Meeting Mr. Z80, an interview with Damien Scattergood

By Jack ColemanFor those who are unfamiliar, Damien Scattergood is a legend among Irish game developers. Known as “Mr. Z80” (named for the Z80 assembly language), Damien developed a multitude of games during the 1908s, the golden age of game development. Working for a studio full of young and hungry developers like himself, Damien helped develop beloved games like Vigilante (1989) and most famously Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker (1989). Recently, I caught up with Damien for a chat. Now running his own independent studio, Scattergood Studios, I was eager to pick his brain about his future plans as well as reminisce about his work in the ‘80s. I opened up by asking Damien to give me a more detailed account of his history in the gaming industry as well as what keeps him going over forty years later. “In 1980 computers were pretty much unheard of. My dad was a mechanic so I was always interested in machines and tinkering with things. I was able to get a few hours here and there on a TRS 80 in one of my friends’ schools and I got hooked. When the ZX80 was launched I begged my dad to buy me one. It took me a year but eventually, he bought me a ZX81! We used it to play games. There was only a handful of games so we all started to write our own small games. We just got hooked. You’d write a game share it with friends and have fun together. I found I was pretty good and after a while, I thought I could make a living doing it – so I tried. At the time most commercial companies were actually set up and run out of back bedrooms. The machines were cheap and you had an open market with a hunger for new games. The rest is sort of history”.“The ’80s were really exciting, you could play games and say you had a job for a start! The pace of development of machines was incredible. It was a golden era of development. In the five years from 1980 to 1985, we went from the 1k ZX80 to 128k ZX Spectrum. You then had the introduction of the Amiga, Atari ST, NES and more. Keeping up with the new developments was a full-time job on its own and super exciting. In that time I learned multiple languages 6502, Z80, 68000, C, Basic, Forth and multiple OS’s. Most of our code was at chip-level – so you had a steep learning curve and every single day was a new challenge. My first bit of crazy coding was writing a Z80 to 6502 cross compiler. Don’t even ask!” I am someone who is avidly interested in this era of the gaming industry. It was a time when developers were like explorers, carving out new paths in technology and pushing the limits of their hardware. Hearing Damien talk about his experiences during this era was fascinating: “Remember at this time we had no Internet! There was very little information or resources available either. We had to learn by trial and error, reverse engineering code and ROM disassembles and just by talking to other developers. I remember spending hours on the phone talking to other developers about how we coded routines. We’d met up in hotels, computers clubs and exhibitions to share ideas, code and reference information. Handwritten notes were the big thing back then. Printers? They were for the elite developers only. The competition was pretty fierce too. We always wanted to show off our latest bit of code that pushed the machines that little bit further. At the time we didn’t have a lot of tools, game engines like today were just in our imagination. We had to develop our own coding platforms and engines ourselves. My first few games were developed on pen and paper. I wrote the assembler mnemonics beside the code and then painstakingly typed the numbers into the spectrum to run it.  I still keep some of the code to remind me of those days. I think I got my first official assembler in 1985…” And what keeps Damien developing games to this day? “Gone are the days of simple graphics and beeps. If I can imagine it I can create it. I play keyboards too – so I can get very creative with my music and sound effects. As a creative artist, I have lots of avenues to explore – sometimes too many. This has really expanded the potential for games a lot. I actually think the big game companies still have a long way to go, they are really only starting. We are still in a very exciting time. Gaming is more about creative media now. All forms of media are now merging – Music, Film, Gaming, Storytelling. Look at the development of video production techniques in Disney’s The Mandalorian. The film sets and the StageCraft Graphics Engine they use – are straight from the gaming industry. The technologies are the same”. I was curious to know more about Damien’s time at Emerald, the studio that created hits like Moonwalker and Vigilante from a townhouse in Waterford: “Emerald was amazing. For the first time, someone believed in us as developers. We were a bunch of kids, 14 of us, who wanted to take on the world and win. We pretty much did that for the time we had. We were living the dream. We had to create a lot of code and tools as well. In my first six months there I wrote my game engine for the Spectrum. I then wrote a set of software routines that converted Spectrum graphics code to the Amstrad. So I actually wrote for Spectrum and Amstrad simultaneously. I developed a sound processor and secure tape loading system for our games too. As Senior Z80 Developer I got to help other people out too. I wrote the music routines for “The Running Man”, the Arnold Schwarzenegger film. That was fun. The industry was very competitive and tough. After Moonwalker, Emerald tried to develop a number of their own games but the financial stretch was too much for the company and they eventually folded. It was a pity as we had some amazing talent. At the time the games industry was still frowned upon by big businesses. We had always been told to get proper jobs – so raising capital was a tough challenge. I could tell you plenty of stories about that!”. Damien’s future plans for Scattergood Studios involve a multimedia approach, he wants to bring creatives together to combine music, film, storytelling, games and art to create unique experiences for fans. One of the studio’s current projects is a game called Zoro Zombies. When asked about the game’s development progress, Damien responded with: “This is our first foray into the Defold Engine. It is coming along slowly. I’m learning the engine and writing the code at the same time – which means everything is a little slower.  For this game, I’m trying to differ the development model slightly as well. I’m developing the graphics last, which is a bit odd. So what you see on my social media channels are only prototype graphics. The principle is to develop a working game model quickly – with all the basic code elements and then flesh it out later”. Scattergood Studios has a lot of content in the pipeline. Games like Zoro Zombies and Bubble Trouble are currently in development, a short film titled “The Explorers” is in production and an app and book are also planned. Damien hopes to hire some freelance Defold developers soon if any of our readers are familiar with the engine and are interested. In addition, Damien also has an investing project called “Baby Dragon” which he hopes to use to invest in small projects. At the conclusion of our interview, because I was curious, I asked Damien which games that he’s developed were his favourites. Additionally, I also asked what his favourite games were in general. For development, Damien cites Moonwalker as his favourite because “it pushed me to my limits”, he also mentioned, “SuperTed: The Search for Spot” (1990)  because he was a fan of the cartoons and “Vigilante” because of the rivalry he had with the developers of a competing beat’em up “Target Renegade” (1988). As for his favourite games that he’s played, Damien is partial to “Jetpac” (1983) because “This is the first big game I owned and played to death. At the time it was simply amazing. It’s very simple but for the time it was lightning fast and super playable. There isn’t a lot to the game, but the playability is awesome. You don’t get that in many games today”. He also enjoys Uridium (1986) and Trantor: The Last Stormtrooper (1987) because of their amazing soundtracks and visuals that seemed to push the limits of the technology of the time. As for modern games, Damien is a fan of “Little Nightmares” (2017) because of its stunning graphics and atmosphere. I feel you, Damien, that game simultaneously terrified and mesmerised me. It was an absolute pleasure talking to Damien and I’m very excited to see what he produces in the future. He would like me to leave this interview off with the motto of Scattergood Studios, “Create, Inspire and Play”, if you want to get into games then just go for it.