Diary of an 80s Computer Geek

In this book, we meet Steven. He is a Brit in high school back in the 1980s. Computers are starting to come out. He wants to study them in high school. But he is not chosen for the program. He does talk his mom into buying him a home computer from Sinclair.

Steven writes some games. They get published in magazines, and then later in the stores. Unfortunately he does not get rich from this. He has to take a job when he graduates college. He works selling computers and software in a store.

Eventually Steven gets laid off when the old computers stop selling. He gets lucky and submits a game to a magazine. Instead of getting paid for that game in cash, he negotiated advertising space in the magazine. Then he makes sure his game advertises his other games.

Wouldn't you know it? Steven's plan works and he is busy fulfilling game orders every day. It was tough to keep up. But for a while he made some cash. All things come to an end. Steven stops writing software, and declines another deal with the magazine.

This book is a trip back to the 1980s, especially for those of us who played games (and wrote games) for 8-bit computers back then. Steven wrote games for the Sinclair. I wrote games for the Radio Shack Tandy. Good times. Good times.