Andrew Braybrook

United Kingdom · Born 1960 · Graftgold · Game Designer, Programmer

Graftgold's star Commodore 64 programmer, whose Paradroid and Uridium set the technical standard on the machine — and whose development diaries in Zzap!64 showed readers how games were made.

Andrew Braybrook was born in 1960 and began his career in 1979 writing accounting software in COBOL for GEC Marconi, programming BASIC games for the ZX80, ZX81 and Dragon 32 in his spare time. He played bass in a rock band with Steve Turner, who wrote ZX Spectrum games and founded the company that became Graftgold, and in September 1983 Turner asked him to join. On the Commodore 64 Braybrook produced a run of acclaimed games: Gribbly's Day Out and Paradroid (both 1985), Uridium (1986), Alleykat, Morpheus and Intensity. Zzap!64 commissioned him to keep a diary while making Paradroid, and later Morpheus, giving readers a rare look inside game development. He was voted Best Programmer of the Year at the 1986 Golden Joystick Awards. Graftgold moved to 16-bit machines with his Amiga and Atari ST conversions of Taito's Rainbow Islands (1989), Paradroid 90 (1990), Fire and Ice (1992) and Uridium 2 (1993). He later worked for many years as a software developer outside games.