Matthew Smith (born 1966) is a British computer game programmer. He is best known for his games Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy for the ZX Spectrum, released in 1983 and 1984 respectively.
He was born in London, but his family moved around a great deal, finally ending up in Wallasey. He started out programming on a TRS-80. His first commercial game was a Galaxian clone for the TRS-80 called Delta Tower One. He then went on to produce a game on the ...
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Matthew Smith (born 1966) is a British computer game programmer. He is best known for his games Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy for the ZX Spectrum, released in 1983 and 1984 respectively.
He was born in London, but his family moved around a great deal, finally ending up in Wallasey. He started out programming on a TRS-80. His first commercial game was a Galaxian clone for the TRS-80 called Delta Tower One. He then went on to produce a game on the VIC-20 called Monster Muncher.
He obtained a ZX Spectrum on loan from Bug-Byte Software Ltd. in return for a contract to make three games. The first of these was Styx in 1983.
He wrote Manic Miner in just six weeks and it was an instant success. While some games at the time were quite basic and amateur, Manic Miner was an addictive platform game with in-game music (a first for the ZX Spectrum). The sequel, Jet Set Willy, took considerably longer to write and was an even bigger success. Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy are two of the most famous...
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