Do you want to know more about Grocer Games?

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Grocer Games is me - Kevin Kelley.

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A little bit of background.

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My first computer was a TI-99/4a.  It wasn't long until we upgraded to an Apple iic, where I would play simple games but I didn't start programming until I broke my arm in middle school.  I sat in the library for months where I was left to my own devices.  I discovered QBasic and in an attempt to learn, I found my family's old magazines and books from our first computers and proceeded to enter in line after line of code.

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It wasn't too long after that when I started to make programs of my own.  I never quite grasped concepts like sprites or some of the more complex functions so most of my programs consisted of ASCII art, text adventures, and simple boardgame-style games (which wasn't too much of a stretch since I used to design boardgames in my spare time as well).

Eventually I discovered HTML and attempted to make websites to feature my hobbies, like video games, but I slowly stopped programming until college when I started to discover homebrew Atari video games.  At the time I thought that being a decades-old video game system, the Atari VCS would surely be easier to program for.  

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I was wrong.

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It was at this time that I came up with the idea for Bag Boy.  I made numerous game ideas based on working at a grocery store and I had hoped to pump them out under the banner Kelleyvision but programming proved harder than I had thought and in the early days of the internet, I had a harder time finding help on my way and so I had quit.  Every once and a while I would pick up my journal and toy with programming only to quickly become discouraged.

 

Over the years I would try and find different app-making tools, thinking Bag Boy would translate well into the mobile app arena but I had lacked the patience to proceed.  It is very odd that the development of Batari Basic eluded me during this period, as I would frequent Atari Age and the various fan sites during my programming fantasies. 

 

It wasn't until years later when watching YouTube.  After watching a show, YouTube queued up the next video - the Tinkernut video "How To Make An Atari Game."

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I quickly sat up, ran to my computer, and followed each step making a game in a matter of minutes.  Encouraged, I quickly scoured the internet to learn everything about Batari Basic and the Visual Batari Basic editor.  I went from lurking on the forums to becoming an active participant and before long I started programming my first game after nearly 20 years of dreaming of making one.

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I quickly learned about the limitations of the Atari and instead of becoming discouraged, I refocused my attempts and started studying.  I discovered that I began to understand the concepts that confused me as a youth.  As I hit roadblocks, I started making additional programs to become more familiar with the code with an added goal of becoming familiar with programming assembly.

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I had initially wanted to focus on Bag Boy but after numerous rewrites, I started making practice programs that were simpler than my original code so that I could figure out what works and how it works.  These quickly became Manatee Madness and Crossdock.  2600 Beat was a separate project that stemmed from reading the schematics of an Atari Joystick Controller and a drum trigger (as electronics and music production are an overlapping interest).

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With help along the way I started getting better and I as to the point where I was nearing the possibility of releasing a game for sale and so I decided to make a website and now here we are - at Grocer Games!