Bill Budge
| Bill Budge | |
|---|---|
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Budge in 2012
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| Born | August 11, 1954 |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | video game programmer, designer |
| Known for | Apple II games Raster Blaster (1981) and Pinball Construction Set (1983). |
Bill Budge (born August 11, 1954) is an American video game programmer and designer. He is best known for the Apple II games Raster Blaster (1981) and Pinball Construction Set (1983).
Budge says he became interested in computers while obtaining a PhD at UC Berkeley. He purchased an Apple II and began writing games. He enjoyed it so much that he dropped out of school and became a game programmer. Budge's first game was a Pong clone, called Penny Arcade, which he wrote using his own custom graphics routines. He traded the completed game to Apple Computer for a Centronics printer. By 1981 his reputation was such that BYTE wrote in its review of Budge's Tranquility Base, a Lunar Lander clone, that "Consistently excellent graphics are a trademark of Bill Budge's games". Budge marketed his games commercially with a floppy disk drive salesman who traveled from store to store; he and the salesman agreed to split profits of selling his games 50/50. Budge was shocked when he got his first check for USD$7,000.
Budge does not enjoy playing video games, and described having to play pinball for months while developing Pinball Construction Set as "sheer torture." He more enjoyed writing fast graphics libraries for game programmers. Budge said "I wasn't that interested in playing or designing games. My real love was in writing fast graphics code. It occurred to me that creating tools for others to make games was a way for me to indulge my interest in programming without having to make games." and "The way I got started was by not trying to do anything original at all. I wanted to learn how to write videogames. I ... just went to arcades and copied the games that I saw."
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