JSWE 35 IN THE BEDROOM WITH MATTHEW SMITH
Matthew Smith seems conflicted about the Eighties. “It was hell from start to finish,” he says, glancing round the bedroom where he spent a fair amount of those years. “Even the music was shit. Anyway, isn’t nostalgia the death of the soul?”
Yet even as he decries the decade which he is most associated with, thanks to his pair of Spectrum classics Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy, we are listening to an Echo And The Bunnymen Peel Session from 1983 and he’s been reminiscing fondly about the sweet and sour sauce as we eat a Chinese bought from the same takeaway he frequented back then. Most intriguingly, when we ask him if he was impressed by the Eighties period detail in the interactive Black Mirror episode Bandersnatch, he replies, “I didn’t notice it. I thought everything was still like that.”
“If I was flaunting anything, it was I could program the impossible!”
MATTHEW SMITH
It’s not clear whether he’s joking, and it won’t be the last time over the weekend he leaves us in doubt. We have travelled up to the family home in Liverpool to drink Guinness, talk about Miner Willy as he turns 36 and then accompany Matthew to Manchester in the morning, where he is due to appear at this year’s Play Expo event. The plan tonight is to take a tour through Willy’s mansion and for its author to comment on each of its 60 rooms, but now we feel awkward for asking him to recall a time he plainly did not enjoy. “Oh I’ve been sick of this shit since 1986,” he says, taking a large swig of Guinness, “but go on, press play.”
Thankfully, as soon as the title appears, displaying that Penrose Triangle, Matthew grins. “Ah, yeah, apparently Roger Penrose showed that to Escher and it inspired some of his paintings.”
An impossible shape opening a game set in an impossible building which turned out to be impossible to complete. Rather apt, we suggest.
“It was a nod to the whole process of producing the game,” he replies, his eyes flicking from screen to glass to ceiling. “If I was flaunting anything, it was I could program the impossible!”
As we revisit each room in Willy’s sprawling mansion over the next few hours – you can read his recollections in a later edition of Retro Gamer – he is at times witty and insightful, at others, vague or even dismissive. “Look at that,” he tuts, as we arrive at the First Landing, “Three quarters black space. When I see some of the screens now, I do think… well, not, ‘Why didn’t I do more?’ but I have bad memories remembering why I didn’t do more.”
He’s referring to his experience as a director of Software Projects, the company he set up in 1983 with Alan Maton, an employee of Bug-Byte Software who had first published Manic Miner, and Tommy Barton, a local businessman. It’s a tangled tale and the legal wrangling around who actually owns the rights to the Miner Willy games continues to this day but what is clear is that Matthew had a thoroughly miserable time through the five years it was in business.
“Tommy was Grima Wormtongue, Alan was Saruman,” remembers Matthew, in a rather cryptic JRR Tolkien reference before moving on to a Gilbert and Sullivan analogy. “Alan thought he was the Grand Poobah because he’d gone from being an employee at Bug-Byte to managing millions at Software Projects. I thought I was the Grand Poobah because I could produce the products. They kept hassling me to get the game done but I just couldn’t get the equipment I needed from
