RetroGamer_011.pdf - Internet Archive

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RETRO11 Cover UK 03/12/2004 12:40 PM

Untitled-1 1 1/9/06 12:55:47

>10 PRINT "hello">20 GOTO 10>RUN

Welcome to anotherissue of Retro Gamermagazine. As we write

this it's the run-up to Christmashere and overcome by thegenerosity of the season we'vegone out of our way to packthis issue with more retrogaming features than everbefore. As always, let us knowwhat you think about thecurrent contents, either byemailing me or posting acomment on our Web forum –

there will be a feedback threadon this issue up there right now.

The keen-eyed amongst youwill have no doubt noticed thatthis issue contains yet anotherfeature on Jet Set Willy. It seemsthat some people believe we havean unhealthy Matthew Smith/MinerWilly obsession. It's not like thatreally. Well, it is a bit, but it's notentirely planned. We coveredManic Miner and Jet Set Willy inthe early issues, and it kind ofsnowballed from there, what withThe Mega-tree disks turning up on

eBay and Matthew Smith turningup at the Classic Gaming Expo.And then we wanted to leave italone, but we were recentlyoffered a fascinating article aboutthe new mobile phone version andwe really couldn't turn it down.So, this is it. The last Miner Willyarticle we ever run. Ever. Or atleast it is until Matthew Smithfinally completes Miner WillyMeets the Taxman...

�❇❙❖✄❉❇❙❙❋❊❏❙

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hello

llo

<EDITORIAL>Editor =

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Keith Campbell + David Crookes

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Per Arne Sandvik + Craig Vaughan

Jason Walsh + Dan Whitehead

Carl Woffenden + Iain Von Warde

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Marketing Manager =

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Editorial Director =

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Publisher =

Robin Wilkinson

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Retro Gamer, ISSN number 1742 3155,

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**3**

RETRO11 Intro/Hello 08/12/2004 11:21 AM

>insides 11

The GX Factor p22

David Crookes explains why Amstrad’s GX4000

failed to make the promised impact

Talking Trash p54

Craig Vaughan digs up the story of the Spectrum

classic Trashman and chats with its creator

Jet Set Go p72

Matthew Smith’s greatest game is now available

for your mobile courtesy of Carl Woffenden

Mac Attack p30

Jason Walsh gets the inside story on Apple’s

enduring flagship computer

Games of the Century p62

Dan Whitehead discovers 20th Century Fox’s

greatest movies on the Atari 2600 console

Format of the Future p79

Shaun Bebbington takes Codemasters’ rare CD

games collection for a spin

**4****4**

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Superplay p47

How quickly can you complete Super Mario

Brothers? Alicia Ashby has the stopwatch

Keep the Faith p69

Per Arne Sandvik finds enlightenment in

Wisdom Tree’s games of Biblical proportions

IF Comp 2004 p85

Adventure legend Keith Campbell reveals the

winners of this year’s IF writing competition

Discovering Durell p88

To tie in with this month’s coverdisc, Martyn Carroll

explores the history of 8-bit publisher Durell

>Regulars

Retro News p06

The latest retro news for your reading pleasure

Retro Forum p10

Send us some feedback. You know you want to

Retro Reviews p16

Old games, new games. As long as it’s retro we’ll rate it

Desert Island Disks p39

TV presenter Violet Berlin reveals what she’d take to our

digital desert island

Retro Mart p108

Bargains galore in our virtual car boot sale

Endgame p114

It’s the end of the magazine!

**5****5**


**6**

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | REGULAR:NEWS |

Nintendo is to add four more toptitles to its NES Classics range.From January 7th you’ll be ableto get Metroid, Dr. Mario,Castlevania and Zelda II: The

Adventures of Link for around£15 each.

The original range of eightgames launched back in July,along with a limited edition NES-

Just as we were wrapping upthis issue, the guys at the RetroRemakes website revealed thewinners of the Retro RemakesCompetition 2004. First placewent to Robert Lupinek’sLegend of Shadow, a remake ofTaito’s rather obscure 1985arcade game The Legend ofKage. The remake received an

average score of 91.5% from thefour judges, with Steve Phelps(aka The Toker) commenting:“This entry puts the nail in thecoffin of those who believe it isnot possible to produce anoutstanding game in a click andplay development system… thisis done in Game Maker andoozes class from the second it

opens to the very moment itcloses.” For his efforts Robertwins over £1,200 in prizes,including a two year subscriptionto Retro Gamer (so hopefully heshould be reading this rightnow!) Second place was awardedto Stop the Express by Jetman’sDad, a remake of the oldHudson Soft game of the same

name, while third place went toAndrew Pointon’s TrashmanAnniversary (featured elsewherein this issue).

The overall quality of gamesin this year’s competition wasincredibly high, so here’s tonext year’s competition, right?Well, with the 2004 competitiontaking up nearly eight monthsof his life, Steve is not eager tocommit just yet. “If there is a2005 competition it will be in avastly different format, withmany more people helping out.”If you can offer your services, ormaybe act as a sponsor, whynot stop by the website(wwwwww..rreemmaakkeess..oorrgg))? Theremakes scene needs you!

We Have a Winner!

Remake competition results announced

More NES Classics

Zelda II and Metroid heading to GBA

styled GameBoy Advance tocelebrate the console’s 20thanniversary. While we’re lookingforward to the new releases,we’re slightly envious that the

Japanese range (known asFamicon Minis) has now grown toinclude 30 titles, compared to the12 available in the UK andEurope. Granted, some of theJapanese releases are a littleobscure, but we’d welcome therelease of Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins, DigDug, Kid Icarus and especiallySuper Mario Bros 2 (as thiswould be the harder JapaneseSMB sequel, released over hereas Lost Levels in the SNES MarioAll-stars pack).

Regardless, Metroid and ZeldaII are must-buys, and the wholeseries is sure to worth somethingto collectors in a few year’s time.

RETRO11 News 08/12/2004 11:36 AM

**7**

Important happenings in the wonderful retro world

This month // NES Classics Range // Retro Remakes Competition 2004 // Turbo OutRun on MAME // Retro Reading //

Stunt Car Racer on Gizmondo // C64DTV Joystick // Retro Auction Watch // OrSam 2004 Show Report...

It’s official. The arcade emulatorMAME is exciting again, thanks tothe latest build which includes fullsupport for Sega’s Turbo OutRun.

The recent Xbox version ofOutRun 2 was packed with old-school extras, including theoriginal OutRun and tracks fromDaytona 2, but Turbo OutRun wassadly omitted. This wasparticularly disappointing as it’s awell known fact that Turbo OutRuncould not be MAME’d, as thegame is encrypted. According toan online source, “The encryptionuses a epoxy block that contains acustom 68000 processor, someRAM, and a suicide battery.” Wewon’t pretend to know what any

of that means, but we’re guessingthat it’s tough to crack. Anyway,cracked it has been, and the

Publisher Ilex Press’s autumncatalogue features a number oftitles aimed at gamers, includingin-depth books on game design.One book that will be ofparticular interest to Retro Gamerreaders will be Digital Retro.

Written by Gordon Laing, formereditor of Personal ComputerWorld magazine, this impossibly-glossy 192-page volume tells thecomplete story of homecomputing, beginning with 1977’spioneering MITS Altair and takingin 40 classic computers includingApple, IBM, Atari, Commodore,Sinclair and more.

The book features dozens ofhigh-quality photographs – noGoogle Image Search used here –and the production values aresecond to none. It really is onefor the coffee table. Digital Retrois priced at £19.95 and availablefrom wwwwww..iilleexx--pprreessss..ccoomm.

While on the subject ofbooks, we’d like to quickly

Richard Burtonreports on thelatest online auctions

With the evenings drawing in earlier andthe wintry fingers of Christmas flicking theV-signs at you, the online auction sites arebecoming busier and chock full ofnostalgic gaming wonderment as peoplestart flogging off their retro wares for anextra bit of Christmas income. Of course,with the hundreds of gaming bargains tobe had there are also severaloutstandingly overpriced items to dreamabout and drool over. Here are but a few…

In a previous issue of Retro Gamer wefeatured the slightly porno game BubbleBath Babes. Well, as if by magic anothergame from Panesian Ltd, filthmongers tothe gaming world, has made a rareappearance on eBay USA. The aptly

named Hot Slots is considered to be therarest of Panesian’s three games, the otherunmentioned title being Peek-A-Boo Poker.

As with all the titles, a standardgaming recipe takes shape. Take asimple game, in this case a fruit

Retro Reading Ilex Press releases Digital Retro

mention Dizzy: This is Your Lifeby David Crookes. David wroteour Dizzy feature back in issuetwo of Retro Gamer, and this new68-page book is a fitting tributeto Codemasters’ popularcharacter, complete with a Dizzyhistory, game reviews andwalkthroughs. The book is pricedat £4.99, and 75p from each sold(basically the full profit) will bedonated to the Royal NationalInstitute for the Blind. David willbe selling the book on eBay(search for ‘Dizzy Book’), and youcan also buy it direct by sendinga cheque or postal order for£4.99 to David Crookes, 37Trimingham Drive, Bury, GtrManchester, BL8 1JW.

