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Fergus McNeill (born in 1969) is a Scottish author and interactive entertainment developer. He has designed and created games since the early 1980s, working with companies such as CRL, Silversoft, Macmillan Group, Activision, SCi Eidos and EA. He was a founder member of TIGA and is a member of the Crime Writers' Association [1] and BAFTA. He is the author of a series of contemporary crime thrillers published by Hodder & Stoughton.
McNeill, born in 1969, [2] grew up in Scotland, living in Helensburgh [3] and later in Fintry. When he was 11, his family moved to Hampshire, England, where he attended Swanmore Secondary School. Whilst there, he wrote his first games, which attracted coverage in the specialist computer press, [4] and this led to him abandoning college plans in order to pursue a full-time career in the games industry.
McNeill started developing adventure games using The Quill software. Initially, these were sold by mail-order under the Delta 4 brand, before publishing deals with CRL and Silversoft brought the titles to a larger audience. This led to McNeill working with Terry Pratchett to create the first Discworld game [5] and, later on, adapting Murder off Miami by Dennis Wheatley. [6] After an affiliate label deal with Activision, [7] McNeill set up a new studio for SCi in Southampton, focusing on PC games. While there, he oversaw development on movie tie-ins including The Lawnmower Man , and scripted the award-winning Kingdom O' Magic . He also co-produced (and provided the race announcer's voice-over for) Stainless Software's controversial racing game Carmageddon . [8]
After SCi, he moved to Smoking Gun Productions, where he worked on a range of football management titles and interactive DVD games, [9] before joining InfoSpace / IOMO as studio director in 2005. Two years later, McNeill and other staff from IOMO relaunched the studio as FinBlade. [10] In 2019 he took on the role of game director at Stainless Games.
In 2011, he signed a three-book deal with Hodder & Stoughton. [11]
A Detective Harland novella entitled Broken Fall was released in 2015.
A standalone historical thriller, Ashes of America, was published in 2019.
The standalone crime thriller, Up Close And Fatal, was published in 2022.
Early interactive fiction titles and PC CD games
More recently[ when? ], McNeill has worked on the following apps:
Pitfall! is a video game developed by David Crane for the Atari 2600 and released in 1982 by Activision. The player controls Pitfall Harry, who has a time limit of 20 minutes to seek treasure in a jungle. The game world is populated by enemies and hazards that variously cause the player to lose lives or points.
Delta 4 was a British software developer founded by Fergus McNeill, writing and publishing interactive fiction.
Knight Lore is a 1984 action-adventure game developed and published by Ultimate Play the Game, and written by company founders Chris and Tim Stamper. The game is known for its use of isometric graphics, which it further popularized in video games. In Knight Lore, the player character Sabreman has forty days to collect objects throughout a castle and brew a cure to his werewolf curse. Each castle room is depicted in monochrome on its own screen and consists of blocks to climb, obstacles to avoid, and puzzles to solve.
Your Sinclair, or YS as it was commonly abbreviated, was a commercially published and printed British computer magazine for the Sinclair range of computers, mainly the ZX Spectrum. It was in circulation between 1984 and 1993.
CRL Group plc was a British video game development and publishing company. Originally CRL stood for "Computer Rentals Limited". It was based in King's Yard, London and run by Clem Chambers.
The Hobbit is an illustrated text adventure computer game released in 1982 for the ZX Spectrum home computer and based on the 1937 book The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien. It was developed at Beam Software by Philip Mitchell and Veronika Megler and published by Melbourne House. It was later converted to most home computers available at the time including the Commodore 64, BBC Micro, and Oric computers. By arrangement with the book publishers, a copy of the book was included with each game sold.
Spindizzy is an isometric video game released for several 8-bit home computer formats in 1986 by Electric Dreams Software. It combines action and puzzle game elements. Players must navigate a series of screens to explore a landscape suspended in a three-dimensional space. Development was headed by Paul Shirley, who drew inspiration from Ultimate Play the Game games that feature an isometric projection.
Aliens: The Computer Game is a 1986 video game developed and published by Activision for the Commodore 64, Apple II based on the film of the same title. As Activision's UK subsidiary Electric Dreams Software had independently released their own version of the game with the same title, the game was renamed for European release. Initially planned to be released as Aliens: The Second Part., it was finally published under the title Aliens: US Version with ports for the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum produced by Mr Micro.
Andrew Glaister is a video game programmer.
FinBlade is a British mobile game and mobile app developer. FinBlade was founded by John Chasey, Fergus McNeill, Steve Longhurst and Barry Simpson in August 2007. Much of the FinBlade team previously worked at mobile game developer IOMO.
The War of the Worlds, titled on screen as Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds and on the cover as Jeff Wayne's Video Game Version of The War of the Worlds is a ZX Spectrum video game developed and released by CRL Group in 1984. The game is based upon the 1978 concept album, itself based on H.G. Wells' 1898 novel The War of the Worlds.
Piranha Software was a short-lived video game publishing label created by Macmillan Publishers in 1986 and closed eighteen months later. In that time it gained a reputation for its unusual output from well known developers such as Don Priestley, Design Design and Delta 4. The majority of their games featured licensed properties including the first video game based on the Discworld novels and two games based on the animated television series The Trap Door.
Mindfighter is a text adventure game developed by British studio Abstract Concepts and published by Activision in 1988 for the Amiga, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Amstrad PCW, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and the ZX Spectrum computers.
The Price of Magik is the third game in the Time and Magik trilogy.
Bored of the Rings is a text adventure game released by Delta 4 in 1985 for several computer systems written using The Quill. It was also released by CRL Group. The game is inspired by, but not based on, the Bored of the Rings parody novel published by Harvard Lampoon. The earlier game The Hobbit is also parodied. It was followed by a prequel in the same spirit, The Boggit.
Respawn Entertainment, LLC is an American video game development studio founded in 2010 by Jason West and Vince Zampella and owned by Electronic Arts since 2017. West and Zampella previously co-founded Infinity Ward and created the Call of Duty franchise, where they were responsible for its development until 2010.
Way of the Tiger II: Avenger is a video game made by Gremlin Graphics in 1986, for the computers Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum and MSX.
Patrick Buckland is a British video game programmer, designer and chief executive officer of Stainless Games, which he co-founded with Neil Barnden in 1994.
Joe Blade is a game published by Interceptor Micros on their Players budget label for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC in 1987. It reached the top of the UK game charts, replacing Renegade. In Germany, the game peaked at number 7. It was later ported to the Acorn Electron, BBC Micro, Atari 8-bit, MSX, Amiga and ST and a sequel, Joe Blade 2, was published in 1988. Another sequel, Joe Blade 3, was released in 1989.