Matthew Smith

Although he wrote a couple of earlier games for the TRS-80 and the Vic-20, Matthew Smith is best known for creating the platform games Manic Miner and its sequel Jet Set Willy for the ZX Spectrum.

Smith wrote his first commercial game when he was 14 years old. It was a clone of the arcade game Galaxian, called Delta Tau One.

Following his departure from Bug-Byte who had released Manic Miner, Smith set up Software Projects Ltd. with Alan Maton and Soo Maton (coming from Bug-Byte) in 1983. After producing Jet Set Willy for his new company Smith worked on a couple of other new titles but none were released. This included a planned 3rd game to feature Miner Willy called Miner Willy Meets the Taxman.

Smith left the company in 1988 and later moved to the Netherlands although he was eventually deported and returned to Britain in 1997. He took on a role with the computer games developer Runecraft in 1999 but they went out of business after releasing only one game, Scrabble for the Game Boy Color.

He has attended several conventions devoted to retro gaming as well as appearing in a tv documentary on the history of video games.