SN Systems

From Sega Retro

Yep... Retro is getting famous ... "public service" at his best... --Asagoth (talk) 15:38, 12 May 2018 (CDT)

SNASM

I'll try to explain this... Andy Beveridge and Martin Day from SN systems created SNasm when they programmed video games back then... programmers had to make their own dev tools themselves... now regarding the scene in UK during those glorious years of programming for the zx spectrum... all these programmers were young back then and they knew each other well and sometimes they shared their tools with others... according to this interview SN System founders used to share their tools frelly with their fellow programmers from other companies ... So when they shared SNasm to Realtime Games Software the program was in a primitive state... SNasm started only to be commercialized when Ian Oliver and friend Andy Kraven of nearby Vector Grafix (both companies were from Leeds) founded Cross Products.

As you can see here (scrool down to SNASM) it was Ian Oliver who improved it even further and made it what we already know ( SNASM was only sold by Cross Products... by my understanding SN Systems founders were not realy interested in mass production nor making profit with it so they gave the "green light" to Oliver... As you guys know these tools were not made in a day so Andy and Martin were probably working in a new tool, after giving SNASM to Ian Oliver, which later became PSY-Q... feedback for their tools was positive and requests for support grew to the point where charging became the only option. Using Psygnosis (which later became Studio Liverpool) as a publisher to sell their tools further afield, it allowed them to focus on further development of the products... This is my theory because the various sources I've found are contraditory in who was responsible for SNASM... It's obvious that SNASM was only commercialized by Cross Products... so I believe in my theory...--Asagoth (talk) 06:21, 15 May 2018 (CDT)

Edit:Ok guys... this is probably the best proof that the original SNasm was indeed created by Andy Beveridge and Martin Day... I've found this discussion in google groups from 1995... the participants are all programmers from that time and one of the interveners is Andy Beveridge himself ... despite this facts Ian Oliver made great contributions to SNasm ... in fact the SNASM2 was enterely re-wrote from scratch by Cross Products ... in the discussion Andy Beveridge even recomends Oliver to one of the interveners saying "If you're interested then your best bet is to email Ian Oliver - he's a techie sort"... So when they split from Cross Products it was all in a friendly manner... no wars ... no hatred .... let's make money... and the rest is history...--Asagoth (talk) 03:27, 16 May 2018 (CDT)

The Assembly Line

some pictures of the crew (I need to discover where the photo of the four came from).... and some info about the Amiga version of Xenon 2 (featuring Martin Day's alias Spiny Norman ) ... issue #08 from May 1989 of The One for 16-bit Games confirms all these facts about SNasm... that it was designed by Martin (hence the name of the assembler) with the help of Oliver and Craven ... but what is really confusing is that according with this magazine here, The Assembly Line of Martin Day and Andy Beveridge is credited as the developer of M1 Abrams Battle Tank for the Mega Drive...--Asagoth (talk) 14:05, 21 May 2018 (CDT)