Best known as the author of the Horace games William Tang was Beam Software’s first employee. He was studying commerce and computer science at the University of Melbourne when Alfred Milgrom hired him in December 1980 to work during his University break. At this time Beam had no offices so Tang worked from the Milgrom’s living room writing code by hand as they did not yet have a computer. In the new year 1981 Tang joined the company and Beam got real offices in South Melbourne.
Melbourne House had developed a relationship with Psion a UK Software developer who provided Sinclair Systems with software. For them Tang developed the Horace games a playful re-interpretation of some popular arcade games for the home computer. The Horace character itself was designed by Alfred Milgrom.
Bundled with the Sinclair Spectrum Tang’s Horace games were often the first computer games a generation of people played.
Tang designed “H.U.R.G., High-Level User-Friendly Real-Time Games Designer” for Beam. It was a program that enables you to create games. Using a menu-driven program, which was relatively new at that time, it allowed people with little or no programming knowledge to make their own games.
He edited a book on programming for the Spectrum for Melbourne House’s book publishing called Spectrum Machine Language For the Absolute Beginner (1982).
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Images
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- ZX Spectrum Hungry Horace Box Art
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- Image courtesy of World of Spectrum
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- William Tang’s guide ro programming the ZX Spectrum publihsed by Melbourne House
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