Star Guard and Galactic Invaders

Publisher/Author: Shadow Games / Paul Sherwood (Star Guard), Dennis Ibbotson (Galactic Invaders), Stephen Proctor (loading screen), Mark Hessler (cover art).

Notes: Star Guard is tricky as it involves having one hand on the joystick/cursor keys and another on the function keys for the range control. Galactic Invaders is a decent Space Invaders clone. Note that the back cover refers to 'Star Guard' as 'Space Guard' in error.

Paul Sherwood, the author of Star Guard found this page in December 2022 and provided some background:

"While doing my A-levels I tried my hand at a bit of programming, on a ZX81 borrowed from school. I wrote a Treasure Hunt game, and managed to get it published in Sinclair Programs. The game was reprinted in a couple of places, and ultimately I got paid £70 in total for that :-)

Off I went to university. At some point my dad bought a QL, so when I got back home between terms I decided to try writing a game for that too...

The main inspiration was that one of the QL magazines had printed the instructions for a machine code routine to zap sprites around the QL screen - excitingly this meant that I could have fast graphics without learning machine code myself (I was still a Basic noob at the time).

The sprite routine was only 2D, but I realised I could achieve a pseudo-3D effect by having different sized sprites for the aliens. The game took me something like two weeks to write - during an Easter break I think.

Shadow Games was selling games by mail order in the magazines - I can't remember if the ads actually included requests for titles or whether I just took a shot in the dark. I remember I had a couple of calls with someone (can't remember his name, sadly) about making a few minor tweaks, at which point he agreed to pay me £500. Not sure if I came up with the Star Guard name, or they did. I'd guess that the other game may have been picked up in the same way."

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