NEW GAMES FOR REMARKABLE MACHINES.

When I was but a lad, I had a dream of a shiny new pair of roller boots from Santa. My dreams were shattered when under the tree for me was a ZX Spectrum 48k from that day on I was hooked.

Playing games was my first passion until I got a job in a local computer shop, after that my life was all about selling games and computers. During this time I always wanted to get a team together to write and produce games.

I did have an initial go at this back in the 90's but it didn't take off, since then I have always wanted to have a business producing games and well.. here we are thanks to Gary :)

I have a big 'ol collection of computers, consoles and games. I can often be found delving in to my 'Box of Broken Dreams (tm)' to see what I am going to try to get working again next.

Along side this, I am one of the co-hosts of the Pixel Gaiden Podcast with my good buddies, Cody Hoffman and Eric Nelson from all the way over in California, U S of A.

Our main aim here at Atomic Windmill is to bring back the fun and pure gameplay back in to games and importantly with physical releases along side digital, there is nothing quite like that feeling of holding a copy of a new game in your hands, anticipating that first load and what fun you will have with that game. We hope the games from Atomic Windmill will bring you that feeling.

I fell in love with computers the first time I saw a rubber-keyed ZX Spectrum at a friend’s house. The first game I experienced on it was The Hulk, and I was hooked.

I must have talked about it enough, because that Christmas I received my own 128K Spectrum. From that point on, going outside became a lot less interesting. I became obsessed with everything computers had to offer.

I started dabbling in BASIC, writing my own crude text adventures and experimenting with whatever I could get my hands on. But it was being gifted an Atari ST, the Discovery Pack, complete with STOS, that really pulled me into programming.

From there I eventually moved into Assembly using Devpac 2, and loved digging deeper into how games actually worked. I spent countless hours exploring, learning, pulling apart software, ripping assets, and figuring out how to train games using MonST2. That curiosity, wanting to understand what was happening underneath the surface and seeing what I could make a computer do, has stayed with me ever since.

Growing up, computers and games were just not a thing until classmate Ben brought in his Game Boy on the last day of school before Christmas. I was enraptured and asked if I could have one for my birthday the following year. And that’s how I ended up with a Commodore 64. Oh well! At least I knew what it was like to buy a Codemasters game for £3.99 with my pocket money!

For me, gaming is all about the fun, and that is always better when playing games with friends. That’s what being part of Atomic Windmill is for me: the joy of gaming when shared. My gaming background is storied, from that C64, through the Amiga, and then perhaps my favourites - the Super Nintendo and original Sony PlayStation.

Such was my love of gaming and Japanese culture that I finally decided, in my mid-30s, to follow a lifelong ambition and move to Japan. After living there for a number of years and learning the language, I returned to the UK.

I also freelance for retro gaming website Time Extension, get out on my skateboard a couple of times a week, and find time to review Japanese curios on a small channel hosted by a roster of characters I developed for Saki Endo’s Rubbish Heap. And of course, I find time to draw and study more Japanese.

When I sit down and really think about gaming, I think about my all-time favourite game, Grandia, and think: wow, gaming is so rad!