Jonathan Thompson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jonathan Thompson born in Salford, Greater Manchester, England in November 1976, where he spent his youth. He studied at University of Salford between 1995 and 1997 where he studied a HND in Design & Media Communications, followed by a BA (Hons) Television and Radio between 1997 and 1999.

Jonathan's career began at BBC GMR (a local station serving Manchester and Salford) where he presented a program called “The People”. In January 1998, Jonathan moved to hospital radio based in the Manchester Royal Infirmary where he presented various evening and weekend shows. He also had a stint at radio lollipop in Birmingham from 2000 to 2002, where he presented various daytime shows and became Head of Music. In March 2003, he took over as presenter of Nickelodeon. See IMDB. He also has worked for Southport Reporter as a reporter and presenter.

Jonathan Thompson owns the largest collections of retro arcade machines in Europe. The collection ranges from Doctor Who to Star Wars collectables and has with in it Europe's largest Star Wars arcade machine collection. His huge Star Wars collection range from the original Atari Star Wars cockpit machine up to the Star Wars pinballs and a Trilogy full size arcade machine. His Star Wars cabinet, now extremely rare, forms a centrepiece to his collection and has been shown all over the world. His collections have been on show in places like "Spaceport" in Liverpool (UK).

On the back of this, Jonathan Thompson formed a company called JS Classics. JS Classics is the only company in the UK that actually designs and manufacturers its own range of full sized video game cabinets. The company also has its own range of called “Voyager” ™ machines that faithfully reproduce the style of the original retro cabinets, while unique software enables the player to play many of the Classic games.

At present Jonathan Thompson is running an international competition to find the next generation of top retro arcade game programmers. This is with the view of developing a center of excellence in the UK for arcade game programming. He is also following on from his call for a museum of arcade machines and is in now in negotiations with Cities in the UK and in Europe over plans to build one. See "Museum & Heritage" in sources.

[edit] Sources

"Museum & Heritage" magazine by McMillan Scott Issue 4 2005 (call for amusement arcade museum!!)
"Voice newspaper" 30 October 2000
"Sun" online May 2004
"Maxim" magazine June 2004 edition
"Loaded" magazine May 2004
Front cover of the national "Metro News" 31 March 2004
"FHM" magazine may 2003
"Mail On Sunday" October 1999
"Lancashire Evening Post" 12 October 1999
"Area 51" sci fi magazine 1999
"Manchester Evening News" 22 may 1999
"Big Breakfast" with Chris Evans 1997