Turbo power

New MAME update plays host to Turbo OutRun

required version of MAME (v0.89)can be downloaded fromwwwwww..mmaammeewwoorrlldd..nneett. Enjoy!

RETRO11 News 08/12/2004 11:37 AM

**8**

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machine simulator, smother with prettycomputerised ladies, whip in a fewchoice double entendres and finallygarnish with an assortment of nipplesfor a risquéé but nonetheless, verysought after NES game. A very tastydish and so it should be for a gutbusting $417.99. As a finishing touch,maybe a splash of double creamwouldn’t go amiss…

Closer to home and free frompixelated debauchery is the gloriouslywholesome ZX81. Although boxedexamples of the computer can raise inexcess of £100, the games are generallyfairly cheap to pick up, being only a fewpounds each. Meteor Storm bydk’Tronics changed that somewhat whenit reached a final bid price on eBay UKof £49.

Delving further back into thecomputing timeline we bump into theZX80 and particularly one which wasdescribed by its seller as “Probably thebest you will ever see!” Well, we don’tknow about that, but it was certainly themost expensive one we’ve seen, pullingin a colossal £577. This is by far andaway the most highly priced ZX80auctioned to date.

According to the owner of aCommodore P500 – basically a splicingtogether of a Commodore 64 with extramemory and a Commodore PET – theselittle beauties are rarer than theaforementioned ZX80. After raking in animpressive £353.33, we wouldn’t

disagree. Apparently the P500 wasrecalled by Commodore after runninginto certification problems and the fewthat survive are demonstration machinesthat were sent to dealers.

Finally, it’s back over the Atlantic toCanada where a boxed Fire Attack!Nintendo Game & Watch Widescreenended with a final figure just short of£1,130. Why it should pull in that sortof money we’re not quite sure however.The recent Retro Gamer Game & Watchprice guide quoted this game at £100boxed and, as of writing, the two boxedexamples on eBay UK are both under£30. Intriguing…

New Games fromCronosoft

Just as he’d done at last year’sOrSam, Cronosoftboss Simon Ullyatttook the opportunityto launch thecompany’s latestgame at the event.The excellent ZXFootball Manager2004 for theSpectrum (reviewedthis issue) costs amere £2.99 (pluspostage) and is a

homage to Kevin Tom’s legendaryFootball Manager.Simon also took the opportunityto promote Cronosoft’s currentrange of titles for other formats

during the day,including Reaxion andCyberwing. When wespoke to him he wasgetting rather excitedabout a new Vic 20game currently indevelopment. Hewouldn’t name it, butsaid that it would bein a similar vein toManic Miner andcontain 20 screens –

impressive in itself, as the 16KRAM pack enabled machinecouldn’t quite manage acompletely faithful version firsttime around. Simon then wenton to explain that the game willlikely run on an unexpandedmachine! Needless to say we’rehoping to see this title verysoon but in the meantime keepa careful eye onwwwwww..ccrroonnoossoofftt..ccoo..uukk.

Game in a day

Further proving his programmingbrilliance, Jonathan Cauldwell setup his development machine and

Retro Gamer was in attendance at the recent OrSam2004 show, held in Norwich. Here are the highlights

The new handheld consoleGizmondo is to play host to aremake of Geoff Crammond’sclassic Stunt Car Racer. The game,entitled Stuntcar Extreme, is

Extreme HandheldRacing

Stunt Car Racer reborn for new handheld

currently being developed byFathammer and is alreadyshaping up nicely. The game willfeature seven race tracks and 20‘retro-styled’ cars to choose from.

Like the original, there will be amulti-player mode availablethanks to fancy Bluetoothtenchology.

There is a video clip previewon show at wwwwww..ggiizzmmoonnddoo..ccoomm,as well as more information onthis and other retro-esquedevelopments for the console,including Angel Fish, a verticallyscrolling shoot-em-up, and SuperDrop Mania, an interesting takeon the Tetris concept.

RETRO11 News 08/12/2004 11:37 AM

**9**

was keeping top secret; even fromus. No early peeks were allowedat the black box he was showingthe internals of to his colleague.What could it be?

Eventually Colin revealed theanswer – the Mayhem acceleratorboard for the Sam Coupé. Thisdevice, though still in the earlystages of its life, plugs into theback of the machine, speeding itup to 12MHz, with half a megabyteof fast memory for good measure.Colin demonstrated the board byrunning the FreeScape games on it,and the improved frame rate wasvery noticeable.

Also on the Quazar stand wasa modern looking silver computerwith a widescreen TFT monitorand a PC keyboard. This was themuch talked about Sam in a Can,the unusual British beast in abrand new housing. Moreinformation on this and otherQuazar projects can be found atwwwwww..qquuaazzaarr..ccllaarraa..nneett

The current owner of theCommodore brand has finallyreleased its new C64-based plugand play console, similar to thoseproduced by Namco, Sega andAtari. As we predicted way back inissue five, it’s styled around theclassic Competition Pro joystick,powered by batteries and plugs

into the A/V input on your TV. Thedevice, named the C64DTV, hasbeen launched in America first,through the shopping channel QVC,but will no doubt soon find its wayto the UK and Europe.

Epyx (and sport sims) fans arewell served by the plug and playconsole. Included is the superlative

California Games (amongst othersfrom the Games series), as well assome arcade games includingSpeedball II, Slayer and Nebulus.More details will be available atwwwwww..ccoommmmooddoorreewwoorrlldd..ccoomm. We’llbe importing the joystick to give ita thorough test and bring you theverdict on the device next issue.

Spectrum hardware

On the AY-Riders stand waspossibly the best use of aPlayStation TFT “flip-lid” monitorwe’ve yet seen. It was connectedto a Spectrum 128+! This wouldmake for an interesting mod ifthe two could be fused togetherin some way (and the monitorpainted black).

Equally interesting was thedevice hanging out of the back ofthe machine; a Slovakian IDEinterface which can use CompactFlash cards with a generic PCadapter. These devices, availablein the UK soon, are an excellentway of sharing files between yourPC and Spectrum at little cost –the price is rumoured to bearound £30. As soon as we havemore information on thisintriguing piece of hardware, we’llpass it on.

C64 Reborn (again)Play 30 classic C64 games on your TV

tackled the crazy challenge ofwriting a complete game, fromscratch, during the event. Earlyon, it was clear that his idea wasambitious. He wanted to create agame based around the Thrustconcept and while this seemssimple enough, it’s actuallytrickier than you’d imagine. Heneeded to code a simulation ofgravitational pulls and the effectsthat using the thrust controls ofthe ship would have.

But if anyone could do it, itwas Jonathan. He quickly had abasic engine set up and by theend of the day – to the

amazement of most – he hadcompleted the game, a screen-by-screen affair in which the playerhad to manoeuvre their shiparound collecting bubbles. As youwould expect, none of the bellsand whistles, such as soundeffects or music, were includedbut pretty much everything elsewas in place and the game wasfully playable with just minutes tospare. The full game, now withmusic, will soon be available todownload from Jonathan’shomepage athhttttpp::////mmeemmbbeerrss..ffoorrttuunneecciittyy..ccoomm//jjoonnaatthhaann66//eegggghheeaadd//

Mayhem at theOrSamDuring the morning’s obligatorysetting up period it quicklybecame apparent that Colin Piggotfrom Quazar had something he

Jonathan Cauldwell as he

starts the mammoth task

Jonathan’s game in a day

in action

A Sam Coupe with a Mayhem

accelerator

An interesting use for a

PSOne monitor

The end of a long day

but in good spirits

RETRO11 News 08/12/2004 11:37 AM

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙ | REGULAR:RETRO FORUM |

**10**

Teenage kicks

I’ve just started collecting themagazine, issue eight being thefirst. I’m a massive retro gamer(although I like some of the newstuff as well), and the firstcomputer I played on was my dad’sC64 when I was just three-years-old. Over the years, I have playedon many old retro platforms,including a Commodore VIC-20.

Now that I’m 18 I can reallysee how much games havechanged throughout the years.Gone are the simple and fungames like Manic Miner. Here weare in the ultra-3D, ultra-violentworld of gaming. GTA is one goodexample – although its violentcontent does upset me so I don’tplay any of them.

I’ve just finished reading issuenine, which is the best of the twoissues I’ve read so far. Yourfeature on the Amiga was a joy toread, as the Amiga is my favouritecomputer of all time. The onlyproblem with it was there wasn’tenough about the top gamesavailable for it. You could have atleast done a top ten like you didwith the Gameboy feature.

I have also read the top 100

games, and I couldn’t believe myeyes that the number one gamewas one I remember my brotherplaying on the C64. I have toagree that Elite was veryimpressive for its time. Its sequel,Frontier, was also excellent. Awhole universe on one 3.5infloppy disk. Respect! Some of theother games on the list were finetoo, although I must confess thatmy brother and I must be theonly people to hate Halo. Weplayed it and thought that it wasso cheesy. You can even rotateyour vehicle in mid-air. You can’tget any cheesier than that, canyou? I was also surprised to seethat none of the Unreal gamesare in the top 100. Unreal, Unreal2 and the Tournament Editionsnot only look great, but they areso much fun. I can’t believe thatthey are always underrated bysome. These games rock.

