Tony Cruise

I have been programming computers in Australia for over thirty-five years.

Starting in the early 80’s with the purchase of a 2nd hand TI-99/4 computer in partnership with my father, and then progressing to a Spectravideo SV-318 a year later, I loved playing games, mainly in the arcades and on the two main home consoles of the period, the Atari 2600 and Intellivision.

Having little money to spend on games, I decided to make my own versions for the Spectravideo.

Some early game listings were published in the local Australian user group publications and were received well at the time.

Then the entrepreneur in myself, thought, why not put some of these games on tapes and sell them locally and via the user groups. Thus the ‘Program Pack’ series of titles was launched with the initial pack containing one utility for drawing sprites, and three simple games.

This was soon followed by more and more titles and program packs, with over 50 games being released in a short period.

After dabbling with enhancing some of the early games with add-on machine code routines, I decided to program my very first 100% machine code title, Meteor Swarm.

Heavily inspired by the arcade game Asteroids, this was very well received, and along with a cover designed by a local artist and a 2nd B-side title, Birds of Orion, was the very first release under the Electric Adventures name (the Program Packs where subsequently re-branded as Electric Adventures).

Around the same time the ColecoVision was launched in Australia. Coming with Donkey Kong, as it’s pack in game, the systems literally flew off the shelves.

I worked in the local games store that Christmas and can remember opening the store in the morning to receive a huge palette of ColecoVision systems, stacking them around the store and them being sold well before closing each day.

So, my first experience of the console was demonstrating the system in store to customers and watching lots of lucky people take them home for Christmas.

My efforts, both working in the store, and selling my own titles paid off a few months later, with enough money to upgrade to a Spectravideo SVI-328 Mark II and most importantly a SVI-603 Colecovision adapter. Along with a ColecoVision joystick from a broken system, and several actual ColecoVision titles on cartridge.

Soon I was playing Mouse Trap, Q*bert, Frogger and Popeye at home and learning more about great games.

In the years that followed more, ever more complex machine code games were released (Munch Mania, Pyxidis and Video Grafitti), all of the titles were ported to the MSX systems after the purchase of a SVI-728, itself followed by a SVI-738 X’Press.

Next, I turned my hand to writing, starting tutorial articles on enhancing basic games with machine code (Beyond Basic), the Micro’s Gazette magazine and finally the book ‘Spectravideo and MSX Complete User Guide’.

Moving on from retail, I embarked on a career in the software industry, writing complex data driven business applications; ran a company, selling a market leading Point of Sale solution; many years in the Financial Planning, Banking Industry, Tourism and Gaming and now the resource sector.

In the last ten years, with a renewed interest in all things retro, I converted several of my titles from the Spectravideo/MSX originals across to the ColecoVision. As well as creating a video series on making retro games.