An Interview with Paul Hughes

I’d always been fascinated with computers and computing since I could read; I used to digest all my Dad’s electronics magazines, filled with info on how to build your own computers – but they were way out of our league.

I first laid hands on a PET computer, where I played my first computer game Nightmare Park which was from a type in listing; this was at a friend’s Dad’s office where he had a bank of PETs to run his loan business back in 1980.

The first computer I actually owned was a ZX81 that my Dad lovingly put together from a Sinclair kit (it was cheaper that way). On that I learned BASIC and very quickly after that Z80 machine code. From there I went through the TI99-4A, and the Vic-20 where I first started to release commercial games, and that led me to the new kid on the block that was the C64.

It was one hell of a series of events; around ‘81 a new video hire shop had opened across the road from the house where I lived. Every time I went in there (which was a lot!) I used to babble on about how they should computerise their video booking system. To cut a long story short, about six months after they opened I got a phone call from the MD of the shop – and he asked if I could pop in to see him when I had a minute - me, thinking I’d forgotten to take a video back wandered straight over.

Turns out he was opening a new business in town to sell computers and computer games and wondered if I would be interested in working there during weekends and holidays (I was still in school at this point) as I knew about computers. No brainer for me, I got to be surrounded with all the latest computers and got to choose what games we stocked! Suffice to say I snatched his hand off.

The shop became quite the draw for local enthusiasts, college students and wannabe game makers, so I’d be this teenage kid giving people advice on what computers to buy, how to program them and what software to use.

When I hit 16 the chap that owned the video shop, computer shop and now a travel agent (!) decided he wanted to form a software development company too, so that really pushed me into wanting to write games for a living. I would be tinkering around with game ideas on the machines in the shop; a couple of guys from the local college used to pop in and provide support (and graphics).

Now, the one thing I loved about the C64, and indeed what made me buy one was the SID chip. Forbidden Forest melted my mind and so I was always fascinated with making the sound chip sing. Alas I had (and still have) the musical talents of a sponge ball so whilst I could tinker around modulating the inputs to the sound chip, Greensleeves was as far as I got!

Every week this tall chap who looked a lot like Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy used to pop into the shop; he was well into his games and we got talking about music, our love of the music of the arcades and he told me his stories of being a gigging musician. We became very friendly, frequenting the arcades and he told me about his exploits in music on the C64 - at the time I’d just got in a new bit of software called Electrosound which was the closest thing to Rob Hubbard at the time as it actually did some post modulation; pitch bends, patch swapping drums etc, so I told him about this and he bought a copy.

The following week, he comes in with a floppy disk. He gets me to boot up Electrosound and loads up this version of Abba’s Money, Money, Money that he’d knocked up – he told me about what beautiful musical compositions Abba did and presses play. Out of the speaker comes this stunning rendition of Abba with all these lovely little after touches. WTF!

Over the next few weeks he brings in more and more pieces of original music including one called Ocean Dries Up that starts as a piss take of Martin’s Ocean Loader music (little did we know in a couple of years’ time it would be in Martin’s music driver, playing on Ocean titles and known as Ocean Loader III).

At that time, I was working on a little C64 game not dissimilar to Star Force and he rocked up one day with some title music for it. Not long after this the sales at the shop crashed and the business was liquidated, but Pete an I kept in touch and I suggested we have a pop of doing something like WE M.U.S.I.C; I’d write drivers and Pete could compose the music and see if we could get any work… And so the collaborations began.

Around ’81 I pushed out a version of Pac Man on the Vic-20 having just seen it on holiday in Florida – in hindsight it was pretty awful, but it ran on an Unexpanded Vic, played reasonably similar to it and was all in machine code! It can’t have been too bad as two months into its release cycle NAMCO sent out a cease and desist to the publisher! From there I published a few games on the TI99 through the local computer shop and then through their newly formed publishing label.

Having met Pete, I started writing music drivers and landed us a couple of gigs with Superior Software and Elite Systems where I provided the drivers and Pete delivered the music in spades.

Serendipity! Whilst doing the music for Repton 3 for Superior Software, they asked me if I’d mind going to the programmer’s house to get the music incorporated, so I popped into Manchester to meet the game’s author Richard Kay. He was ex-Ocean and just about to form his own game dev company Software Creations. The meeting was fateful, and he asked me to go work for him as his first programmer. Upon getting this job I was chatting to my aunt about what I was doing and telling him the story about Rick and Ocean, when she drops the bombshell, Ocean? Your Uncle Les’ nephew works for Ocean, he’s doing pretty well there – she meant THE Dave Collier! The next day she rings him up, tells him about me, about the games stuff, about Rick Kay (whom Dave worked with) and the next thing I have an open invite to go have a look around 6 Central Street.

Software Creations was just up the road from Ocean, so one evening, I popped in, Dave meets me, takes me into the dungeon and shows me Terra Cresta. We get talking about scrolling, multiplexing, tape protection and all sorts and he says, Barbara didn’t tell me you knew your stuff – calls over Gary Bracey as says Gary can we give this lad here a job? Twenty minutes later, and rather unexpectedly, I had a job offer!

The overly keen, socially inept but mildly talented 17-year-old, said Work for Ocean, are you kidding me? HELL YES! on the spot without thinking of Creations – it took me a long, long time to make up with Richard for that!

The first day was a whirlwind; I got to meet all these legends; I was tersely related to the king of C64 Dave Collier and thus as his little protégé was shown around to Martin Galway, Joffa Smith, Mike Lamb – all these absolute legends

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I was a kid in the candy store, desperate to impress with all these peers who were out and out game dev legends. I was buzzing by the time the day ended.

With film and TV licenses we were pretty much left to our own devices; we got told we have the license to this film, here’s the script, off you go, and left it to the dev team – usually a programmer and an artist to design, develop and ship the game (we even wrote the manuals!) Gary Bracey would chip in with ideas as he was a proper dyed in the wool gamer and film buff all rolled into one, but the core flow of the game was pretty much left to us. It was incredibly trusting!

I think it’s pretty well documented (see Pete’s interview) that we had a bit of a falling out over Ocean and the Double Take soundtrack – totally my fault I hasten to add – so things were a little tense for a while especially when someone within Ocean, who shall remain nameless, really fanned the flames between us (it was 20 years before we figured it all out and realised we’d been duped).

With that being said, we still travelled to and from work together every day, had lunch together and played games all the way through our time there. It was an odd old time; we didn’t see much of each other in the office as Pete was locked away with Martin in his little fish tank office and I was down the corridor doing my thing.

Alas we had zero influence over what musician worked on each game as normally you had the choice of Martin or Martin – but once Pete came into the fray there was choice and some senior devs started asking for Pete or Martin specifically.

Hands down I loved working there. I was in amongst one of the finest development crews that you could have wished to be with, and we learned so much from each that other I wouldn’t have swapped it for the world. That said, there were politics, in fighting, incredible pressure to deliver, and a bunch of late teen / early twenty egos fuelled by hormones working in a crammed underground office for 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Here’s the thing though; I left Ocean 29 years ago and I’m still friends with virtually every single person I worked with – we all grew up together, we learned together, I guess we helped create an industry together.