I really like your coverdiscs,especially issue eight’s filled withGraftgold games. Its games werealways great, with Uridium andSuper Off-Road being ones Iremember (we had Uridium onthe C64, and I used to have theGame Gear version of Super Off-Road). As with Timo Reinikka’s

The

RETRO

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RETRO11 Letters 08/12/2004 11:33 AM

email in issue nine, I would alsolike to see a CD like this again.Perhaps you could do one withTeam 17 games on like AlienBreed?AAnnddrreeww PPoottttss,, vviiaa eemmaaiill

RRGG:: WWee’’rree ggllaadd ttoo sseeee tthhaatt tthheemmaaggaazziinnee ccoonnttiinnuueess ttoo aattttrraaccttggaammeerrss ooff aallll aaggeess,, aanndd wwhheerreeaasswwee ccaann’’tt ccoommmmeenntt oonn HHaalloowwiitthhoouutt ccaauussiinngg ccoonnttrroovveerrssyy,, aaTTeeaamm 1177 ffeeaattuurree iiss iinn tthhee ppiippeelliinnee..WWhheetthheerr oorr nnoott wwee ccaann ggeett aannyy ooffiittss bbaacckk ccaattaalloogguuee ffoorr oouurrccoovveerrddiisscc iiss aa ddiiffffeerreenntt mmaatttteerruunnffoorrttuunnaatteellyy,, bbuutt wwee’’llll cceerrttaaiinnllyyggiivvee iitt aa ggoo..

Bits and bobs

I am a US citizen (sorry aboutthe re-election of Mr George W.Bush, by the way) andsubscribed to Retro Gamer a fewmonths back. I love the mag –it’s a dream come true!

I wanted to report a bit of anerror in the Apple IIGS article. Theauthor refers to the IIGS as a “16-bit” machine, akin to the Amigaand Atari ST. That comparison isinaccurate. The Motorola 68000 inthe Amiga and Atari ST is a‘16/32’ bit processor in that it hasan internal 32-bit architecture (32-bit registers, etc.) but sits on a16-bit data bus. It does notcommunicate externally at 32-bits.The WDC 65C816 in the AppleIIGS is an ‘8/16’ bit processor inthat it has an internal 16-bitarchitecture, but communicateswith the rest of the world in 8-

bits. So if the Amiga and Atari STrange are considered 16-bits, thenthe Apple IIGS would have to becalled an 8-bit. If you call theAmiga/Atari ST 32-bit machines,which you could with someaccuracy, then the IIGS becomes a16-bit machine. This is quite animportant distinction that was notconveyed in the article.

I am a huge retro computingfan. Check out my list of machineshere wwwwww..bbllaakkeessppoott..ccoomm//lliisstt andalso check out my vintagecomputing website, where Icovered your magazine in anarticle at wwwwww..bbyytteecceellllaarr..ccoomm.

I recently received a mintSpectrum 128 that I must wire upto my Amiga 1084S monitor(which can handle PAL signals)and find a proper power supplyto experience what the Brits call80’s computing. I’m that seriousabout retro! I’m an avid NewtonMessage Pad user as well, goingfull force with the retro handheldfrom Apple.BBllaakkee PPaatttteerrssoonn,, UUSSAA,, vviiaa eemmaaiill

RRGG:: TThhaannkkss ffoorr tthhee iinnffoorrmmaattiioonnBBllaakkee.. II ssuuppppoossee tthhee mmaaiinn ppooiinnttooff nnoottee iiss tthhaatt tthhee IIIIGGSS wwaass aammaajjoorr sstteepp uupp ffrroomm tthhee ssttaannddaarrddAAppppllee IIII lliinnee..

Streets ahead

I help out with a retro gamingsite that focuses on retro gamesand fan remakes for PCs andconsoles. We also regularlyupdate our emulation news. Amain focus recently is Beats OfRage, a homebrew fighting gamemade by Senile Team(wwwwww..sseeggaaffoorruummss..ccoomm//sseenniilleetteeaamm)which was released as aremake/addition to the Streets OfRage games. It has become quitepopular and now people aremaking their own games usingwhat is known as the ‘BORengine’. The source for this hasbeen released onwwwwww..ggaammiikkaazzee..oorrgg. The newversion will be called BorG, andwe anticipate this will bring manynew people to the scene.

Are you Elite?

So Elite is the best game everaccording to RG readers? Well, Iwouldn’t dream of disputingthat. The opportunity to gowhere you pleased and do whatyou wanted really set the gameapart from anything else. A gamewhere you played youroccupation (miner, trader,assassin, pirate, bounty hunter,navy freelancer) rather thanchoosing it on some charactergeneration screen. I know I wasimpressed at the time (whowasn’t?) but in retrospect thegame is even more of a toweringmonument to gaming genius.

Even recent space combatgames can’t beat the fantastic AI.

I remember pulling an all-nighterwith a friend, taking turns. Oneon the C64 flying the Cobra andthe other manning the VIC-20containing our database ofplanets, which showed us whereto go for the hottest profits, or torack up the kills. In the middle ofthe spree I caught myself in themidst of a protracted dogfightwith a twisting and turning CobraMk I, thinking, “this guy’s good”.That’s immersion. And then wefound out about the forced mis-jump cheat that pushed you intowitch-space, home of theThargoids. Man, that’s when therating started jumping, if youcould survive being attacked bythree of them at once. Not one toattempt without an Energy Bomb.I haven’t played Elite in perhaps

ten years, despite emulation, butI can still remember all the keys(such sublime control), I canidentify any ship, and I canremember some of the bettertrade routes (Qutiri to Isinor,only a few jumps from the starton Lave, was a particularfavourite). Like so many others,Elite is permanently etched intomy memory.

As for the rest, I wasdelighted to see such diversity.Not a single genre left out, andso many all-time peaches. Thetop 100 was another top-notchfeature. Congratulations to youguys, and to Ian Bell and DavidBraben on crafting a game whichhas weathered two decades withno sign of rust. CChhrriiss,, vviiaa eemmaaiill

PS. Told you FFVII wouldn’t topthe poll!

RRGG:: WWee’’rree aass cchhuuffffeedd aass yyoouutthhaatt FFFFVVIIII ddiiddnn’’tt mmaakkee tthhee ttooppssppoott.. WWhhyy nnoott cceelleebbrraattee wwiitthh aaffrreeee TT--sshhiirrtt?? OOhh,, aanndd bbee ssuurree ttooggeett hhoolldd ooff tthhee RReettrroo GGaammeerrAAnntthhoollooggyy wwhhiicchh iinncclluuddeess aammaassssiivvee 1144--ppaaggee ffeeaattuurree oonnEElliittee.. IItt iinncclluuddeess iinntteerrvviieewwss wwiitthhbbootthh BBeellll aanndd BBrraabbeenn,, aanndd rreeaallllyyiiss tthhee llaasstt wwoorrdd oonn tthhee ggaammee..

**11**

Our well-dressed friends at Joystick Junkies (www.joystickjunkies.com) produce official clothing

based on loads of classic videogames, and the winner can select any T-shirt from the range

* Star letter *


**12**

We thought you may beinterested in doing an acticle onBeats Of Rage, Senile Team andGamikaze, perhaps focusing onthe game, the mods available andthe upcoming BorG engine thatwill be fully XP compatible (aswell as adding many new featuresto the engine). The game itselfhas been ported to PC-DOS,Win32, GP32, DreamCast, PS2and Xbox, with a Linux and newWin32 version coming.ZZaacchh BBeettttss,, vviiaa eemmaaiill

RRGG:: WWee’’rree aallwwaayyss kkeeeenn oonnccoovveerriinngg tthhee rreemmaakkeess sscceennee,, aannddttrryy ttoo ffeeaattuurree aass mmaannyy rreemmaakkeess aasswwee ccaann oonn oouurr ccoovveerrddiissccss.. WWee’’llllcceerrttaaiinnllyy kkeeeepp aann eeyyee oonn tthheeGGaammiikkaazzee wweebbssiittee tthhaatt yyoouummeennttiioonn.. AAss ffoorr aa ffeeaattuurree oonnBBeeaattss ooff RRaaggee,, wweellll mmaayybbee aawwiiddeerr wwrriittee uupp oonn ggaammee mmooddddiinnggwwiillll bbee ooff mmoorree iinntteerreesstt??

On the money

I picked up issue eight of RetroGamer because I was bored whileshopping and wanted somethingto read. I’m a big fan of the retrogaming scene, and thought themagazine looked interesting. Iwasn’t sure what to expect andcouldn’t skim through themagazine before I bought it(damn that plastic wrapping!),but suspected it might simply befull of Zzap!64 reviews orsomething.

I was pleasantly surprised tofind it was full of interestingfeatures and articles about topicsand companies that were close tomy heart. I was impressedenough to buy issue nine, whichwasn’t as good as issue 8 butstill good enough to convince meto subscribe.

