ZX81, C64, then an Amiga 500 in 1987. Playing games was great. Making the machine do things was better.
In 1988 I co-founded Public Enemies, and next to the demos I wrote a couple of games. We even tried to sell one, inspired by SEGA's Hot Rod, right up until Activision released the official Amiga Hot Rod in 1990. Into a drawer it went.
Meanwhile the arcades had me for life: Commando, Ghosts'n Goblins, Wonder Boy, and a frankly irresponsible amount of pocket money. I never stopped wondering how they did it, and the only way to really find out is to write it yourself.
In 2020 I came back to the C64, and the itch came right back with it. So, forty-odd years after that ZX81: proper games, on cartridge. Three so far ;)
Kong-Fu Masters
A cat, a dog and a fox brawl through twelve fully animated rooms for a spray-painted golden floppy, and the best move in the game is picking your opponent up and carrying them off a ledge. Lobo built the world and drew it together with Mikael, DivertigO wrote the music, and I wrote the code.
Up to three players, four sprites each, on a machine with eight. It is nearly done and heading for a boxed cartridge release, which makes it the first game I will ever have published. Only took forty years.
Wonder Boy
The arcade game that ate my pocket money in a pizzeria at thirteen, and the C64 version that broke my heart. Forty years on, I am writing the port I wanted back then: arcade rules from the original code, SEGA Master System looks.
Eight sprites, a full multicolour bitmap scrolling horizontally and vertically, a multiplexer juggling swarms of bees and a boss too big for sprites, all on a 1 MB cartridge with no loading. The story of how, in plain words. It is fully playable already, and The Hobbit, Mikael and TheK have joined to bring the pixels and the music up to scratch.
Populous: C64 Fan Edition
The Amiga god game I played to the very end at fourteen, finishing third in Sweden's Populous championship in 1989. Now every one of its 495 worlds plays on a C64 cartridge, by the original's rules.
And because I ported it twice, from the Amiga to the C64 and then from the C64 to the web, anyone can design a brand new world in the browser and send it in. The best ones go on the cart.