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A work colleague remembers Wizard


Mort
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When I found out about Chris passing away it affected me (and continues to) more deeply than I ever would have reasonably expected to feel, after all I had great admiration for Chris's work but I never knew him as a person.

I reached out to family and friends of Chris when he passed away. I don't know why I felt the need to do this other than I felt that I wanted to understand more about Chris as a person and also especially that I just wanted for people to understand how much his genius and dedication provided to a scene of hobbyists, and how much his work continues to both help, provide memories and entertain people.

I did reach out to one of his work colleagues, Mark, and had a brief conversation, after some time passed I had a PM from another of his colleagues called Ainsley, and this is his response (which he is happy to share with you all)

Ainsley: Hello Simon, I am a former Avaya workmate of Chris Wren. So it was a with great shock and sorrow I read the post you sent to Mark on the 20th Oct this year about Chris’s passing. Personally, I worked side-by-side with Chris for over of 20 years and spent many hours with him in the course of this time.

Me: Hello Ainsley, nice to hear from a colleague who worked with Chris and knew him on a personal level. I knew Chris as ‘Wizard’ which was the name he went by on various internet emulation scene forums relating to Fruit Machine and SWP emulation. He spent years coding a windows application to emulate various fruit machine technologies. It’s a very niche emulation community of which he is the founder. His own interest and hobby in this area provided a challenge to him which he started around 2001/2 with the first release of his windows based emulation called fruit.exe. In the beginning this only emulated a single technology MPU3. By 2020 his program, later called MFME emulated over 15 technologies which span almost all fruit machines released over the past 40 years. Its considered by all of us involved in this emulation scene to be a gift given to us by a dedicated genius and without his work we would have never seen this area of emulation borne into existence. Many of us spoke with Wizard in forum PMs etc over the years and he was always very helpful but many of us never knew him as a person and it would be great to hear from you on what he was like, we assumed he would have been somewhat introverted and considered geeky/ nerdy by some but in my opinion people like Wizard should not live in the shadows and instead be given all of the credit and acknowledgement of their individual accomplishments. Many of us reached out to his family to explain how well thought of he was. We understand it came as a shock to the family how much his work helped people especially with helping some cure their gambling addictions. He was a special person for what he provided to many people. He will be greatly missed by all of us.

Ainsley: Thanks for your response and sharing your thoughts.  We are all shocked to hear the news. For more than 20 years I worked with Chris on Avaya IP Office PBX solutions. Chris was one of the main developers that worked to establish this product as the bestselling small/medium PBX system and sold by British Telecom. Chris left Avaya sometime in 2017/18 and it saddens me to consider I hadn’t spoken to him since and to hear this awful news is overwhelming. As programmer the complexity and depth  of this knowledge knew no bounds and was simply mind-blowingly brilliant.  I recall  working with him as a test engineer in the development of the VoIP interface for the system.  He at the time would endeavour to explain how the traffic prioritisation of the voice packets verses signalising and data no-critical data traffic was managed on a ring buffer, but often at times it was lost on me; quite frankly he was a brilliant programmer. I recall my time with him as enjoyable, rewarding and educational. As you have correctly surmised, he was an intensely private person and outside working hours we never saw him.  I remember his warm friendly, quiet and gentle personality that just radiated intelligence in conversation and most enjoyable company in the bar.  He was always first with new tech, and back in around 2005 he was the first to acquire TomTom navigation system which he patched together and got working in his Impreza 2000 at the time. It is typical of the man  to dedicate his free time to a community you have described, yet he did not seek to impress those around him at work as he spoke little of it. We knew Chris interest in pin ball machines and emulators, but I guess none us understood the full scale of this hobby and the community of followers. The world is gloomier place knowing CJW has departed from us.

Edited by Mort
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@Mort I want to thank you, Mark and Ainsley personally just to get a glimpse of what Chris was like irl so for that please pass on my gratitude for them sharing, it is one of the best things I have read in a long long time. None of what he achieved surprises me really as the magnitude of Chris's intelligence and not just MFME goes much much further than some think, what a pleasure I have had to have known him if only for a couple of years.

You have made my day and helped me in the acceptance.

Gone but never forgotten.

Thanks again from the bottom of my heart:)

 

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Many thanks for that Mort.

Since Chris passed I have wished on several occasions that we knew more about him, that he'd let more of 'himself' out on the forums and suchlike, but obviously he just wasn't inclined to do so and ultimately we have to respect that.

As such it's especially nice to hear from people who knew him IRL and it seems he was a thoroughly decent chap, but at the same time still kept his private life private.

An enigmatic genius for sure.

Thanks again for sharing Mort.

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Fruit machine emulation content from the artist previously known as Degsy Degworth and the odd new thing here and there too - https://www.youtube.com/c/DegsyDegworth

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Thank you for sharing with us Mort..

Its a shame Wizard is no longer with us... I had wondered what the legendary man was like - i don't even know what he looked like, i dare say a pic of him was around in the past on the likes of Fruit Forums etc...

I once thought how brilliant it would of been to of had a Degsey Degworth video about Wizard - what the man was like, what his own MFME machine would of looked like, the future development of MFME - what else Wizard enjoyed tinkering with etc...  sadly without Wizard we will never completely know but it is interesting to see stuff like this from his workmate.

Brilliant stuff! :)

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Thanks for helping join the dots .Most appreciative.I always assumed that he worked in fruit machine industry.Maybe at some point some of the members here who knew him will share their thoughts about him.I have 2 people specifically in mind but its up to them to come forward.As I play the emulator almost every day I think about Chris daily and the sadness that happend as i think most on here do.

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Thanks very much for this Mort, it helps us gain a little more insight to the genius himself.

It does sound sickly as every man should be equal, but even though I had never met him, I knew I should be privileged that he had given his time to exchange PM's with me. It's like having that person who you loved to have a conversation with, maybe a celeb, sports star or a great person in history for instance and them taking the time out, to actually engage with you, rather than ignore you. Even though they were the one doing the entertaining and you were a mere fan.

I think for many of us, if we had, had the chance to meet him, we would have had no qualms of inviting him into our home to stay if he needed and then down the pub, he wouldn't be needing to put his hand in his pocket all night.

I think we all knew he was a very private person and highly intelligent, therefore it would be interesting to know if he was an addict or a professional player of fruit machines. On the one hand, it would show that everyone can be addicted, no matter how intelligent you are, but I suspect it was the latter. Also fruit machine are generally looked upon as a little bit dirty, so it's kind of also strange that someone with his intelligence would even give them the time of day.

Considering the general tone of the place today, it's been great to read something interesting and hopefully it will remind a few people, why we are really here and what we all agreed to do, when Chris died.

Edited by wearecity
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Nice one Mort, thanks for sharing this, really appreciate it.  Knowing he was well liked and respected for his knowledge has made me feel a little better.  Thanks mate ;)

When Chris passed I just felt so sorry for him.  It really affected me, it was such a shock. I’d never met him, I think that’s what upset me so much.   This guy who had given me so much and I didn’t even know what he looked like, yet I felt like I knew him.

He will always be deeply missed around fme.   Such an honour to have known and interacted with him on the forums, I really have to thank him for getting me back into my design work back in early 2000’s when I was broken due to fruit machine addiction.  His mfme tools inspired me to get involved and use my skills again ;).

J

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