Mark Allen, Technical Director

Mark’s experience in making games came back in the early 1980s. His parents had bought him a Sinclair ZX Spectrum and he was playing a game called Manic Miner. Unlike most eight year olds who would have just played the game again and again, Mark decided to see if he could make the game himself. Not out of cardboard and sticky-back plastic, but using fantastical things called machine code and assemblers.

And since those heady days of Duran Duran and Kajagoogoo, Mark has been making games. He’s travelled the world in his pursuit of gaming heaven and worked for two of the biggest and best console game manufacturers.

First off he went to Acclaim in Cheltenham where he honed his technical skills and responsible for producing classic games such as Extreme-G 3, Crazy Taxi and XGRA for PS2, GameCube and the X-Box.

Following a few years there, Mark was lured over to the US of A to work for gaming giants Midway. His bosses clearly thought that Mark was a bit of a legend as he was Technical Director and Executive Producer on numerous mega titles, including Happy Feet; Ed, Edd and Eddy; Area 51 and TNA Wrestling.

Having to manage $15million projects with up to 200 people on each game, Mark’s effortless mix of coolness under pressure and genius talent in making a good game really became invaluable.

But then it was time to head back to Blighty and as a resident Cotswoldian, he saw the excitement and potential of making games for the iPhone and signed up to the mighty Neon Play adventure.