Wayne Smithson

Written by grams88

This is where Wayne's adventures in computing started.

The brilliant Lemmings 2. Wayne was the sole programmer for the Atari ST version. Making sure the game was a faithfull conversion of the Amiga original was his mission.

Even though Lemmings 2 was a fantastic game, Wayne prefers the original and the expansion disk, Oh no More Lemmings, of which we see a screenshot here.

The Blood Money logo, accompanied by an eary voice announcing the game. Legendary.

The classic title screen for the game Blood Money.

Pushover definitely featured one of the most impressive intro cinematics on the ST. This is the box art.

One Step Beyond, the follow up to Ocean's classic puzzler Pushover. Wayne got 3 months to complete the Amiga to ST conversion. He finished the job in 3 days!

By the time Creatures came out, Wayne had his own company and programmers working for him. He wasn't directly involved in the conversion of this hidden gem. Creatures featured almost ray trayced like graphics and is a must play if you are a fan of the platform genre.

The beautiful boxart of Ork.

Shadow of the Beast style graphics. Ork was Psygnosis' version of The Killing Game Show.

Anarchy, a Defender style, fast paced shooter on the ST. CV&G gave it 98%. It was developed by Wayne on the ST first, then ported to the Amiga.

1) Hi Wayne, I'm grams88, to start things off, would you be able to give us a quick introduction about yourself and what you were known for?

Sure, my name is Wayne Smithson and a very long time ago I wrote games predominantly for the Atari ST (prior to that I was writing games for the Dragon 32/64 if anyone remembers that!). Mostly I wrote my own games but I also liked to port Amiga games to Atari, mainly to prove that the Atari could handle them just as well.


2) Were you one of the programmers for the Atari ST version of the game Lemmings 2: The Tribes? I love that game and still play it occasionally. Could you tell us what your main job was in relation to Lemmings 2? Were you a big fan of the original Lemmings? I think you worked on Oh no more Lemmings as well.

I was the only programmer for the Atari ST version of both Oh No More Lemmings and Lemmings 2: The Tribes. My job was to take the original Amiga games and port them to Atari, while making sure the games were performant and a faithful reproduction of the Amiga versions.
I loved the lemmings games – it was such a simple yet brilliant concept. I preferred the first game (and Oh No More Lemmings which was an expansion really) over Lemmings 2 but they were all great games. I’m pretty sure I was the first person to complete the original game outside of DMA Design, but that’s only because I got a copy about a week before it was released???


3) Even though there were many ports to Blood Money, I remember playing two different ports such as the Amiga and Atari ST version, I really liked the Atari ST version as that was the one I grew up with. Could you tell us your work on that of the game? What did you think of the game itself?

The Amiga version of Blood Money was the original, and I ported the game to Atari ST. This port was actually quite a tricky one because there was a lot going on in this game and add the fact that it was constantly scrolling in one of 4 directions (which the Atari was notoriously bad at), it made getting the game running at 30fps on Atari pretty difficult. I had to use a lot of pre-shifted graphics and even resorted to shaving a few lines off the images in order to bring the speed up and fit it into the available memory.
As for the game itself, I think it was one of the best shooters on the Atari, the slow pace defied the difficulty of the game in places and I really got to like it as I played it more – which of course I did because I had to test it all the time!


4) I think the game One Step Beyond was technically the sequel to the very famous Pushover puzzle game. Were you a fan of the Pushover game and what work did you do on the one step beyond game?

I wasn’t really familiar with the Pushover game, and I picked up the One Step Beyond port I think after visiting Ocean Software, I can’t really remember it was so long ago. I do remember it was just before Christmas one year though. My job again was to port the Amiga version to ST, I was given 3 months to do it and I remember completing the job in 3 days between Christmas and New Year – probably the easiest port I ever did.


5) The Creatures game was a very good game from what I remember, I remember it being a platform style one, what was your work in relation to the game creatures?

Actually by the time “we” did the Creatures ports, I wasn’t involved directly with those – I had a small company at the time and I had a couple of programmers working for me who handled those ports, there were 2 games – Creatures and, no surprise, Creatures 2.


6) I love that green level at the start of the Ork game and it is actually quite a good game, I might try and complete that game one time. What was your work on the Ork game and what did you think of the game?

So this time around I actually wrote the original game on the Amiga – it started out as a bit of a demo for multiple layer parallax scrolling at 60fps and developed into a platform puzzle game. I think for its time the game was quite good – it could have been better, It got a bit repetitive the more you played it but we didn’t have the budgets back then to do anything more with it.


7) There were two games, I'm not too familiar with, which were by WJS Design, I think they were called Anarchy and It can't be done. They look like similar games but I know they probably are not. What was your work did you do in relation to the games?