Issue 10 arrived recently andwith it the most importantmessage yet, namely Jon Foster’sarticle on games he believedhave been over-hyped. Now, don’tget me wrong, I really am a keenretro gamer. I started with a VIC-20, moved to a C64, then wentthrough an ST, an Amiga and aPlayStation before arriving at

where I am now (PlayStation 2and PC). One of the first thingsthat I did when I got internetaccess was download emulatorsand favourite games, beforegraduating onto sites likehhttttpp::////rreemmiixx..kkwweedd..oorrgg andlistening to old game music.

Jon Foster’s article was,however, right on the money.Retro gamers, by definition, wearrose-tinted spectacles. Sure, thereare still some gaming classicsthat have aged extremely well(Elite, Pirates! and Archon arethree that personally spring tomind), but there are an equalnumber of games that were oncegreat and now stink like ten-year-old cheese.

Personally, I can’t believe thatI once skived off school for half aday just so that I could playKarateka and Druid. Likewise, Iwas nearly reduced to tears tofind that my once favouriteMidwinter 2 actually has a 3Dengine that is so sluggish that itis now totally unplayable in thispost-Quake age. Syndicate hasgone much the same way,despite previously being my A-Level revision’s main competition.

I love retro gaming, but I’drather play GTA: San Andreasthan Pong any day of the week.Retro gaming is as much aboutnostalgia as it is about being a‘purist’, and we would do well toremember that.

Jon’s article was a brilliantaddition to an already excellentmagazine. It reminded us not totake retro gaming too seriously. Itpoked fun at those who stillbelieve that games really werebetter when you had to wait 10minutes for them to load, orthose who really expect us tobelieve that they would prefer toplay Kick Off 2 rather than ProEvolution Soccer. Kudos to himfor writing it, and kudos to youfor printing it.JJaammeess WWeebbbb,, vviiaa eemmaaiill

RRGG:: TThhee ppooiinnttss tthhaatt yyoouu rraaiissee aarreeeexxaaccttllyy wwhhyy wwee iinnttrroodduucceedd tthheeHHaallll ooff SShhaammee bbaacckk iinn iissssuuee ffiivvee((aalloonnggssiiddee tthhee HHaallll ooff FFaammee,, ooffccoouurrssee)).. WWee wwaanntteedd ttoo ttaakkee aalliigghhtteerr--hheeaarrtteedd llooookk aatt rreettrrooggaammiinngg,, rreevviieewwiinngg ssoommee ooff tthheemmoosstt aappppaalllliinngg aanndd iinnssuullttiinnggggaammeess iinn hhiissttoorryy,, wwhhiillsstt ggiivviinnggccrreeddiitt ttoo ssoommee rreeaall ggeemmss tthhaattppeerrhhaappss mmaannyy hhaavvee eeiitthheerrffoorrggootttteenn aabboouutt oorr nneevveerr ppllaayyeeddffiirrsstt ttiimmee aarroouunndd..

Gaming vet

I am 36-years-old and have beentoying with consoles andcomputers from the age of 11upwards. I am very proud to haveowned nearly all of the consolesand computers that you havementioned to date. I also onceowned a Phoenix arcade machinebut was stupid enough to sell it.

My first console was anAcetronic MPU 1000; theseconsoles were slightly moreaffordable than the Atari consolesof the day, but Space Invaderswas only just passable on myAcetronic. I finally graduated to anMB Vectrex, which was the closestthing to owning a miniature arcademachine at the time. The gameswere so addictive. Do you thinkthat they will ever create a plugand play Vectrex just like thosebrilliant joystick-based gamessystems that are available now? Orbetter still, bring back the Vectrex?

Does anyone remember thebrilliant Systema TV Boy that cameout a few years ago? It contained127+ games inside a tiny blackcasing, all of which seemedsuspiciously like an entirecollection of Atari games. Everygame was there from River Raid toSpace Invaders. I think that it wasthe first plug and play joystick-based game system ever made.

I would like to thank you for

rekindling the fire inside all of usthat are old enough to rememberprogramming the 3.58Kb VIC-20.Retro Gamer really is special toall of us. I haven’t felt this wayabout a magazine sinceCommodore User, Crash andZzap!64. It reminds me of thetime when the C64 made acomeback in the early 90s andCommodore Force was launched. Ijust could not wait each month toget those Reel Action tapes.

Lastly, I really enjoyed thefeature in issue 6 about buildingyour own arcade cabinet. As I donot have the space at home for afull-sized machine, I decided touse my model-building skills andbuild a much smaller one instead.Take a look at the pictures that Ihave sent in. And don’t laugh, as

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Disappointed

I’ve been reading Retro Gamersince issue one and find it veryentertaining, but I was verydisappointed with the Don’tBelieve the Hype article inissue 10.

On seeing the contentspage I was expecting anexamination of some of theclassic failures in game history,maybe with an examination asto what went wrong. I washoping for a close up look atthe flaws in Rise of theRobots, some of theTerminator games or maybesome of the later FIFAfranchises. But no, instead wegot the opinionated ramblingsof a man who hates originality.

I’ve got nothing againstopinion pieces in general ifthey approach a specific areawith ideas and some reasonedargument behind them, but thiswas just a random trawl

through games Jon Fosterdoesn’t like, with the mainjustification being the fact hewas no good at them. You canget this level of journalism forfree at any Internet-based gamingforum, so please, no more.

On a more upbeat note, Ireally enjoyed the Game &Watch article. I had completelyforgotten about these, thanksfor reminding me. My primaryschool days were filled withendless hours of Donkey Kong.Are you going to do anotherarticle on the non-Nintendoones? I remember Grandstand’sPocket Scramble beingparticularly good. JJaammeess,, vviiaa eemmaaiill

RRGG:: JJoonn’’ss aarrttiiccllee hhaass cceerrttaaiinnllyyggoott ppeeooppllee ttaallkkiinngg,, aanndd tthhaattwwaass tthhee eennttiirree ppooiinntt.. AAss yyoouussttaattee,, iitt wwaass aann ooppiinniioonn ppiieeccee,,aanndd nnoott nneecceessssaarriillyy tthhee vviieewwss ooffRReettrroo GGaammeerr.. SSoommee rreeaaddeerrsslliikkeedd iitt tthhoouugghh…


**13**

it is notsize that counts,

but functionality. It was alsocheap as chips to build.SSiimmoonn DDaannddoo,, vviiaa ppoossttPS: Where are the likes of JeffMinter and Rob Hubbard thesedays? Please could you trackthem down?

RRGG:: TThhaannkkss ffoorr sseennddiinngg iinn tthheeppiiccttuurreess ooff yyoouurr ssccaalleedd ddoowwnn--aarrccaaddee mmaacchhiinnee.. IItt llooookkss lliikkee aarreeaallllyy pprrooffeessssiioonnaall jjoobb.. TTaakkiinnggyyoouurr qquueerriieess aanndd ppooiinnttss iinn oorrddeerr::wwee ddoo rreeccaallll tthhee SSyysstteemmaa TTVV BBooyybbeeiinngg aavvaaiillaabbllee ffrroomm AArrggooss ffoorr aawwhhiillee,, tthheenn ddiissaappppeeaarriinngg wwiitthhoouuttaa ttrraaccee.. WWee’’rree aallmmoosstt 110000%%cceerrttaaiinn tthhaatt iitt wwaass bbaasseedd aarroouunnddtthhee AAttaarrii 22660000.. RReeggaarrddiinngg tthheebbrriieeff CC6644 rreevviivvaall tthhaatt ccooiinncciiddeeddwwiitthh ZZzzaapp!!6644 cchhaannggiinngg iittss nnaammeettoo CCoommmmooddoorree FFoorrccee;; wweellll tthhiinnggsstthhaatt ccoommee aarroouunndd ggoo aarroouunndd..LLooookk oouutt ffoorr aannootthheerr mmiinnii--CC6644rreevviivvaall ssoooonn.. AAllll wwiillll bbee rreevveeaalleeddiinn oouurr nneexxtt iissssuuee.. AAss ffoorr ttrraacckkiinnggddoowwnn JJeeffff MMiinntteerr…… llooookk oouutt ffoorr aaffeeaattuurree oonn LLllaammaassoofftt iinn tthhee vveerryynneeaarr ffuuttuurree..

Unsafe

Let me first say that I am theproud, middle-aged owner of everyissue of Retro Gamer so far andhave no intention of ever partingwith any issue on eBay, even if theselling prices get to 10 times whatthey are currently for the earlyissues. Each issue so far has beenoutstanding – keep up the goodwork!

However, with that said, I amannoyed about the Desert IslandDisks article in issue 10 featuringMystikal. Sorry, but who the hell isMystikal and why would I beinterested in hearing the streetrantings of some uneducatedyobbo who cannot utter a singlesentence without putting aprofanity in it?

I’m sorry but you have noexcuses over this article – youhave a wealth of programmers, oldsoftware houses and websites fromwhere you can find informed,interesting people to give opinionson the retro gaming scene, andwhy you selected this person to

offer commentary, purely becausehe mentions a few classiccomputer platforms in his ‘songs’,is beyond me.

