Commodore Free 9/Commodore_Free_Issue_09_2007_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/t.iv shaun 1

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 11KB | 332 lines

u   Interview with Shaun Bebbington
      Retro promoter and Writer
PART 1

Commodore Free) Please introduce
yourself to our reader.

Shaun Bebbington) Hello all. I am
Shaun Bebbington. Just call me Shaun,
Bebbers, Fluff or Picto. I am a
part-time writer and columnist for
Micro Mart magazine, available
throughout the UK via WH Smiths and
the likes.

CF) What are your first memories of
Commodore?

SB) That would be one Christmas, I
think 1985 though I'm not entirely
sure. My Dad brought a Commodore 64
from his brother who had recently
upgraded to a flat Commodore 128 with
a 1541 disk drive. The first game I
remember was Beech Head II. Brilliant
loading music, graphics and speech it
had. The cries of "Medic!" still ring
today.

CF) Do you still use Commodore
machines actively? And can you tell us
about your various set-ups?

SB) Currently, I don't have a place of
my own as such, so I am a "sleeping"
Commodore user, as all of my machines
and hardware items are in storage. By
the time you are reading this, I would
like to have my Commodore 128D-Cr,
which has the internal 1571 removed
and attn line cut, up and running,
with a SuperCPU 128 and RAMLink MK-II
as well as a CMD-HD. I also have a
1581 and FD-2000 (note, no 5.25"
floppy disks here), IDE-64, SCSI
CD-ROM and ZIP drive, SmartMOUSE and a
few other hardware items. I hope to
add a StereoINSid into this mix, just
for the fun of it. In for a penny, in
for a pound, that's what I say. When
this has happened, I'll be running
Wheels 128, which is basically a step
up from GEOS. To find out more about
GEOS, www.cmdrkey.com should have the
answers, though I'm not sure if you
are able to order anything from the
site yet.

CF) Do you own other retro machines?

SB) Yes, quite a few. I own every
Sinclair machine less the ZX80 (and to
be honest, I don't want a ZX80
anyway), most Commodore machines
except the rare ones and the C16 (I
have a few Plus/4s though), and an
Amstrad CPC for shame. It's rubbish,
of course!

CF) You have written for many magazine
would you like to tell our reader
about some of them?

SB) Well, I've been published in PC
Mart, Micro Mart, Retro Gamer,
gamesTM, PC Extreme and PC Action
Emulate, and a few fan-based
publications such as ZXF, ZX Shed and
Commodore Scene. I've been regularly
published for over five years, though
I was first published some 10 years
ago in PC Mart. I first started
regular writing for Micro Mart, issue
686 to be exact, and through that I
was asked to set up a "Retro area" for
the two Micro Mart computer shows that
they ran in 2002 and 2003 I think.
During the latter one, a guy named
Martyn Carroll introduced himself to
Allan Bairstow and was talking about
this new magazine called Retro Gamer.
I butted in, telling Martyn that I was
a writer, and importantly that I don't
 write for free. I even got a mention
in the very first issue.

For issue two, I wrote the Commodore
feature. This was a bit of a
nightmare. Firstly, Martyn asked me to
write 7,000 words. I had never written
that many words before or since, not
for a single feature. Anyway, at first
I was told that the deadline would be
ages away, some two months. But things
were happening at Live Publishing, and
the editorial deadlines were brought
forward to increase the frequency of
the magazine.  All of a sudden, I had
two weeks to write more words on a
single feature that I had ever done. I
booked a few days off from work, and
was even working at my partner's
parent's house whenever I could. Alas,
I lost some of the text during the
process as I was using Notepad, and I
didn't realise that this package on
Windoze 98 wouldn't allow you to write
much more than 5,000 words without
loosing some of the text. So, I had to
rewrite a whole section before sending
my work to the three Commodore experts
that I trusted, being Allan Bairstow,
Bo Zimmerman and Robert Bernardo, to
mull over. Unfortunately, the deadline
finally caught up with me and I had to
submit it warts and all. I didn't
realise that Retro Gamer were going to
put me as a Commodore expert. For the
record, I AM NOT a Commodore expert. I
am merely an enthusiast. Okay! Anyway,
from there, I became a staff writer on
Retro Gamer, and officially worked
until issue 12 when I was made
redundant. Though I continued writing
for the magazine unofficially until
issue 15. I just didn't allow Martyn
to use my name.

After being made redundant, I did some
freelance PR work for Cronosoft and
the Alten8/Retro-Soft group. By doing
this, I got to know Darran Jones, who
was the "Retro" editor on the magazine
gamesTM. Shortly after, I was writing
for gTM. It was quite a relief as I
felt frustrated after my RG
experience. Anyway, I wrote an article
about the Commodore VIC-20, Atari
2600, Amiga A500 and ZX81 (not
necessarily in that order). The VIC-20
piece is my best work ever, and I'm
not sure if I'll ever write anything
more worthwhile, though the ZX81
feature comes close. I also
represented gTM to a degree at the
CGE-UK 2005, which was great fun
though I was a bit hung over. Did
anyone notice? I'm happy to consign
the rest to history for now. It was
good while it lasted.

