|
Notes
|
Prolific 8-bit programming pioneer of some quite groundbreaking Spectrum games in the 1980s, notably a number of licensed conversions for Ocean/Imagine including COBRA, GREEN BERET, MIKIE, HYPERSPORTS and BATMAN: THE CAPED CRUSADER. When the commercial games market for the Spectrum started drying up in the late 80s, Joffa Smith moved on to the 16-bit platforms including the Atari ST and consoles (SNES, Game Boy, Mega Drive/Genesis).
Just prior to his move to the Atari ST, a two week contract involving a modest sum of money to do the background computer displays for the second season of the UK sci-fi comedy TV series ''Red Dwarf'' presented itself. Unbeknownst to him, it was the seed that would years later inspire him to set up his own small production company - Shorten Suite (sounds like a cheesy name for a bad artificial sweetener, doesn't it?! ;-p--) - with the aim of producing his own games, films, music, scripts, novels, artwork and anything else that took his fancy.
Meanwhile, fed up with writing computer games and facing the prospect of coding for yet another console in the form of the new Sega Saturn, Joffa did the unthinkable in 1995 and abruptly left the games industry behind. For the next 5 years, amongst other assorted activities, he did some DJ'ing in Blackpool. However, in need of extra income, he returned to the games industry in 2000 when approached by his old colleagues at Special FX / Rage to write mobile/cell phone games for them.
With the door pried ajar, he seized the opportunity to return to coding for the consoles and feverishly produced a handful of games for the Game Boy Advance and Gizmondo handheld before disappearing from the industry once again in the mid-2000s. This followed work on what would be his last known title, an unreleased Spectrum shoot'em-up called SAUCER that was planned for release on his own company label Shorten Suite Software.
With great sadness, however, Joffa Smith's coding genius and life story came to a premature halt in June 2010 when he passed away at age 43 years. His death, reportedly, came after spending some 3 months in hospital with an unknown illness.
|
NAME