Yes, I’m an old fogey geek wholistens to the likes of Led Zeppelinand Deep Purple with absolutelyno interest in rap musicwhatsoever and I’m just part of ageneration that thinks the nextgeneration’s music is rubbish – likeevery generation that has comebefore and every generation that isto come.

But I also believe that themajority of your readership iscomposed of males eitherapproaching or in their middle age– perhaps with the exception offathers who have passed theirinterests in classic gaming to theirsons. As such, the opinions ofMystikal, spiced with ‘colourful’language will be irrelevant andserve only to lessen the content ofan otherwise great magazine.

With that said, everyone isentitled to make a mistake onceand I hope that, in future, you willlook a bit harder for intervieweesof Mike Singleton’s and MatthewSmith’s calibre who are going tohave views of interest to yourreadership such that you can leaveclowns like Mystikal to othermagazines aimed at the teenagechav market.

Just continue to provide us withquality content and we, the fathersand uncles of modern gamers, willpass the retro gaming messagedown to the younger generation. PPeetteerr,, vviiaa eemmaaiill

RRGG:: WWee’’rree nnoott ssuurree RReettrroo GGaammeerr’’ssrreeaaddeerrsshhiipp iiss aass ccuutt aanndd ddrryy aassmmiiddddllee--aaggeedd mmaalleess.. FFeeeeddbbaacckk ttootthhee ffeeaattuurree oonn oouurr ffoorruumm hhaass bbeeeennvveerryy ppoossiittiivvee,, wwiitthh rreeaaddeerrssaapppprreecciiaattiinngg MMyyssttiikkaall’’ss ssoommeewwhhaattssllaanntteedd llooookk aatt rreettrroo ggaammiinngg.. PPaauulliiss ggiivveenn aa ffrreeee rreeiiggnn wwhheenn iitt ccoommeessttoo sseelleeccttiinngg ccaassttaawwaayyss,, aanndd wwee’’rreeccoonnffiiddeenntt hhee’’llll aallwwaayyss ttrraacckk ddoowwnniinntteerreessttiinngg cchhaarraacctteerrss.. WWhhoo kknnoowwss,,hhee mmaayy eenndd uupp cchhaattttiinngg ttoo RRoobbeerrttPPllaanntt oorr JJiimmmmyy PPaaggee oonnee ddaayy!!

Budget was best

I would just like to make a fewpoints. Imagine my surprisewhen I was in my localsupermarket looking for amagazine to read on the planewhen I was going on holiday tofind Retro Game on the shelf.Respect! It brought back allthose memories of the dayswhen I was locked in my roomwith my Amstrad CPC464.

Can I just bring to theattention of the readers andyourselves the arguments thatused to be in the letters sectionsof the old magazines. As anAmstrad user, I always purchasedAmstrad Action and AmTix. Thearguments would always centrearound the price of games andtheir quality.

The main culprits for poorquality games came from thebig three software houses,being Ocean, Imagine and USGold. At the time, I was onlyabout 12 or 13, and could never

afford to pay £9.95 for a game,so I would save up for weeksand go out to buy one of theirtitles. When I purchased thegame Street Hawk, I cried forweeks! What a waste of money.Imagine my delight whenMastertronic and Codemastersbrought out their games at just£1.99. I often wondered if thebig companies whereembarrassed by the general tatthat they would releasealongside the budget classics?

I have only been buying yourmagazine since issue seven and Iwondered if you have ever donea feature on the worst games ofall time from particular softwarehouses such as Ocean. If not,how about doing one?Anyway, I’m off to get myAmstrad back out of theloft and sift through the600 or so games thatI had. Cheers!SStteevvee,, vviiaaeemmaaiill

Pocket moneypower

In my younger years, I used tosave up my pocket money tobuy the budget games frommy local stockist. They werenearly always Mastertronicgames for my Speccy, andthey were usually good,especially at the price. Thosedays bring back such greatmemories, even when thegames wouldn’t always loadfirst time around. This wasusually because my brotherhad been using my Speccytape player to listen to musicand changed the volume level.

Anyway, the reason that I amwriting is to say that, afterseeing your magazine, I had togo on eBay and buy a Speccyagain (I think the one I hadwhen I was younger was sold ata boot sale at some point). Ithen discovered that I can stillbuy good Spectrum games atpocket money prices thanks tothe website atwwwwww..ccrroonnoossoofftt..ccoo..uukk, the onlydifference being that I’m older,and I don’t have to save up toafford them. It is really greatthat they can offer good Speccygames at cheap prices. I feellike a child once more!

Keep up the good work gang.Any chance of a feature on thepeople who write Speccygames today?AAnnddrreeww,, vviiaa eemmaaiill

RRGG:: CCoommppaanniieess ssuucchh aassMMaasstteerrttrroonniicc aanndd CCooddeemmaasstteerrsscceerrttaaiinnllyy ooffffeerreedd tthhee ppllaayyeerrssvvaalluuee ffoorr mmoonneeyy,, aanndd uussuuaallllyyeenntteerrttaaiinniinngg ggaammeess aass wweellll.. IIttcceerrttaaiinnllyy iiss ggoooodd ttoo sseeeeCCrroonnoossoofftt kkeeeeppiinngg tthhee ssppiirriitt ooffbbuuddggeett ggaammeess aalliivvee,, eessppeecciiaallllyyccoonnssiiddeerriinngg tthhee qquuaalliittyy ooff tthheeggaammeess aavvaaiillaabbllee.. AAss ffoorr aa ffeeaattuurreeaabboouutt ddeevveellooppiinngg ggaammeess ffoorrrreettrroo ssyysstteemmss,, wwee ssppookkee ttooCCrroonnoossoofftt’’ss JJoonnaatthhaann CCaauullddwweellllbbaacckk iinn iissssuuee ttwwoo.. MMaayybbee wwee’’llllttoouucchh oonn tthhee ssuubbjjeecctt aaggaaiinn ssoooonn..


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**14**

RRGG:: TThhee mmaaggaazziinneess ooff oolldd wwoouullddtthhrrooww uupp mmaannyy aarrgguummeennttss,,iinncclluuddiinngg tthhee ttiimmeelleessss ““mmyymmaacchhiinnee iiss bbeetttteerr tthhaann yyoouurrss””oonnee,, wwhhiicchh iiss hhaappppiillyy ssoommeetthhiinnggtthhaatt wwee’’rree lleeaavviinngg iinn tthhee 8800ss.. WWeesseeeemm ttoo rreemmeemmbbeerr tthhaatt SSttrreeeettHHaawwkk wwaass rruubbbbiisshh ttoooo ((aannddwweerreenn’’tt tthheerree ttwwoo vveerrssiioonnss,, wwiitthhoonnee bbeeiinngg eevveenn mmoorree rruubbbbiisshhtthhaann tthhee ootthheerr??)) WWhhyy nnoott rreevviieewwiitt yyoouurrsseellff aanndd ssuubbmmiitt iitt ttoo oouurrHHaallll ooff SShhaammee?? DDeettaaiillss aarree iinn tthheerreevviieewwss sseeccttiioonn..

Memory lane

Reading Retro Gamer doesn’t halfbring back some memories of myold gaming days; I just thoughtyou might like to know some ofmy tales and a couple of ideas forthe magazine.

My first home computer wasan Atari 400 with cassette deckback in the late 70s. It cost thesame price as you would pay fora medium spec computer now.After about 12 months I got fedup with tape loading and boughtan 810 disk drive and Atari 800computer. The cost of thesewould certainly buy a top of therange computer today.

When the first computer gameshit the local pubs and bars I canremember four of us playing Pong,the tennis game that started it alloff. We used to have a miniknockout – the winners of twogames went in to the final and thewinner of the final had theirentrance fee to the nightclub paidby the other three players.

A couple of years later, whenthe likes of Donkey Kong and Pac-Man came out, another local pubused to hold a monthlycompetition whereby the customerwith the highest score won agallon of beer. I can rememberwinning on Scramble, Rally X,Galaxians and Donkey Kong. Idon’t know if I fed the machineswith more 10 pences than thebeer would have cost, but it wassure fun trying for the top spoteach month.

I’ve got a couple of ideas forthe magazine. How about doing areally in-depth tutorial of adifferent emulator each month orso, with step-by-step instructionsof all the different settings andmaybe list the top five ROMs thatwork without any problems? Also,for fun, what about having a gameof the month for readers to tryand get the top score; maybesending in a digital picture of thescreen. I know this would bedown to trust, but if you have tocheat it isn’t worth playing.Anyway, keep up the good work.PPeetteerr SSiinnccllaaiirr,, vviiaa eemmaaiill

RRGG:: PPllaayyiinngg vviiddeeooggaammeess ffoorr bbeeeerr??SSoouunnddss lliikkee aa ppllaann.. AAss ffoorreemmuullaattoorr gguuiiddeess,, wwee’’llll lleett oouurr ssiisstteerrttiittllee PPCC AAccttiioonn EEmmuullaattee!! ddeeaall wwiitthhtthhaatt.. HHiigghh ssccoorree cchhaalllleennggeess hhaavveebbeeeenn ccoonnssiiddeerreedd.. MMaayybbee wwee’’llll kkiicckkssoommeetthhiinngg ooffff iinn tthhee NNeeww YYeeaarr..

