Gaming legend started his $500 million career in a bedroom in Templepatrick!

FORMER Templepatrick Primary School pupil David Perry’s life changed forever in 1982.

His mum had wanted him to be a dentist, but he had bigger ideas - and had planned to spread his wings as a Concorde pilot.

But there was one not so small problem. At 15 he was already towering over his peers.

“I studied hard, but had a very sad day when I finally got to go into the real Concorde Cockpit, and as I’m six foot eight tall, I didn’t even slightly fit.

“So after banging my head around for a while my hopes and dreams were dashed, but I had no idea my real calling would be programming video games.”

That eureka moment came when his mum presented him with cash to buy a ZX81 computer.

By modern standards, with its 1K of memory, it is basic - but it was affordable and it opened a whole new world to the local lad.

“My mother handed me the cash one day to get a Sinclair ZX81 with a 16K Ram Pack and a Sinclair Printer, and that unleashed me.

“Now I’d be programming to 3am. She also got me a little black and white TV and a cassette recorder, so that ‘Workstation’ became the centre of my entertainment universe.

“I started programming BASIC on the ZX81 and got lost down the rabbit hole for years. I feel programming is a bit like photography or art, you never actually get there, you’re always learning and improving, so I was addicted.”

And it soon became clear that he had a real aptitude for coding too.

He was still a teenager when he started sending programmes to the National ZX80-ZX81 Users Club magazine.

It may come as something of a surprise to modern gamers spoon fed games on disc or cartridge, but back in the day many publications carried programmes for users to key in at home.

Many ran to several pages and the quality was variable - assuming that it was keyed in correctly in the first place.

His first was a driving game, ‘a black blob avoiding other black blobs’.

But David’s early efforts proved popular - and he was surprised when a cheque for £450 arrived in the post.

“I didn’t know I was actually getting paid so when a cheque showed up, it instantly became my career,” he later recalled.

“It was life-changing.”

Indeed it was - because it meant he had to open a bank account!

At the age of 17, he moved to London where he was offered a job for £3,500 a year as an apprentice to a veteran programmer who taught him more advanced programming.

It was a wise move. Within a few short years he was working with Mikro-Gen and Probe Software for publishers such as Elite Systems and Mirrorsoft, working on titles such as the ZX Spectrum conversion of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Nintendo and Sega versions of The Terminator.

With a growing CV he decided that he had to move again to advance his career - so in 1991, he upped sticks to the United States to work for the American division of Virgin Games.

It was a very productive period for the enterprising Ulster man.

While there, David led the development duties for several award-winning games for the Sega Megadrive, including Global Gladiators, Cool Spot, and Aladdin - which scored a real coup by using hand drawn animations from Disney themselves.

It was a long way from Templepatrick, but on 1 October 1993, Perry formed his own company in Laguna Beach, California,

It as called Shiny Entertainment, named after the song ‘Shiny Happy People’ by R.E.M.

And their first game, programmed by David himself, went on to become a global smash - sparking a range of toys, comic books and even a TV series.

‘Earthworm Jim’, an ‘average worm’ who stumbles upon a space suit which turns him into a superhero, went onto sell millions of copies on consoles and PC.

He remains immensely proud of the ground-breaking game.

“I think I was most proud of Earthworm Jim as it was the last game I personally programmed. After that I went to the dark side of the force… Management!”

In 2002, Shiny Entertainment was acquired by Atari, Inc. for $47 million, with Perry signed to a long-term contract to continue on as president. Also in 2002, Perry collaborated with The Wachowskis on games in coordination with their Matrix series of movies.

In 2006, he resigned from Shiny and formed GameConsultants.com, a consultancy firm planning to offer executive level video game industry advice, followed by GameInvestors.com, a business-to-business company to help video game development teams get funded.

Though he had stepped back from coding, he remained a key mover and shaker in the industry.

He was on the advisory board for the Game Developers Conference, and has spoken at industry venues such as E3, CES, Hollywood and Games, Digital Hollywood, iHollywood, SIGGRAPH, Entertainment in the Interactive Age, What Teens Want, The Banff Summit, as well as at major universities such as USC.

In 2006, he co-hosted the annual Game Developers Choice Awards with Tommy Tallarico.

In 2008 he was presented with an honorary doctorate from Queen’s University Belfast for his services to computer gaming.

In November of that year, Perry co-founded Gaikai in the Netherlands, a company that released game streaming technology in late 2009.

In January 2016, Perry confirmed that he and Michael Jackson had been discussing making a video game together prior to the singer's death in 2009.

“I met Michael at Neverland several times,” he said.

“He was a big video game fan and we discussed the idea of releasing his next album exclusively in our video game.

“He was excited and had a vision for a game that he felt needed to be developed.

“Sadly his world turned upside down. I got to spend quality time with him and had free roam of Neverland.

“It was an experience I won’t forget and it’s also just another example of how video games break down all boundaries.”

In July 2012 Gaikai was sold to Sony Computer Entertainment for $380 million. It’s a mind-boggling figure, but David’s career is full of them.

He has developed 35 games - serving as lead programmer on 24 of them - totalling 101 individual retail titles across 23 video game platforms.

All told, Perry’s games have totalled more than $500 million in sales.

And he has hinted that when he finally ‘retires’ from management he may return to his first love.

Yes, David Perry wants to start writing again...