Lawrence (Jim) Wills

From Jim Wills' website

Lawrence (Jim) Wills

Jim Wills started out writing games for the MTX with Antony Butterfield, starting with Pothole Pete which was distributed by Continental Software. They continued to write games under the Megastar Software label, Son of Pete (follow up to Pothole Pete) and Rolla Bearing. Jim also wrote Landmines published by  Lightbulb Software Developments.

There is more detailed information on these games on Jim Wills' website.

Jim's site also gives some more detail on his time with Memotech . . . . .

"[Jim] became involved with the MTX whilst working in [his] local computer shop. Having sold many MTX`s [he] decided to try and write a game, it was called Minefield. This game was written in basic, it worked but was slow. Someone (Antony Butterfield) who came into the shop had written a game on the spectrum and had recently bought an MTX. [They] decided to write a game together and after a lot of work and frustration wrote [their] first game together called Pothole Pete. [They] then took it down to Memotech to see if they would sell it through their company Continental Software, which they did.

Whilst [he] was there [he] jokingly asked if any jobs were going, after some time they offered [him] the job of Technical Advisor which [he] took. Additionally to the TA role [he] also got lumbered with games software duties, after looking at the existing stock [he] became concerned by the lack of quality and numbers available which is why Megastar Games was born.

[They] liked to play games as well as write them which is why [their] games had good gameplay, though some did find a couple of them quite hard to start with ([him] included) Due to lack of time and no space [he] had to give up the production and distribution of [their] games to the MTX usergroup GENPAT. Initially all was well but after the first payment no more was recieved. [he] attempted to recover [their] royalties but the company kept going broke and being a Limited company it protected them from [Megastar Software].

Jim also wrote a version of Toado for the Amiga - with much swankier graphics than the MTX. Jim gave an interview to the "charityware" site, AmigaPD, about the writing of Toado' in 2011. You can read the interview here.

The interview also has an end note outlining some of Jim's future plans....

"Currently (April 2011) I am slowly in the process of converting Rolla Bearing to run on mobile phones, this is a test project really but one I hope to grow and hopefully and finally release quite a few games. Keep an eye on my website at jimsbitesizegames.com (currently a veg shop!!) "

The "veg shop" comment is outdated now though - the games web site is up and looks interesting - as of November 2011, Rolla Bearing was still in development, but the plan is to bring it to the App Store.

The site also gives a little history of Jim's career between Memotech and today.......

"My passion for game programming though remaining high has not been my main source of income since the Memotech days. I have worked in car sales both new and used cars and car parts departments, high pressure water cleaners as a technical sales person, then worked for Rover making of all things the rear seats for the Montego estate car.

From Rover it was off to British Telecom as a repair engineer spanning fifteen years. Near the time I left I worked on a project called ‘Engineer’s Assistant’ which was to provide a laptop based ‘in the field guide’ to help the engineers when they came up against a difficult problem to overcome.

I finally left BT in 2004 to set up my own computer repair business, this is currently my main source of income though I hope to be able to move away from this and more towards the software development. I have been involved with quite a few different games over the years since those early days, working on the Commodore Amiga, Nintendo Gameboy Advance and Java games for the mobile phones running Symbian. Due to a reliance on getting someone to publish and market a game as there were no real alternatives available at the time sadly none of the game ever saw commercial release."

Jim now runs Anvil-ICT, quoting from their website.....

"Anvil-ICT is an IT solutions company located in Carterton (Oxfordshire) covering an area roughly 15 miles in radius for support. We offer onsite as well as bring to our office services depending on the requirements. Our experience goes back to the early 1980's and includes computer sales / technical support & software development. With over 15 years in Telecoms line repair/provision (BT trained) providing our customers with a unique service where Broadband problems occur as we can work on both the Computer and Telecoms side of thing"

website: http://www.anvil-ict.co.uk