Mr Biffo

Dear purveyors of dewynostalgia. Just wanted to dropyou a somewhat belated note ofcongratulations on the YourSinclair freebie in issue nine.Until then, I hadn’t realised quitehow influential the mag hadbeen on my own games writing,and without it I doubt I’d haveended up writing Digitiser onChannel 4 Teletext, let alonewhatever the hell it is I’msupposed to be doing thesedays. Besides all that, it’s alwaysnice to find another piece fromthe jigsaw of your psyche.

Incidentally, this is the firsttime I’ve ever written a letter toa games magazine. Not bad fora musty old fart like myself.

Keep up the good work –you’re always a splendid read.And please excuse thedampness of this email; it’s justthe tears of wistfulsentimentality I sobbed overyour marvellous Game & Watch feature.PPaauull RRoossee,, vviiaa eemmaaiill

AAss lloonngg ttiimmee rreeaaddeerrss ooff DDiiggiittiisseerr,,wwee’’rree hhoonnoouurreedd PPaauull.. YYoouu’’vveerreeaallllyy mmaaddee oouurr ddaayy!!

Retro PCs

Having played computer games for20 years I was thrilled when Istumbled across an ad for RetroGamer on the web. My firstcomputer was a C64, and I stillplay some of those old games fromtime to time, using a C64 emulator.So, reading Retro Gamer bringsback a lot of good memories.

I was wondering about onething though. What about PC retrogames? A lot of the games coveredin your magazine were alsoreleased for the PCs of the day,such as Summer Games, Dizzy,Barbarian (released as DeathSword), Outrun and many more.

It could also be cool to take alook at an almost vanished gamegenre; the ‘type-in’ graphicadventure games that wasextremely popular back in the 80sand early 90s. I don’t know howmany hours I spent with SpaceQuest, Police Quest, Leisure SuitLarry and similar adventures, but itwasn’t a few here and there.

It would be great if parts of themagazine could include some PCclassics. The website Home Of TheUnderdogs covers both classic andnewer PC games, and is a superbresource. It can be found atwwwwww..tthhee--uunnddeerrddooggss..oorrgg. Keep upthe good work.UUllff AAaasseenn,, NNoorrwwaayy,, vviiaa eemmaaiill

RRGG:: AAnn iinntteerreessttiinngg ppooiinntt,, aanndd oonneetthhaatt hhaass bbeeeenn rraaiisseedd bbeeffoorree oonn oouurrWWeebb ffoorruummss.. TThhee tthhiinngg iiss tthhaatt mmoossttooff oouurr rreeaaddeerrss wwiillll hhaavvee oowwnneedd aann88--bbiitt hhoommee ccoommppuutteerr dduurriinngg tthhee8800ss,, aanndd pprroobbaabbllyy pprrooggrreesssseedd oonnttoo1166--bbiitt mmaacchhiinneess ssuucchh aass tthhee AAmmiiggaaoorr AAttaarrii SSTT.. AAlltthhoouugghh mmaannyy ccllaassssiiccggaammeess ddiidd aappppeeaarr oonn tthhee PPCC,, nnoottmmaannyy ppeeooppllee wwiillll rreemmeemmbbeerr tthheemmffiirrsstt ttiimmee aarroouunndd.. UUnnddoouubbtteeddllyy,, iittwwiillll mmaakkee ffoorr ggoooodd rreeaaddiinngg,, bbuutttthheerree aarree nnoo ppllaannss jjuusstt yyeett..


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From old

games o

n new pl

atforms

to new g

ames on

old

platform

s. As lo

ng as it

's retro

, you'll

find it

in our

regular

reviews

section

RETRO

REVIEWS

Publisher: ProtovisionPrice: Euro25

(UK postage free)Format: C64/128+Super CPU

The Metal Dust storystarted back in 1995 as anattempt to create a shoot-

em-up for the Flash8 accelerator.This device was fraught withcompatibility problems, and theproject was halted until CMDlaunched its more stable andcompatible SuperCPU accelerator in1997. When CMD’s device startedto gather a cult following, theMetal Dust project was reborn, anddespite many delays and doubts,it’s finally here.

This game is a horizontallyscrolling shoot-em-up of truly

epic proportions, with all of theslickness of a 16-bit game thanksto the processing power of theSuperCPU (a similar CPU to thatused in the SNES, but faster).Initially you feel like you’replaying an impressive sprite-multiplexed demo as the screenis crammed with detail andanimation. This soon dissipatesas play commences.

It is very apparent that a lotof thought has gone into MetalDust. For instance, the backdropsare interactive: flying through awaterfall forces your shipdownwards. You also start eachlevel shielded, but only from theinvading crafts and not from thewalls, static rocks or other partsof the scenery.

Many games have influencedMetal Dust. Some obvious, likeR-Type and Turrican II, and othersnot so obvious, including Deltaand the lesser-known Lions ofthe Universe. Metal Dust goesbeyond these and provides arock-solid shooter withintelligently designed levels and

gameplay. Many of the mid- andend-of-level bosses really areingenious, and we’re especiallyimpressed with those in thesecond level.

If you want to see C64technology (the VIC-II and SIDchip) stretched to within a fagpaper of its absolute limits, youcan’t go wrong with Metal Dust.It shows off the capabilities of anexpanded C64 whilst being veryplayable and enjoyable. If youdon’t have a SuperCPU, theproject’s producer has revealedthat Protovision is porting thegame to mobile phones. SShhaauunn BBeebbbbiinnggttoonn

Graphics 95%The in-game graphics are virtually flawless for the VIC-II chip, driven by the extra power of the SuperCPU.

Sound 95%The SID chip reaches almost burn-out with probably the best sampled music and speech from a single chip.

Playability 93%A complete blastarama from the start. Shoot-em-up fans will be hooked.

Addictiveness 91%Difficult, even on easy. But like all good shooters, it keeps you coming back.

Overall 92%A unique shoot-em-up for an upgraded C64, worthy of its development time and price tag.

If you would like to enter a game into

either our Hall of Fame or Shame, send in a

review (of up to 650 words), with ratings

explaining why your choice deserves a place on

the mantelpiece or a trip to the bin. All reviews are

gratefully received at rreevviiee

wwss@@rreettrrooggaammeerr..nneett,

and we’ll consider them for inclusion in a

future issue…

Metal Dust

RETRO11 Retro Reviews 08/12/2004 11:58 AM

**17**

Zx Football Manager 2005

Publisher: CronosoftPrice: £2.99 + p&pFormat: ZX Spectrum

Many thought that thisyear’s OrSam showwould see the final

public release of Reaxion. Aspredictable as the outcome of anAmerican Presidential Electionhowever, Cronosoft insteadlaunched ZX Football Manager2005, developed by the Russian-based Triumph Games Lab.

A tribute to Kevin Toms’ classicFootball Manager, the game seesyou drafted in to manage a topdivision team as its currentmanager is out of action. The aimis simple; choose your bestplayers from the current squad of20, trounce the opposition, winthe league and cup and increasethe bank balance of the club. Asyou’ll soon find out, this ain’t nokick about in the park.

The backdrop that greets youis a picturesque stadium, overlaidwith detailed icons. From here,everything is pointer driven. Thefirst thing to do is to assess eachplayer in your squad, then work

out who should play for youbased on their skill and fitnesslevels. If you’re lazy, you cansimply delegate this to yourcoach, allowing him select thebest team. If you prefer to useyour own tactical genius, then apen and paper is essential formaking handy notes.

Once you’ve got the perfectteam, or the best you can muster,it’s time to start sending scoutsout to look for new talent. Youhave two scouts, one of which willwatch certain clubs whilst theother will look out for particularplayer attributes. Both take up tothree weeks to complete theirtask, but if you have a particularweakness in your current squadthen it’s worth doing. If you wantto buy or sell players the transfermarket is only open betweencertain weeks within the season.

With all of the planning done,you’re ready to kick off. However,you can make last-minute checkson the opposition as it might bethey’re weak in defence, forinstance, and you can adjust yourteam accordingly. You may alsoview their league position, as wellas other fixtures.

On starting the match theresults appear per league (or cup)game. It may be a short whilebefore you see your result, butthis isn’t too much of aninconvenience and allows you tosee goal scorers and offendersfrom the other games. Making

notes of the results may also giveyou an indication of how goodother teams are. You’ll feel like areal tactician now.

Once you’ve tasted thesweetness of victory, or thebitterness of defeat, you can viewthe cash flow results the matchgenerated through TV rights andticket sales. The better your teamperforms, the more lucrative itmight be. If you find yourselfstruggling, transfers in and out ofthe club can help. And if you’respending copious amounts onbuying players, or the team isperforming badly – or a mixture ofboth – then it will be time to turnto the banks who will loan you£8,000,000 every time yourbalance reaches zero. This willonly happen six times before thegame is over.