Actually they are the same game, well, sort of. “It Can’t Be Done” was a tongue in cheek title for a demo I wrote on the Atari that showed off full screen parallax scrolling with if I remember rightly a big dragon firing fireballs over the top, running at 60fps. The Atari wasn’t meant to be capable of scrolling the screen that fast, hence the title.

I then developed that demo into a Defender clone type game which was titled “Anarchy” and I wrote it on ST first then ported to Amiga. This game actually reviewed really well and I remember C&VG giving it a 98% review score which at the time was the highest score they had ever given to any game. Still quite proud of that!


8) Are you able to give us what your work on the Baal game involved, I remember playing this game and I quite liked this one.

Baal was the second game I did for the Atari ST (Skyrider was the first), and it was a multi-way scrolling platform puzzler (notice a theme developing here??). I was kind of obsessed in writing games that were technically challenging and anything that involved scrolling on the ST ticked that box. By the time I’d finished it, I actually thought the game might be a bit boring as it was quite slow paced but again, it reviewed well.


9) I bet you spent a long time playing the games you were involved with, could you tell us more about that one?

I did, and while it’s fun at first you do get fed up with playing the same thing over and over and over again in order to test everything and make sure you catch all the bugs. By the end of each project you were usually pretty fed up with the games you worked on. There wasn’t a lot of QA back then like there is now so you pretty much did everything yourself.


10) I bet you have some great memories of working with different people who have all sorts of skills, was there any memory that stands out for you if you were to pick a memory or a moment?

I wouldn’t say I have a particular stand out memory but I do remember those Atari days fondly. I was still very young at the time (around 20 years old) and working with the people at Psygnosis and DMA Design (who went on to create GTA) were fun times. The industry was a bit like the wild west back then, I didn’t make a lot of money but I did enjoy working and learning in those early days.


11) I almost forgot to ask but Skyrider being a shoot 'em up game, what was your main job when working on that game, I think you were the main programmer for that one.

Skyrider was the first ST game I wrote, I pretty much did everything apart from the graphics which I had a friend do for me. It was basically a rip-off of Uridium (don’t tell anyone ????)


12) If you were to pick your favourite Atari ST games what would those games be? Let's make the rules strict, you are not allowed to pick any games you worked on, sorry about that one.

I didn’t really have any time to play games as I was too busy making them! However I liked a lot of the Bitmap Brothers games, especially Xenon 2 – I was into my shoot-em-ups.


13) I hear you are still quite busy with things, is that you still working in the video games industry? a great industry to keep at.

I am still in the industry though I no longer program. I’m currently the Chief Development Officer at Double Eleven. I started here as a programmer over 15 years ago, working on Little Big Planet for the PS Vita and joined the board at D11 3 years ago helping to run a studio of over 400 developers working on some major IP’s like Lego Harry Potter, Red Dead Redemption, Fallout 76 and Minecraft Dungeons.


14) Are you into video games yourself? Sometimes the creators might not be gamers themselves. Are you able to list a few favourites if you are a gamer?

I’m not a massive gamer so it usually takes something special to get me hooked. Back in the day, that was the original Quake which apart from being a great single player game, I still think to this day, is the best pure multiplayer game ever written. I believe it’s still being played by people even now.
More recently, I’ve played the God of War / Ragnarok games and they are simply flawless and brilliant. These days I’m more into single player story based games so these are right up my street but when they’re done as well as these games are, they’re hard to ignore.


15) I like playing board games on the computer as you get to play against a computer bot or other players in a pass n play mode. Are you a fan of board games and if you are, what are your favourites?

I don’t play board games to be honest apart from the odd game of Othello a long time ago which I actually quite enjoyed.


16) I'm into my TV shows and do like the occasional film, are you into your TV shows and films and if you were to name your top ones what would they be?

I’m certainly into my TV shows and films but it’s really hard to pick out the top ones. I like all sorts of different genres and shows but if I had to single any out, I’d probably go for anything that is written by Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone, Landman, Mayor of Kingstown, Lioness, Tulsa King etc) and for Dramas any adaptation of Harlan Coben’s books.

Film wise I like a lot of popcorn movies (disaster movies or monster movies in particular) but my favourite movies of all time are probably the Hobbit & Lord of the Rings movies, and Blues Brothers – just because I love the music ????


17) Keeping to ST Graveyard, he usually asks this at the end of the previous interviews so here I go. If you could have a drink with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be and what would you ask?

Sticking with the games industry, If I could have a drink with anyone it would be with Ian Hetherington, co-founder of Psygnosis, who passed away a few years ago. When Psygnosis was sold to Sony many years ago we lost touch and I was really saddened by the news of his passing. I wouldn’t want to ask him anything, just thank him for the mentorship and head-start he gave me in the industry. He was a thoroughly nice guy.