Paul "Paulie" Hughes
@pauliehughes
43 years of programming games; from Vic-20 to PS5! The LEGO game guy, The Ocean Loader Guy. 56 shipped titles, 240M sales. Retro Game Code archiver/documenter. Happy Chappy. Occasional Magician. Typography snob. BAFTA member.
As you get older, sometimes you need to embrace and acknowledge your failures along with your successes… One game sold in excess of 5,000,000 units, the other, well, did not. Don’t let one dreadful title define you.
Had a couple of amazing days down in London with my daughter this weekend to watch Hamilton staring one of the original Broadway cast. Absolutely astounding production. Mind blown!
A few more bits and bobs for the wall - some more giant carts and giant cassettes.
Couldn’t resist - a giant cassette tape to go with the ocean cartridges!
Thought I’d do a Navy Seals cart as well - next to the actual size of a Commodore cartridge. I guess I should do a giant cassette now, in order to round off my C64 trophies!
Another giant cart for the wall. Batman (by Zach Townsend) was the first proof of concept for Ocean’s multibank cartridges. I honed the cart software with this title to get the whole game into 128K. We upped the ante with the compression on Navy Seals to get loads of extra bitmaps in the 128K.
That’s the Ocean 64 cart modelled. Giant label made, now to print a mahoosive version of it for the wall. It’s been 37 years since Dave Collier and I created the multibank cart (the hardware was all Dave!)
Another giant 3D print of a DS cart this time for the wall. Thus far my magnum opus.
One more to celebrate my old mate Colin Porch’s sequel to Head over Heels - Return to Blacktooth. Released last week by @thalamusdigital.bsky.social
A little bit of weekend de-stressing making some retro 3D prints. Proper therapeutic!
A stressful week, so spent the weekend 3D printing some little trophies - one for Atic Atac and one for The Sentinel.
Back from one hell of a weekend at Zzap Live 2026. Did a Q&A panel with a group of the old Ocean crew. Signed stuff, chatted through the night and had a thoroughly lovely couple of days.
3D printed a little raked stand for the Star Wars minifigs.
Rather chuffed with this print. Might do another one sliced up so I can use the original BBC colours.
Hen's teeth! Just ran across this advert from 1988 again - how times have changed! Jesus! I think Creations did the 8 bit ports of this (it was a decent little game to be fair).
Just digging through some old back issues of Your Computer, and came across this advert for one of the greatest pieces of software engineering ever... 1K Chess.
Robin, I can’t believe you don’t have them all - you were the guy that got me into Graphics Gems and Jim Blinn back in the 90’s! Here’s mine 😉
A quick trip to the Manchester Christmas Markets, and as I was on Albert Square, it would've been rude to not visit the old Ocean building on Central Street... Me in 2025 and 1987 Oh my word!
Just came across this advert from the 80s - it made me chuckle. A desk at armchair height, with the TV a good six-feet away! You can't beat a bit of "keyboarding"!
@mikejmika.bsky.social A little something cut into a playing card for your launch tomorrow :o)
Quite proud of this. This is the original Taito flyer art for Renegade (as used for the loading screen on the Speccy version). I've had a few partial scans and B/W photocopies over the years, but finally found a dog-eared over exposed full image. Several days of re-touching and I think we're there!
More treasure from Dad’s attic; my first forays into demo programming via this little beastie!