At the end of each season,success will see the money rollingin, with a £6,000,000 payout forwinning the cup and £10,000,000for the league. Then it’s time torenegotiate the contracts, whereappropriate. Being careful withcash isn’t so much of a bad thing,as there are usually players on the

market who could potentially saveyou money. Those who areunhappy with a tight-fistedapproach may move on though.

Cronosoft has come up with thegoods yet again in publishing thebest 8-bit football managementgame we’ve seen in ages. We havea few niggles with the game mindyou. We would have liked to haveseen a choice of teams to manage,and something that would allowyou to change the names ofindividual players and clubs beforethe season starts. These are justniggles though and this is anotherwise excellent game.SShhaauunn BBeebbbbiinnggttoonn

Graphics 88%This game is slickly presented with some high definition colour effects.

Sound n/aNo sound whatsoever. Not even the Match of the Day theme. Never mind.

Playability 85%You’ll find taking charge quick andeasy. Now get out there and win.

Addictiveness 88%One game becomes one season, and before you know it you’re fourseasons in.

Overall 87%Cronosoft FC 1, Sports Interactive FC 0.


**18**

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | REGULARS:REVIEWS |

Publisher: Zoo Digital Price: £19.99Format: Gameboy Advance

Coming home from a hardday’s grafting, Mr Pac-Man finds that members

of his extended family have beentaken captive by his arch-nemesis Toc-Man. The kidnappingwas apparently organised byToc’s cronies as a surprisebirthday present, but when Tocrealises that the Pac-Man hasn’tbeen snatched in the raids, heturns nasty. Seeking revenge, ourhero heads over to Ghost Islandto rescue his friends and family,and his adventure is re-enactedon the GBA as perfectly as theoriginal PSone version.

As with Ms Pac-Man’s outingin Maze Madness, there is thetraditional chomping action, withpower pills having their usualeffect on your foes. Pac-Man

World is more open andplatformy though, featuring a 3Denvironment full of platformsand hazards. Along the wayyou’ll find hidden bonuses and treasure.

The gameplay sees Pac-Manacquiring a range of handy movesto help him on his way. There isthe Butt-Bounce and Super Butt-Bounce, used to open treasurechests, destroy foes of a non-ghostly nature and to get up tothose hard to reach platforms. Paccan also barge doors and enemies,swim and jump and grab platform

edges to help further explorationof each level.

To add interest, different levelshave different settings. Forinstance, you start off on anisland, and later on you get tovisit Toc-Man’s outposts in deepspace. Luckily, Pac’s diet of pillsand more pills hasn’t impaired hisability to swim; as you’d expecthis weight and shape give him acertain buoyancy. Special power-ups will allow Pac to walk on theriverbeds, enabling him to hoardyet more collectables.

The game is a neat mix oftraditional platform action coupledwith Pac-Man’s desire to eateverything in sight. It’s great tosee Pac-Man so nimble after allthese years.MMiikkee DDaavviieess

Graphics 82%Smoothly animated and pac-ked with loads of detail.

Sound 78%Fitting music accompanies the game play.

Playability 84%Plays really well, adding enough new elements to the traditional Pac theme to make it feel fresh.

Addictiveness 88%Nice big levels that keep you exploring.

Overall 86%An excellent update of the PSone original. Perfect fun for the GBA.

Pac-Man World


It’s great to see the pill-munching diva back inaction once again. In this

adventure, Maze Madness, Ms Pac-Man must assist Professor Pac inretrieving the lost treasures fromthe forgotten labyrinths of the oldworlds. This title contains many ofthe elements that made theoriginal Pac games such a hit, butgoes further than simple top-downchomping action, as you willdiscover as you progress.

The game is viewed from aside-on 45-degree viewpoint, withProfessor Pac (who obviously hasmore important things to do)appearing as a futuristic hologramat certain points on the earlierlevels. This is to offer youguidance on your quest and tohelp settle you into the game,

something which is probably morerelevant to younger players thanto us experienced retro heads.

Once the old Professor hasstarted you off, a simple maze andmunch affair ensues. During eachlevel you need to eat a certainnumber of pills in order toprogress further. And as you delvedeeper into this munching venturethe nature of the game evolves,featuring puzzle elements andideas borrowed from Bomberman,with the TNT carts, and Sokoban,with the strategic placements ofblocks and platforms. These notonly make the play moreinteresting, but open up each level

to reveal its secrets. At the end ofeach level, you are awarded pointsand stars based on yourperformance.

There are 13 levels, split intofour separate worlds themed onEgypt, Antarctica (well, icy cavernsanyway), an old city and ahaunted house. Aside from solvingthe puzzles, you are almostcompelled to explore each level todiscover its secrets. In doing so,you earn more stars, and thusrack up more points. Ms Pac-ManMaze Madness is aimed at ayounger audience, but stillprovides enough retro-styledgameplay to keep you happy. SShhaauunn BBeebbbbiinnggttoonn

Graphics 79%Cute, well animated and nicely designed. The one small problem is that it’s not always easy to see the different heights of the platforms.

Sound 75%Fully retroed-up sound effects accompany the background music.

Playability 79%The learning curve is perhaps a little too lenient, but is nonetheless a very playable game.

Addictiveness 76%There is enough to keep you coming back certainly as the puzzles become more involving.

Overall 77%A solid release, but one aimed at younger gamers.

Ms Pac-Man Maze Madness


**19**


The GameBoy Advance isregularly criticised for thenumber of SNES ports it

receives, with Nintendo itself oftenthe biggest offender. R-type III isanother SNES port, but it’s morewelcome than most, as the originalwas an superb shooter, far superiorto the SNES’s Super R-type (a

bastardisation of stages from R-Typeand R-Type II that suffered fromchronic slowdown). Furthermore, R-type III was a SNES exclusive. Itnever appeared in the arcades andnever graced any other platform. Soof all the SNES ports, this is onepeople have been waiting for.

The basic structure of the gameremains unchanged, with you onceagain going up against the evilBydo empire, using your ‘force’power-up system to chip away at itsmighty defence system. As before,you can charge up the force byholding down the fire button, thenletting go to unleash a searing ballof energy. There’s a twist too, as

you can switch to ‘hyper’ attack. Inthis mode, your charged force willfire off a constant stream of energy.This is great for dealing with theend-of-level bosses, but the flip sideis that the force will overheat, andyou must wait for it to cool downbefore you can fire it up again. Inaddition, there are two new types offorce device to choose from –Shadow Force and Cyclone Force.These work in much the same wayas the standard Ball Force, but theyopen up access to new laserattacks, and actually require you toalter your play accordingly.

R-type III is a classy space-basedshooter. It’s perfect fare for the GBA,

with its pick up and play nature.The port is generally very good,although it is let down by poorrenditions of the original music.Don’t let that put you off though.MMaarrttyynn CCaarrrroollll

Graphics 85%Great use of SNES Mode 7 graphics.

Sound 50%The game’s weakest point. Not much better than MIDI.

Playability 80%It’s classic R-type with a few refinements.

Addictiveness 86%Seven levels of intense action will keep you hooked.

Overall 83%A perfect companion cart to R-Type DX on the GameBoy Color.

R-type III

Publisher: AtariPrice: £19.99Format: Xbox

First there was theActivision Anthology, thenMidway Arcade Treasures.

And now another collection of oldgames for new consoles, this timefrom Atari. Veteran publishers arecertainly resourceful, but whyshould we complain? Especially asmany of these packs representexcellent value for money and willsurely rise in value, making themof interest to both nostalgia fansand retro collectors alike.

Atari Anthology is basically anXbox version of a 2003 PCcollection entitled Atari 80: ClassicGames in One. And that’s exactlywhat you get for your money –80-odd games, with the vastmajority taken from Atari’s own2600 back catalogue. Familiarclassics such as Adventure, Missile

Command, Super Breakout,Centipede, Millipede and Yar’sRevenge are all included; alongwith many more obscure titles,some of which we’d never playedbefore. The cream of thecollection, however, is theinclusion of 18 Atari arcadeclassics. These versions areunderstandably a clear cut-abovetheir 2600 counterparts, with theoriginal vector titles like Tempestand Battlezone still managing toraise the hairs on the back of theneck. Some people havecomplained that the vector gamesare not emulated 100% accurately,but we can’t find fault.

So what else does the AtariAnthology contain? Well there areall the usual extras andsupplementary material you’dexpect in such a collection,including packaging artwork,instruction manuals, backgroundinformation on each game and

video interviews (including onewith Nolan Bushnell). The onedownside is that navigating fromgame to game can be a real pain,thanks to a good-looking butdifficult to use interface. Still, thisdoesn’t take the shine off anexcellent value package.MMiikkee DDaavviieess

Graphics n/a

Sound n/a

Playability 88%Emulation is generally spot-on and the controls are well mapped to the Xbox pad.

Addictiveness 92%The simple nature of the games will keep drawing you back.

Overall 90%Over 80 Atari games for £20? You can’t really go wrong.

Atari Anthology


Developer: StatesoftYear of release: 1985Format: Commodore 64

Envy is a terrible thing,especially in a youngchild. Chants though the

playground of “my machine isbetter than yours” and so on stillhaunt and shame me to this day.Why did I buy a stupidCommodore 64 when I could havebought a (insert your preferredmachine here)?