CF) Which magazines do you currently
work for?

SB) Just Micro Mart presently. I have
no plans to work for anyone else.

CF) Is all you work Freelance?

SB) It currently is, though I was a
staff writer on Retro Gamer for all of
nine months. Those were the days!

CF) Some of our reader will recognise
you as the voice of the retro section
in Micro Mart - although its only a
one page section in a PC magazine. Do
you think it's important to keep
pushing the retro aspect of computing?

SB) Absolutely. With so much
happening, it's important that there
is at least one national magazine
which is taking retro computing and
gaming seriously beyond the usual
collectors/eBay/nostalgia slant. At
first I didn't have much faith in the
home-brew scene, but then I played a
demo of the forth-coming Metal Warrior
IV.  This was a brilliant little game,
and I instantly downloaded the first
three titles, which were all equally
as good. Around that time, Cronosoft
were just starting up. Their aim was
to offer new software on computers
such as the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and
of course the Commodore 64. Their
first game was EggHead in Space, which
was a nice little game for the Speccy.
I asked Colin Woodcock to review it
for me as he was a Speccy enthusiast
and I wasn't, and he was and is one of
the best writers that I know. His
review was brilliant.

After this, I tried to promote
home-brew software as much as I could.
My aim was and is to create a big
enough market for bedroom programmers
to earn a few quid and for Cronosoft's
activities to be viable beyond a small
niche. The fact that Retro Gamer seem
now to be taking home-brew software a
little more seriously is a good thing.
Hopefully, sales will continue
increase steadily and people will
start using their old machines again
rather than just collecting them.
Speccy fans are especially spoilt at
the moment I have to say, with
Jonathan Cauldwell the standard barer
not just for that machine, but for all
8-bit home-brew programmers. His ideas
are thought provoking and well worked
even if you don't like his games. Even
an ardent Commodore enthusiast like me
has to acknowledge that.

CF) Can you tell our reader a little
of the history of Micro Mart, and how
you came to work on the retro section?

SB) Micro Mart started in 1984 or 1985
I think, offering "free adds" and
numerous typos. It was like the eBay
of it's time for people interested in
trading or selling computers. It's
done extremely well to have survived
over 20 years, and as the
small-adverts have dropped, the
editorial has increased. MM is a
free-thinking PC magazine that also
covers Linux, Amiga and even MAC.

Freedom of speech, or in this case
freedom of print, doesn't work unless
the editorial process allows it.
Thankfully, in my case it does, and
I'm given a free hand in what to write
about. In other words, I write the
column because I want to cover what
interests me and not what my editor
tells me to write. It's a very good
situation, and is like working on a
fanzine only on a bigger and more
professional scale. As for how my
Retro coverage started, well I did
write into Micro Mart after seeing
some retro features that they wrote,
and noting their Amiga page. I told
them about the SuperCPU and GEOS,
Protovision and other such things.
Simon Brew did respond to me
personally, but was thinking of how to
implement it, and after all I could
only cover Commodore stuff at the
time, or so it would seem.

A few months later and I started
working on an electronic fanzine
called Retro Computing Today. This was
an eight-page sampler for people to
download, and covered formats such as
the Atari Jaguar, MSX and Commodore
Plus/4. As it turned out, Simon (Brew)
downloaded a copy and liked it. He
could now see how a regular retro
column would work, and asked me to
work for him on an eight-week trial
basis. I did, and I was never asked to
stop, so I guess the trial is still
on-going.  That is, as long as I
continue to find new content, the
column will thrive. Though I can't do
that unless programmers and hardware
hackers continue to do what they do.
I'm sorry to say that I don't tend to
cover demos, but I do cover new games
and hardware, as well as
modifications, such as adding an
internal CD-Rom drive to a C64c. So,
if you're up to anything in this
regard, please get in touch. My email
is [e-mail].

CF) Do you want to plug the Micro Mart
website?

SB) Looks like you want me to. Okay,
head over to www.micromart.co.uk and
if you're lucky you might be able to
read my column without buying the
magazine, though you'll have to do a
site search for either "retro" or
"shaun" V while you're there, also
check out the retro forum. Everyone
there is friendly, honestly.

CF) Can you tell us about retro gamer,
you were a staff writer, what went
wrong?

SB) I was a staff writer for nine
months. As for what went wrong, well I
probably wasn't good enough and I
couldn't compete with the freelancers.
Martyn was trying to keep peace with
them as best he could as far as I
could tell, so if someone emailed in
suggesting a feature, he wouldn't say
no in case someone would kick up a
fuss if he, Aaron Birch or I wrote
"their idea". This had already
happened anyway in the very early days
when Martyn was working on his own.
Anyway, I was made redundant because I
was redundant. But if I had been there
until the bitter end, I would have
been worse off, that is for sure.

Continued in PART 2