Michael Boyd
About Michael Boyd:Michael Boyd was a teenager when he wrote his games for the Sega SC-3000. Between 1985 and 1987 he created games including “Burglar Bill”, “Burglar Bill II”, “Caverns of Karanor” and “Sir Roderick’s Quest”. Boyd worked alone to design his games, with no mentors or collaborators. He created his games on his computer in his room at home, where he says he ‘spent too much time’. He made his first sales of “Burglar Bill” through mail order and later marketed this game and all of his subsequent games through Poseidon Software.
Boyd’s games were generally inspired by other games that were available at the time, and he relied mostly on Sega magazines to help him understand and use the SC-3000 hardware and BASIC ROM routines. In 1987, Boyd received a ‘Bits & Bytes’ Software award for “Caverns of Karanor”. With every progressive game that Boyd developed he was attempting to create a more realistic world within which the player could be immersed.
Boyd viewed game development as challenging and as a creative outlet for him. Having not had contact with people who played his games while he was developing them in the 1980s he was surprised to later learn about how much enjoyment people got from his games.
Boyd currently lives in London where he has an Osteopathy practice.
