PB course helps!

Ha, thought you’d bought that one!