“The amazing thing about computer science is that it’s always advancing and progressing, so there’s always something new to learn and do,” says Randal when asked about the technical challenges left for him. “Early in my career I used to think that I had done a wide variety of projects, but with the huge growth of the computing field, I realised that I had only scratched the surface of technology.” That 40-year career has gone from Commodore PET to Switch, creating memorable titles including SNES Doom, the first C64 emulator for the Amiga and the Amiga’s stunning conversion of Dragon’s Lair.
Can you tell us about your first ever encounter with a computer?
My first experience was in junior high when our school library received three Commodore 4032 PETs. The librarian wrote a program that allowed students to schedule time to use the computers and I spent many hours there studying and learning all about the machine – of course, I also played games, my favourite was a clone of Space Invaders.
What computers did you first have at home?
My very first home computer was a Texas Instruments TI 99/4A and my favourite game for it was called TI Invaders, a clone of Space Invaders with unique-looking enemies. My second home computer was the Commodore C64 and my third was the Commodore Amiga 1000 – then an Amiga 2000 and Amiga 500 as well! It was many years into my career before I purchased (and switched to using) a PC as my primary machine.
When did you write your first game?
I wrote my first game when I was 12 or 13 and it was called Barriers. In the game, you controlled a ship flying towards a barrier wall and had to blast holes in the advancing wall so you could fly the ship through without taking damage. The game was all machine language and written on the Commodore PET 4032 at school.
Your C64 game Bubbles is currently unavailable online – do you have anything left of it, or know where it might be found?
for the Commodore 64 was my first published program., the code was all hand-written 6502 back when there were no compilers for the C64/C128, assemblers were just becoming commonplace, and linkers were unheard of. To this day I still remember many of the 6502 opcodes along with how to calculate the branch destinations. EA = NOP, A9 = LDA, 60 = RTS, 20 = JSR, 00 = BRK, D0 = BNE… those were the days! I have one copy of on a 5 1/4-inch floppy disk and another on a cassette. When I find a suitable place (or person) that can try and read the image, I’ll send the media to them for processing. With some luck, I’ll be able to share so everyone can enjoy my first game title.
