Being on the internet as a British person, one finds its full of people from the States, which isn't a problem in itself, but has meant at many times the 'bloke' suffix is translated many times to 'block'. A lovable nickname that to be fair, isn't used anywhere near as much as it used to be.

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The origin of the name relates to traditional arcade style scoreboards. Unlike a lot of gamers my age (and older) - arcades were not a big thing in the rural England region that I'm from - but video games (many being ports of arcade games of course) included arcade style name initial score charts. My brother would often sign off as 'Ace'

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However, as younger siblings do, we copy, and he got irate at me using the same name. By this stage in the 90's, scorecharts were often more generous giving at least 7 characters or more compared to the usual 3. So I came up with the best thing I could come up with at the time, 'Acebloke'. He laughed, quite hard, but it stuck, and I used it regularly from then onwards. Of course I still used 'Ace' for 3 character records, 'Blk' or 'Abk' doesn't have the same ring to it.

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Despite being the son of a Computer Programmer, there was no direct link that got me into programming - instead being a necessity for anyone who had a 8 bit Microprocessor at the time. I started with the Amstrad CPC 464 - with no upgrades. Its budget place on the market meant it was possibly scraping the bottom of the barrel but I learnt BASIC through it and the magazines that came with code you can type up to make programs.

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I did eventually move on to a 95 system that upgraded to 98 - and with that came the ability to easily access visual programming software packages. While I dabbled in C++ and other systems and selling really rubbish games for 50p on a floppy disk at school, I settled for making games quickly and socially on BYOND.com where I made my first proper level of income.

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As the internet changed, so did I, I might have grew up a little bit too. So to not be so pretentious I switched the 'Ace' out for my first name, hence - Mikebloke. I mean it would have been weird if I used Mike if I was called John, right?

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I tried it out as a streamer, showing off my vast personal collection of video games, but ultimately a crowded field and being physically tired from working outside my hobby interest cut the chances of it being a regular feature. After trying a few video series on Twitch and Youtube, I went back to my roots and dabbled a bit into making games for older systems and finally taking a crack at Assembly.

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After several book purchases, a Udemy course and a lot of help from friendly users at AtariAge community, I'm finally at the point of playable games on old consoles! I join the small list (albiet at the bottom!) of developers for these classic and nostalgic systems.