Paul Owens (games programmer)

{{short description|British video game programmer}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2022}}

Paul Owens is a British video game programmer who worked at Ocean Software in the 1980s and 90s and was the founding programmer employed by Spectrum Games prior to Ocean Software being established. He is best known for writing the ZX Spectrum version of Daley Thompson’s Decathlon.

Mainly concentrating on the ZX Spectrum, he wrote over 14 titles{{cite web | url = http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekpub.cgi?regexp=^Paul+Owens$ | title = Sinclair Infoseek: Paul Owens [1] | accessdate = 4 January 2010 | last = van der Heide | first = Martijn | work = World of Spectrum}} but also collaborated on many other games and other platforms including the Amstrad CPC along with developing other software such as the Ocean Spectrum Loader{{cite web | url = http://newton.sunderland.ac.uk/~specfreak/Schemes/schemes.html | title = Spectrum loader schemes [1] | accessdate = 4 January 2010 | url-status = dead | archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20100506062855/http://newton.sunderland.ac.uk/~specfreak/Schemes/schemes.html | archivedate = 6 May 2010 | df = dmy-all }} and game development software.

In the 80s, Ocean Software collaborated with Sinclair Research to help develop the Sinclair hardware and Paul received a letter of commendation from Sir Clive Sinclair after helping to iron out some problems with the ZX Spectrum 128 (codenamed Derby) prior to its release.