COMPUNET ID: MG12

How Matt made an impact on the shareware scene

Compunet was a pioneering bulletin board system designed for the C64 with Commodore providing the modem, each with a unique ID and software to connect via phone line to the server. It had many features that we recognise today – electronic mail, paying for content, live chat rooms and a voting system (with the trolls frequently voting 1/10). There was also a special version of Richard Bartleby’s MUD

(learn more about that in issue 178). Users were able to upload their own content in the form of pages. This was how many demos, pictures and pieces of music were spread in the early days of the scene. Many creative people got noticed on Compunet before going on to long careers in the games industry. Graphic artist Stephen Robertson (SIR on Compunet) uploaded his bitmaps to the network before joining Argonaut, recently working at Rockstar on the Grand Theft Auto games. Matt Gray (MG12) uploaded several pieces of music, including his Jukebox 64 tunes remixing other musicians’ work, and wrote music for the Exclusive Demo from Pixel Developments. Many demos relied on ripped music, extracted from the newest games, and thus Matt is credited in many demos from that era.