Andrew Braybrook (born 1960) is a

software engineer Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ''p ...

and former

game programmer A game programmer is a software engineer, programmer, or computer scientist who primarily develops codebases for video games or related software, such as game development tools. Game programming has many specialized disciplines, all of which fall ...

. He created

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

s such as ''

Paradroid ''Paradroid'' is a Commodore 64 computer game written by Andrew Braybrook and published by Hewson Consultants in 1985. It is a shoot 'em up with puzzle elements and was critically praised at release. The objective is to clear a fleet of spaceshi ...

'', ''

Gribbly's Day Out ''Gribbly's Day Out'' is a Commodore 64 game by Andrew Braybrook, released by Hewson in 1985. It was written over a three-month period. The game is set on the planet Blabgor and centred on the exploits of Gribbly Grobbly and his attempts to re ...

'', '' Fire and Ice'', ''

Uridium ''Uridium'' (released on the NES as ''The Last Starfighter'') is a science fiction side-scrolling shoot 'em up originally designed by Andrew Braybrook for the Commodore 64, and later ported to other 8-bit machines. It consists of fifteen levels ...

'' and '' Morpheus''. He also programmed the

Commodore Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved grap ...

and Atari ST conversion of the arcade game '' Rainbow Islands''. In 1986 Braybrook was voted Best Programmer of the Year at the

Golden Joystick Awards The Golden Joystick Awards, also known as the People's Gaming Awards, is a video game award ceremony; it awards the best video games of the year, as voted for originally by the British general public, but is now a global event that can be vot ...

Career

Braybrook started out writing accounting programs for

GEC Marconi Marconi Electronic Systems (MES), or GEC-Marconi as it was until 1998, was the defence arm of General Electric Company (GEC). It was demerged from GEC and bought by British Aerospace (BAe) on 30 November 1999 to form BAE Systems. GEC then rena ...

using

COBOL COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily ...

in 1979. In his spare time he wrote games in

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

for the ZX80, ZX81 and Dragon 32. His first foray into professional games came while he was playing

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and s ...

in a rock band with Steve Turner. Turner was writing games for the

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colou ...

in his spare time and decided to make his break into full-time games production by starting the company which went on to become

Graftgold Graftgold was an independent computer game developer that came to prominence in the 1980s, producing numerous computer games on a variety of 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit platforms. History The Hewson Era The studio Graftgold was formed in 1983, whe ...

. A few months after its inception, Turner asked Braybrook to join him in September 1983. Braybrook was commissioned by the magazine ''

Zzap!64 ''Zzap!64'' was a computer games magazine covering games on the Commodore International series of computers, especially the Commodore 64 (C64). It was published in the UK by Newsfield Publications Ltd and later by Europress Impact. The magazi ...

'' to write a diary detailing the making of the video game ''Paradroid''. This was followed by a subsequent diary published in the magazine about his game ''Morpheus''. From 1998 to July 2016 Braybrook worked as a senior

software developer Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development inv ...

for Eurobase International. Since then he has worked as a freelance writer, programmer and game designer. Several games have been created by taking inspiration from ''

''.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Braybrook, Andrew 1960 births British computer programmers British video game designers Golden Joystick Award winners Living people Video game programmers