GARY PARTIS
Profile, A&B March 1987
I first became aware of Gary with the release in 1986 of Psycastria, an A&B Game of the Month and a superlative aggressive arcade game. The following months I kept spotting his name - either on credits on earlier Beeb games or in the news columns of computer magazines as his private life was displayed for all to see.
I made contact with him and, instead of an embittered soul, found a witty and talented young man who is not yet disillusioned by the press and who has had the courage to rise above emotional stress to produce more great games.
With the imminent release of Syncron by Superior and the announcement of an exclusive contract with Audiogenic (ASL), Gary is obviously the programmer of the moment and A&B has managed to get him to talk about his career to date.
I was first introduced to a Commodore Pet 3016 with tape deck in June 1981 and learnt BASIC. By Christmas that year I was beginning to write 6502 machine code.
As at the time Acorn were slow getting out the BBCs, I received my Christmas box on March the 1st, 1982 - a model A BBC micro. Two months later I bought eight RAM chips for the machine (to get 32K), then in September I bought a 6522 via so I could play Snapper and Planetoids, which had just been launched.
As a matter of interest - I met, dated and courted Tracey from July 1982 up to October 1986 ... This will become relevant later.
In Jan/Feb 1983 I wrote a BASIC compiler, handling strings, floating point etc, inspired by Jeremy Rushton's very poor compiler. This was bought by Micropower.
In the Summer of 1983, I wrote Positron in two days flat - Electron version (with pre-release Elk) in two hours! The end of 1983 saw the creation of Pogo (later called Wongo), followed in 1984 by Ultron (Gorfon) and the C64 conversion of Jet Power Jack.
At the same time as the C64 conversion, I wrote an Econet File Server Package - which is now the educational standard in Northumberland LEA and is damn better than Acorn's level 1 and 2 file servers ...
I wrote nothing else of interest that year but 1985 saw the beginnings of Castle Quest 2, later called Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror. The Dr Who team consisted of Alan Butcher (Micropower's technical boss), Ian Clemmetts (Micropower's Amstrad genius), Tony Southcott (freelance programmer and author of Castle Quest) and me. We all took a quarter of the game and created puzzles, etc, then I wrote the BBC version, Tony the C64, Ian the Amstrad and Alan a Spectrum version which was shelved.
1986 saw the beginnings of many a game: Wheelie, Star Wars, Psycastria, Vietnam, Syncron (three versions - each 100% different), C64 Psycastria, Lazon and starting soon, C64 Daxis.
A quick summary:
1983 Turbo Compiler BBC, Positron
BBC, Positron Elk, Wongo BBC
1984 Ultron BBC, Jet Power Jack C64, Quark File Server BBC, Wongo
Elk, Ultron Elk
1985 Dr Who BBC, Wheelie BBC - unfinished
1986 Star Wars BBC - unfinished, Psycastria BBC, Psycastria Elk,
Vietnam BBC - unfinished, Syncron I BBC - unfinished, Syncron
2 BBC - unfinished, Syncron 3 BBC, Psycastria C64, Lazon BBC
- unfinished
Profile:
Height: 5' 8"
Build: average
Weight: 10.25 stone
Hair: black
Eyes: hazel
Favourite computer games: Planetoids, Elite
Favourite computer: Commodore Pet
Favourite TV: Just Good Friends
Favourite film: Porky's I and II
Favourite author: James Herbert
Most respected programmer: Ian Bell and David Braben
Favourite drink: Cider and whisky (one at a time!)
Favourite food: Steak and chips
Favourite music: Ultravox, Jean Michel Jarre, Mike Oldfield,
most chart stuff
Interests: Electronics, karate (graded 1st Kyu - one grade below
black), records
Best moment in life: Meeting Tracey; selling first program
Worst moment in life: Losing Tracey; any bad reviews ...
Most wanted item: Well, what do you think. She is called ...
Least wanted item: Hassle
Pet hate: The wording in Zap64
Phew! Thanks, Gary, for taking the time to dissect yourself so thoroughly! One other pet hate he did mention to me on the phone was the description 'whizz-kid programmer' - please note that this is no longer applicable A&B Arcade language.
What really strikes me as interesting, though, is the range of material and computers that a professional programmer needs to cover. A lesson there perhaps for people contemplating a life consisting of one bestselling game a year ...
As to the future; well, Gary tells me he's toying with the idea of an 'X-rated' fighting fantasy, arcade adventure. Sounds interesting.
Incidentally, his trademark on many games are the initials ILTDN. You should be bright enough to hazard a guess at a meaning ...
This article appeared in the March 1987 edition of "A & B Computing", published by Argus Press.
Scanned in by dllm@usa.net
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