So, what would you like to know? I can't remember the first time I saw a video game, but it may have been Pong at Nottingham's Commodore International conference centre (now demolished) in the mid-1970s. It was the basic black-and-white affair, cost 2 pence per go and the first player to reach 15 points won the game. To be honest with you, I never really liked Pong much and it was machines like Space Invaders and Moon Cresta that really started my interest in all things gaming-related.
I Purchased my first ZX Spectrum in July 1984 and taught myself Z80 assembler the following year. My first programming efforts were pretty dismal and none of them survive to this day, but in 1988 I managed to write a Centipede game for my own amusement. To my surprise this turned out to be quite a playable little game, so I decided to follow up my unexpected success by attempting some 'proper' sprite games for the machine. After a couple of rather dodgy efforts (Let's try to forget Krazy Kitchens shall we?) Egghead was the first one to be published and several others followed over the next few years until the machine ceased to be supported by software houses and magazines in 1993.
After the ZX Spectrum died as a mainstream games machine I worked for an obscure Nottinghamshire software house as a programmer of warehouse management systems, mainly in COBOL (yuck!) and C. It wasn't the greatest job in the world, but it was literally six minutes walk from my bedroom to my desk at work. In 2003 I moved on and since then have been working as a software engineer writing embedded C for fruit machines and simple 68000-based video games.
In my spare time I still like to write innovative computer games, and spend a lot of time working on various Spectrum projects. I rarely get paid for my games anymore - the occasional tenner here or there - but it's not about money anyway. I like to think that my little corner of the Retro gaming scene is doing its bit to keep the old formats alive, both for the gamers of the past and for those who are yet to discover the joys of retrogaming.
And the greatest achievement of my lifetime to date? If I am being honest this was probably realised at the age of eight or nine when, armed only with a mini trifle, I successfully instigated a food fight at a children's Christmas party. Engineering a dining hall full of little horrors hurling egg custards and jellies around is a feat that I have so far failed miserably to surpass, despite numerous attempts. ;)
Click here to send me an email, don't forget to remove the spam filter from the address Jonathan Cauldwell, the programmer responsible for this abortion of a website... 
 I am a Breakout Bat.
I am an abstract sort of creature, who dislikes any sort of restraint. If you try to pigeonhole me, I'll break the box, and come back for more. I don't have any particular ambitions, I just drift, but I am adept at keeping life going along. What Video Game Character Are You?
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