Malcolm Evans

Who is Malcolm Evans?

Malcolm Evans is a British computer game programmer, best known for his games 3D Monster Maze for the Sinclair ZX81 and Trashman for the ZX Spectrum, released in 1982 and 1984 respectively.

He and his twin brother, Rod, were born in Romford, but his family soon moved to Portsmouth. He has a B.Sc. in electronics from Portsmouth Polytechnic and joined Marconi, where he worked on high-powered projects, such as satellite technology. Then in the mid-70s he moved to work for Smiths Aviation, where he designed hardware to implement computer control systems for jet engines.

In 1979 he moved again, to Sperry Gyroscope in Bristol, where he joined its micro-processor applications group. There he found himself using Zilog Z80 and Intel 8088 machine code language for small applications of a classified nature for the Ministry of Defence. The Bristol factory was closed in 1981 but by then Malcolm had received a ZX81 from his wife, Linda, for his thirty-seventh birthday in April 1981. Malcolm developed 3D Monster Maze to test what the computer was capable of, and completed it by November.

At a Bath Classical Guitar & Lute Society meeting in 1981 Evans met John K. Greye who had set up J. K. Greye Software a year previously, and who now asked Evans to join the company. They produced several computer games for the Sinclair ZX81 home computer. In the spring of 1982, Evans split up the company and founded his own company, New Generation Software, which continued to produce games for the ZX Spectrum and pioneer the 3D gaming industry.