Brian Howarth

Who is Brian Howarth?

Brian Howarth is a computer game programmer. He wrote many interactive fiction computer games in the early 1980s in a series called Mysterious Adventures.

Howarth was initially inspired to write computer moderated adventures by the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, and the UK television show The Adventure Game. He first adventures were written on the TRS-80, taking his cues from the works of Scott Adams. After becoming frustrated with the BASIC programming language, he learnt machine language to create his first adventure, The Golden Baton, which was published by Molimerx in 1981. Following this success, Molimerx encouraged Howarth to produce two more titles, The Time Machine and Arrow of Death.

In 1982 Howarth finished developing his own interpreter, based on Scott Adams' Adventureland source code published in Byte magazine. This used a database format which would speed up development of new adventures. He ported his games from the original TRS-80 format to the BBC Micro under his own label, Digital Fantasia, as Molimerx were not planning to support other platforms. Digital Fantasia operated a mail order service and software shop, staffed by family and friends.