Jon Burton

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Jonathan Philip Burton
Place of birth: Winchester, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom
Date of birth: 1969-08-27 (age 55)
Company(ies): Traveller's Tales
Role(s): Programmer, Executive, Designer
Education: Liverpool Polytechnic (Bachelor of Computer Science)[1]

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Jonathan Philip Burton, commonly known as Jon Burton, is a British video game programmer and designer, most notable for co-founding and currently serving as Director of developer Traveller's Tales. Having accumulated a considerable amount of programming talent through his technically-impressive Sega Mega Drive games, Burton designed and programmed a number of first-party Sonic the Hedgehog games, and currently runs the YouTube channels GameHut[2] and Coding Secrets.[3]

History

Upon a visit to his uncle, a young Burton experienced his first personal computer - the VIC-20. After typing in one of the BASIC programs printed on the back page of the computer's manual, and seeing a small UFO move across the screen with accompanying sound effects, Burton was instantly hooked. He soon acquired a computer of his own, a ZX Spectrum, and with this decided to follow his calling and become a video game developer. Dedicating a significant amount of his free time to self-coding a number of computer games, Burton sent a few assembly language ZX Spectrum games to publisher Firebird for consideration, but all were turned down.

Burton acquired a 16-bit Amiga personal computer in the mid 1980s and was soon exposed to the demoscene and its advanced graphical effects. Becoming enamored with this display of programming ability, particularly that on display in cracked intros to pirated computer programs, Burton immersed himself in the scene, and only three months later came into contact with freelance artist Andy Ingram. Becoming good friends, the two set about developing a high-profile Amiga computer game (what would eventually become Leander); early in the development process, they showed an early build of the game to Psygnosis for development assistance, and to their surprise, the company acquired the game for publishing. Working over the next 18 months to complete the game and polish it into shape (with Burton coding much of the game while still attending college at Liverpool Polytechnic), the pair founded a video game development company to represent their work: Traveller's Tales.

Traveller's Tales

Main article: Traveller's Tales.

Jon Burton founded British video game developer Traveller's Tales alongside friend and artist Andy Ingram in 1989, and personally designed, directed and programmed the majority of the company's games. Working alongside Psygnosis for their earlier titles, once that company was acquired by Sony Imagesoft, company was soon able to develop for larger properties; notably, 1994's Mickey Mania started a long and fruitful relationship with Disney. Not long after, Traveller's Tales was contracted by Sega to develop two first-party Sonic the Hedgehog titles, Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic R, with Burton playing a significant role in both the design and programming of both games.

GameHut and Coding Secrets

Aside from his development work, Burton is best known today for his YouTube channel GameHut. Launched on August 30, 2017[2], the channel is a means for him to share interesting development history and explanations of his games' advanced graphical effects. Moreover, his calm demeanor and humble personality has seen the channel experience a significant amount of recent success, and the newfound popularity eventually gave rise to a second channel on June 16, 2020[3], Coding Secrets.

Production history

  • Sonic 3D Blast (Mega Drive; 1996) — Program Design and Implementation
  • Sonic 3D Blast (Mega Drive; 1996) — Programmer
  • Sonic 3D Blast (Mega Drive; 1996) — Project Management
  • Sonic 3D Blast (Saturn; 1997) — Program Design and Implementation
  • Sonic 3D Blast (Saturn; 1997) — Code Conversion
  • Sonic 3D Blast (Saturn; 1997) — Project Management
  • Sonic R (Saturn; 1997) — Program Design & Implementation
  • Sonic R (Saturn; 1997) — Programmed by
  • Sonic R (Saturn; 1997) — Special Effects Programming
  • Sonic R (Saturn; 1997) — Development Director
  • Sonic R (Windows PC; 1998) — Program design and implementation

Interviews

External links

References

  1. ↑ https://peoplepill.com/people/jon-burton
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 https://www.youtube.com/c/GameHut/about
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 https://www.youtube.com/c/CodingSecrets/about
  4. ↑ File:Galahad MD credits.pdf
  5. ↑ File:Galahad MD US Manual.pdf, page 9
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 File:Bram Stoker's Dracula MD credits.pdf
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 File:Puggsy MCD credits.pdf
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 File:Mickey Mania MCD credits.pdf
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 File:Mickey Mania MD credits.pdf
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 File:Toy Story MD credits.pdf
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 File:Sonic 3D Blast MD credits.pdf
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 File:Sonic R Saturn credits.pdf
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