Interview with Jon ‘Jumpy!’ Read

Today we have an interview with Jon Read, a man you have probably not heard of. But, for those of you who used to own a Psion PDA he is likely to be responsible for having taken a lot of your time a few years ago- he certainly did for me. It turns out that he has done a lot since that time, but none of it matters to me as much as his crowning acheivement- he made Jumpy!!! Read on to find out what he really did and what makes the man tick-

1/ How did you get involved in programming games for Psion and was it a worthwhile venture for you?

I had always been interested in programming ever since I got a Commodore 64 as a kid.  My first Psion was an Organizer II CM, which is where I first started developing in OPL (Organizer Programming Language), and managed to implement some fairly basic things that I was overly impressed with at the time.  I eventually upgraded the CM to an LZ (Four lines of text! 64 whole kilobytes of RAM!), paid for by working weekends in Woolworth’s coffee bar.

From there, I remember the product brochure for the Series 3 dropping through my door, and my jaw hit the floor as soon as I read it.  It was a dream machine!  4.7MHz CPU, 240×80 LCD bitmapped display, multitasking!  I had to have one – but no way I could afford it. After much pleading and negotiation, I extracted a promise from my wonderfully generous father that I could have one for Christmas/Birthday.  I was still at school at the time.

So, with Series 3 in hand, my OPL programming really took off.  After learning the ins and outs of the system, Jumpy! was born in early 1992. I remember spending many hours working on the optimization alone – finding exactly which combination of operations and resources could be used together to extract maximum speed from the machine.  I may be wrong, but I’m not sure than anyone else ever got a full-screen scrolling game working as fast on the Psion handhelds – that’s not a great claim to fame, but I have precious few so I’m running with it

I released Jumpy! as shareware, and got letters (and even hand-drawn pictures, all of which I still have) from all over the world from people who were playing and enjoying the game.  I think that’s what pleased me most; at this time I was earning practically nothing from it.  I went to university, and had begun to drift away from Psion development, until one day I received a letter from Psion.  They had found Jumpy! on FIDOnet (remember, this was well before the Internet was available to most people outside of universities and large institutions) and wanted to release it on a Games Pack, if I would agree to that.  Would I?  Hell yes!

So, Games Pack I was launched with Jumpy! on the front of the box.  I wasn’t paid a fortune – £0.40 per copy sold – but as anyone who has struggled financially as a student will know, the money was incredibly welcome.  Incidentally, if anyone has a boxed copy of the Jumpy! games pack, please consider selling it to me – I don’t have one, and never have had.

Fast forward to 1993, and the launch of the 3a.  Again, no way I could afford one, even with royalties drifting in from sales of Jumpy!, so colour me excited when I get a call from Psion asking me to write another game for a forthcoming “Games Pack 3a”.  Yes, they would supply a Series 3a for me to work on. Fantastic!

Six months or so later, I sent Psion the final code for PopOut (a breakout clone).  This didn’t make quite the same splash as Jumpy! did, but did OK and received some very good reviews.

After university, I was offered a temporary job at Psion Software.  I worked there for 3 months and was exposed to what was to become the operating system for the Series 5.  Then it was back to university to start a PhD, part-way through which the Series 5 was launched.  I loved that handheld – even more so as Psion loaned me one to encourage me to write some more games for it.  I still have that loan unit, I’m guessing they don’t want it back any more…

In any case, it worked – I ported Jumpy! to the Series 5 and updated it to Jumpy! Plus, adding more features and more levels.  I also back-ported the Plus version to the 3a (and Siena), releasing it as shareware.

That didn’t signal the end of my involvement with Psion though. Again, another phone call out of the blue, telling me about a new product they were working on and how they’d like to get one of my games included in its ROM by default.  The game they were interested in was a version of the classic SameGame (I had released a version for the Series 3/3a/5 and Siena), which ended up being renamed “Cascade”, shipped on the lovely Psion Revo, and probably caused quite a few wasted hours for many people

Unfortunately there were no more Psion handhelds.  Psion Software became Symbian, Psion themselves drifted into relative obscurity, I got a job, and that was the end of my game development.

I do still maintain epoc zone, and my personal Psion pages still exist here.

2/ Have you programmed other titles for different platforms and would you consider doing so again for the latest smartphones?

I haven’t written games for any other platforms, but have worked in the mobile phone arena since around 1999 as an embedded software engineer. More recently I’ve been developing apps for the iPhone and worked with some pretty major manufacturers on operating system features for new Android handsets. Nothing much in a personal capacity, but that is due to change shortly as I leave full-time employment and go freelance.

So to answer the other part of your question, games on the iPhone/iPad or Android?  It’s definitely a distinct possibility.

3/ What phone do you use now and why?

I have an iPhone 3G.  Not a 3Gs, not a 4.  I may upgrade… but it’s not a priority for me at the moment.  In the day job I get to play with phones that haven’t even hit the rumour sites yet, so I don’t really feel the need to own the latest & greatest myself.

I tried using Symbian phones, but could never really feel for them the same way I did my Psion handhelds (and to a lesser extent, the iPhone).  My next phone may even be an Android device, though I’m really not a Java fan.

4/ Do you believe that the Psion range of PDAs were ahead of their time?

Absolutely.  What else was there?  There were a few Windows CE devices, and perhaps the DIP Pocket PC/Atari Portfolio, but in comparison they were slow, clunky and lacking in features.

Psion’s real masterstroke was in allowing the handhelds to be programmed, not only via a PC, but on the device itself.  This led to a massive amount of available software, much like the iPhone today, albeit without a central app store.  All of my games were written on the palmtop, not on a desktop PC.

5/ What game do you wish you had created?

Hmm, that’s a difficult one.  I actually wrote but never finished quite a few other games, including one RPG, some puzzle games, and card games.  I really wish I’d managed to get those out, especially the RPG, as nothing like it was ever seen on Psion palmtops. Unfortunately, as is often the case, life intervened and I never managed to devote the required time to polishing them off.

To be honest, I’m not a massive games player myself.  Of other people’s games, I think the ones I was most impressed with were De3ender and Stigma from Psion’s “Games Arcade” pack.

6/ How does it make you feel to know that many of us played your games for hours on end and still think of them fondly to this day?

To be honest, it doesn’t seem particularly real to me.  It was a long time ago, and I’ve *never* actually seen anyone playing a single one of my games. Having said that, I am proud of it in my own small way, and as I said I’ve kept all the letters I received.  By todays standards, these games are pretty poor, but I suppose we shouldn’t be judging them in comparison to apps on the colour-screened 1GHz+ handheld devices available now.

So yes… a little proud, definitely pleased, but it’s hardly the first thing I bring up in conversation when I first meet someone