Here's another book on how to write games, but it's slightly different in that it is not machine-specific. The Spectrum is mentioned quite a lot and the author seems to be familiar with the BBC too, but it is meant to be applicable to any computer and even to many languages.

The trouble with this approach is that it necessarily means that the text has to be very general and there is a danger that in trying to be all things to all men (or women!) it may end up being a bit too woolly to be of particular use to anyone.

The idea is that the author explores the theories of writing games programs with a view to enabling people to then apply the principles to their own situation. So far, so good, but I wonder how relevant most readers would find extracts from the "Newsletter of the Association for Child Psychology and Psychiatry" discussions of the theories of Piaget and explorations of the Western world's manipulation of the visual image!

There then follows a brief look at the nature of the main programming languages Comal, Pascal, Lisp and Prolog, followed by a short introduction to machine code.

Eventually we get on to programming games, and the next chapters discuss the principles of sound and graphics, and writing adventure and arcade games, with a few simple routines given in the text. The trouble is that of course there is a big difference between the ways you handle sound and graphics using the Basics of, say, the Commodore 64 and the BBC Micro. However, once you have got the idea you should be able to adapt it to your own purposes.

One complete listing is supplied at the back. This is the skeleton of a quick game that can be built up to any level of complexity that is required and how to develop it is discussed in chapter two.

As a broad introduction to the subject the book serves a purpose. But there is not a lot of meat in it and there are plenty of more useful books on this around.