Kettering councillor releases debut retro video game

He'd usually be found voting on budgets or speaking up for his constituents in the council chamber.

But Kettering councillor Michael Brown has taken his first step into a new world - creating retro video games.

The former Conservative politician, who now represents the Brambleside ward as an Independent, has recently released new game Panic! Rooms for the Atari 2600 console, which first came out in 1977.

And the 36-year-old, who is a software developer by trade, admits it probably puts him in a group of people with very niche interests.

He joked: "I don't think there's many software developing councillors in the country who are making video games!"

Panic! Rooms, which is being sold by classic Atari website AtariAge.com, sees gamers play as a ruthless Texas oil tycoon in their fortress who stepped over everybody and everything to get to where they are today. But their angry competitors, who have escaped from prison, found out the tycoon had them jailed so they could dominate the market and are out for revenge.

Gamers have to defeat enemies in each room, solve puzzles and collect items to increase their score and escape the mansion.

Cllr Brown, who has decided not to run in elections for North Northamptonshire Council in May, first started working on the game in 2016 with a lot of people making new games for old consoles.

After two years of development it spent a year in the testing phase before its progress was slowed by the pandemic, and was only recently released.

Cllr Brown, who named his computer games brand Generation2 because the Atari 2600 was part of the second generation of home games consoles, said his debut game's production was a constant battle.

He said: "It's the first game I've ever made and I wanted to do something that was fun and challenging.

"I thought making a game on a really primitive system would be a good challenge to take on.

"I was constantly battling with running out of processing, running out of ROM and running out of RAM."

Cllr Brown also started work on a Final Fantasy style RPG in 2017, which is almost finished, and is planning on making games for the Sega Mega Drive and Nintento 64 in the future.