David Jones (programmer)

{{Short description|Computer game programmer}}

{{BLP sources|date=November 2008}}

David Jones is a former freelance computer game programmer, who was prolific in the mid-to-late 1980s. He is best known for the creation of the computer game character Magic Knight{{cite web|url=http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/spellbound-review|title=Spellbound Retro Review|author=Peter Parrish|date=19 October 2007|accessdate=2010-10-28|publisher=Eurogamer}} in his 1985 game Finders Keepers for the Mastertronic budget label and released on the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX and Commodore 64.{{cite web |title=David Jones |url=http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/54825/David-Jones/ |website=computinghistory.org.uk |access-date=1 February 2021}} He later went on to work for Psygnosis and Acclaim.

Finders Keepers spawned three sequels: Spellbound (1985), Knight Tyme (1986) and Stormbringer (1987).

In 2019, Jones donated the Tandy TRS-80 Model III computer that he used to create the Magic Knight series of games to The Centre for Computing History.{{cite web |title=Magic Knight Computer Preserved at Museum |url=http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/news/53917/Magic-Knight-Computer-Preserved-at-Museum/ |website=computinghistory.org.uk |access-date=1 February 2021}} Also donated were many floppy disks, and a hard disk that containing source code and assets for many of his games. The data will be preserved as part of the Centre's ongoing video game preservation work.{{cite web |title=David Jones video game preservation case study |url=http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/pages/56937/David-Jones-Videogame-Preservation-Case-Study/ |website=computinghistory.org.uk |access-date=1 February 2021}}

As of 2019, Jones is a Games Lecturer at Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands.{{cite web |title=David Jones |url=http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/54825/David-Jones/ |website=computinghistory.org.uk |access-date=1 February 2021}}