Martin Webb

Martin started making computer games at the age of 13 from his bedroom at his parents house in rural Kent. As a young child he struggled at school with reading, writing and spelling. Failing the once then eleven plus exam and being tested for speech impediments he was strangely selected as one of 15 boys at his school in Tenterden, Kent to enroll in the CSE computer course. This was a changing point of Martins life. At first he was slow to catch on to the concepts of computers but the blinking cursor and possibility of what it meant captivated the 12 year old. His then hidden entrepreneurship had him washing cars and cutting grass out of school hours to fund the purchase of him first PC, A ZX81 costing £49 pounds, from Boots in Ashford Kent. As soon as the box was opened he was stuck at the keyboard. Whilst other boys his age were typing in games and playing them, Martin had much bigger sights. He quickly mastered the skills of programming. And would spend his afternoons after school sat in his local book shop reading books on how to code and construct games. His reading disabilities seemed to very quickly pass. His passion and love to expand his mind became an obsession. By the age of 15 his computer skills and fame had grown so much that his headmaster asked him to sit the A level exam even though he had not sat the 2 year course. He used one of his games as his project work and scored an A + making him the first student in Kent to sit and pass the A level computer studies course. Martin a now seasoned games programmer was 16 and out of school. Working full time on publishing games with his father from their house in Kent they released hoards of computer hits. In 1987 a meeting in Birmingham saw win the contract to code Outrun for the CBM64. Martin recalls being taken into a room and show the huge arcade machine. Geoff Brown the then director of US Gold ask the 17 year old "can you convert this onto a home computer?" 9 months later outrun went on to be the biggest selling game of it's time. Martin recalls "I was in Spain on holiday with my Girlfriend when i heard that Outrun was No.1 In Boots and Smiths. I was just so proud. In January we got our first royalty cheque for Christmas sales, it was a staggering £17000 pounds. Back in those days that was a enormous amount of money. Martin went on to work in the US for Mindscape as well many other top game houses. In left the industry at the age of 21 and went onto launch the first virtual car showroom on the Internet in 1998. He now lives in South America and is founder of a up and coming start-up working in the cloud based point of sale industry.