Background
He was born in Blackpool in 1953.
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- Photos
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Brian Howarth
Edit Profilecomputer programmer video game designer
Education
In 1982 Howarth finished developing his own interpreter, based on Scott Adams" Adventureland source code published in Byte magazine.
Career
He wrote many interactive fiction computer games in the early 1980s in a series called After leaving school he worked as a telephone engineer until 1981. Howarth was initially inspired to write computer moderated adventures by the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, and the United Kingdom television show The Adventure Game. He first adventures were written on the Travel Related Services-80, taking his cues from the works of Scott Adams.
After becoming frustrated with the BASIC programming language, he learnt machine language to create his first adventure, The Golden Baton, which was published by Molimerx in 1981.
Following this success, Molimerx encouraged Howarth to produce two more titles, The Time Machine and Arrow of Death. This used a database format which would speed up development of new adventures.
He ported his games from the original Travel Related Services-80 format to the British Broadcasting Corporation Micro under his own label, Digital Fantasia, as Molimerx were not planning to support other platforms. Digital Fantasia operated a mail order service and software shop, staffed by family and friends.
The titles were later ported to the Acorn Electron, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 16 and, with added graphics, to the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum and released by Channel 8 Software and later Paxman Promotions.
After working on the arcade game Theme Park Mystery and Supplemental Security Income"s Heroes of the Lance Howarth relocated to the United States of America in July 1990 after securing a position with the publisher Cinemaware. More recently Howarth has worked on creating applications for tablets and iPhones. These are the games in the series.
The Golden Baton, 1981, in machine code
The Time Machine, 1981, in machine code
Arrow of Death part 1, 1981, in machine code
Arrow of Death part 2, 1982, in Scott Adams database
Escape from Pulsar 7, 1982 (with Wherner Barnes), in Scott Adams database
Circus, 1982 (with Wherner Barnes), in Scott Adams database
The Feasibility Experiment, 1983 (with Wherner Barnes), in Scott Adams database
The Wizard of Akyrz, 1983 (with Cliff J Ogden), in Scott Adams database
Perseus and Andromeda, 1983, in Scott Adams database
Ten Little Indians, 1983, in Scott Adams database
Waxworks, 1983, (with Cliff J Ogden), in Scott Adams database
The Feasibility Experiment was one of Edge magazine"s 20 strangest moments in videogaming, calling it a "glorious stream-of-consciousness ramble".