One of my best friends owned aBBC Micro. Apart from having thebest (in my opinion) version of Eliteever created, he also had anincredibly addictive game called

Frak!, featuring a caveman completewith an attacking yoyo. You movedhim through standard platform andladder screens collecting diamonds.Big monsters and small balloonswere in your way, with knivesfalling from the sky. Touchinganything apart from diamonds killedyour caveman instantly, at whichpoint he would shout “FRAK!”,presumably some sort of cavemanswearword. Using the yoyo youwere able to ‘shoot’ the balloonsand monsters off the screen. Thelevel ended when all the diamondshad been collected.

StateSoft produced theCommodore 64 version of the

game, which I eagerly snapped upwith the last of my week’s pocketmoney. Getting it home and giddywith excitement, both I and mysmug BBC-owning friend waited forit to load with anticipation. It wasall looking good and he was reelingwith envy; I smiled a “my C64 is acool machine” smile. I pressed thefire button, but very quickly sankinto the back of my chair in totalhorror. Oh no! How did a greatgame turn into such a poor port?Mainly by using such oversizedsprites. The problem was they wereso big that you couldn’t see enoughof the screen, making it verydifficult to manoeuvre and work out

a route through each level. Youoften had to jump blind and hopethat a platform would save you. Itis for this reason that I offer it upto the Retro Gamer Hall of Shame.NNiiggeell PPaarrkkeerr

Graphics 70%Nice animations, very amusing.

Sound 60%Sparse effects throughout but occasionally humorous.

Playability 20%Arrgh! Or should that be Frak!?

Addictiveness 80%Even though it’s nearly unplayable, it features addictive gameplay

Overall 50%It’s just a shame that it’s such a poor port. Get me a BBC Micro please!

Frak!

GoldenEye

Developer: RareYear of release: 1997Format: Nintendo 64

This is it. The daddy. Theking. Call it what you will.For me, this game will be

in my life forever. Forget the EAgames and the endless sequels, thisis the most defining game ever forthe Nintendo 64. Surely this is thegame that sold N64s everywhere?

The game followed the Bondmovie plot very closely, with an evil-doer stealing a top secret satellitefrom the Russians and plotting touse it against the world. Even theLibrary level, where you had toescape with Natalya, followed the

part in the movie flawlessly. Smoothscrolling allowed for a very playableexperience, and the cheats made iteven better. Turn on all the weaponsand put in an invincibility code andyou could wander about the levelsshooting tank shells from your nose.Talk about an explosive sneeze!

The graphics were cool (apartfrom the blocky-head syndromewhen close to other characters), thelevels were well thought out, andthe controls were the mostresponsive I’d ever used.

I also liked the fact that youcould just run the bad guys over(when in control of a tank) with a

very humorous squash followedclosely by a satisfying crunch. Andthe multi-player mode was simply ajoy to behold. Plug in three extrapads, set weapons to explosivesand play in a very claustrophobiclevel. Explosive fun and mayhemensued, especially after the oddbeer or two.

With a few extra levels andweapons to unlock, it is a musthave game. If you haven’t got thisin your collection, then get it. Andif you haven’t got an N64, buyone with GoldenEye. You won’tregret it.MMiicchhaaeell WWiillccooxx

Graphics 87%A little fuzzy and I’ve never knownRobbie Coltrane to have a square head with a little point on top.

Sound 89%Good use of the Bond tune, funking it up like in the movie.

Playability 89%With a great control system and comfy control pad, it’s easy to pick up and play.

Addictiveness 90%Loads of weapons and tons of levels. The hidden features and play modes to unlock means you’ll be playing this until the four horsemen come knocking.

Overall 91%Still unbeaten on any home system, this is the definitive gamefor Bond and FPS fans alike.


Untitled-1 1 1/9/06 12:55:47

**22**

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | FEATURE:HARDWARE | THE GX FACTOR |

RETRO11 AMSTRAD GX 4000 06/12/2004 4:50 PM

>The GX

Factor

In 1990, Japanese giants

Sega and

Nintendo dominated the g

ames

console industry, but on

e firm

desperately wanted to fl

y the flag

for Britain. Enter Amstr

ad with its

GX4000 console. David Cr

ookes

assesses why Amstrad's b

attle was

one war the Brits just c

ouldn't win

It’s 1990 and you’re looking to pick up a shiny new games console. What’s it to

be? Nintendo? Sega? Amstrad? It’s a difficult choice. The Nintendo Entertainment

System and Sega Master System are great consoles, but they’ve both been

knocking around for a good few years. Amstrad’s brand new offering, meanwhile, looks

distinctly space-aged and comes bundled with a couple of joypads and a fantastic driving

game called Burnin’ Rubber. It’s the obvious choice. What could possibly go wrong?

**23**


**24**


The GX4000 arrived in a fanfareof glory in September 1990priced at a very competitive £99.It was billed as the Britishconsole which would play theindustry like a game of SpaceInvaders, shooting Nintendo andSega out of the sky. There werepromises of games aplenty andassurances of support. Softwaredevelopers were told that themachine would be their pathwayto riches.

But it wasn’t. Because withineight months, the big chains hadcompletely given up on themachine and it was beingflogged in independent stores foras little as £30. Up until thatpoint the firm had been highlysuccessful with its CPC and PCWrange of computers, but it wasleft staring failure in the face forthe very first time.

Why was the GX4000 such afailure? On the face of it, theconsole was certainly impressiveenough. It had the looks – itsfuturistic styling being more eye-catching than the NES or MasterSystem. It also had the graphics,with Burnin’ Rubber looking likeno other 8-bit game. Developershad 4,096 colours to choose from– 32 of which could be displayedon screen at once, giving millionsof combinations. And it featuredbuilt-in support for hardwaresprites, allowing for images to bedrawn quickly. These specialtricks, which also included fast,smooth hardware scrolling, madefor beautiful-looking games whichwere almost on a par with the16-bit machines. So in actual fact,everything seemed perfect. TheEuropean big guns such asOcean, Gremlin, Titus, Loricel,and Domark were on board and itwas all geared up for the UK andFrance to grab some of the actionaway from America and Japan.

The third man

Amstrad was canny anddeliberately didn’t follow the pathof Nintendo and Sega. Both ofthese companies strictly dictatedwho wrote for their machines, butAmstrad allowed any softwarepublisher to write for the GX4000– the only stipulation was thatthe packaging had to follow apre-set format. As far as theactual software was concerned,there was complete free range forsoftware houses to do whateverthey liked.

Amstrad boss Sir Alan Sugarsaid as much at the launch whenhe quipped “We don’t just seethis as Amstrad fighting Nintendoand Sega, we see this asAmstrad, together with companiessuch as Ocean and others whowant to make some money andwho do not want to be dictatedto, fighting against these people.”

But Amstrad had another scrapon its hands – the critics whothought it was somewhat strangethat an 8-bit machine was beingreleased at a time when 16-bit

was becoming the norm. Theydoubted Amstrad could damageSega and Nintendo and become athird player, in the same way theCPC had muscled in on theSpectrum and Commodore 64 inthe 1980s. But Sir Alan begged todiffer. “We basically feel we arein the same situation as we werein 1984. We have observed thereis a big market to be had in thisbusiness and we are a powerfulcompany with lots of money andresources and we will take ashare of that market.”

Sir Alan’s thoughts were –predictably – echoed by Amstradmanaging director Malcolm Miller.He told Amstrad Action magazineat the time: “When we firstentered the computer market withthe original 464 in 1984, somecommentators said we’d nevermake it – the market was toocrowded and there were already acouple of major players wholooked to have an unassailablehold. Well as you know, we didn’tjust survive, we grew to dominatethe market in the UK and Europe.”

Although Mr Miller wasstretching the truth somewhat, theCPC had been successful. It hadsold 2.5 million machines by 1990and had more than half themarket in France. With that levelof success, Amstrad felt it waswise to model the GX4000 on the

8-bit CPC series of computers withsome extra hardware bolted on.The CPC was six-years-old at thetime but there was confidencewithin Amstrad that it didn’tmatter. Indeed, Sir Alan shook offall accusations that Amstrad hadarrived too late and he wasabsolutely certain the publicwould ignore the Master System,the NES and the Megadrive (whichwas also launching in the run-upto Christmas 1990). One look atthe GX4000’s bundled game,Burnin’ Rubber, he hoped, and thepunters would immediately reachfor their wallets.

Sugar had a simple outlookon electronics - people will buywhat’s good value and looksgood. He had earlier bundled anamplifier, twin cassette decks, aturntable and radio into one unit,created the midi hi-fi, made itlook impressive and ensured itran with just a single powersupply. It was snapped up bymillions. His firm then inventedthe CPC, an all-in-one computer,cassette deck and monitor, againall powered from one plug. Thattoo went on to sell in droves.

He believed people didn’tmake too much fuss over bitsand bytes, and at the launch ofthe GX4000 he said: “The enduser doesn’t know whether it is16-bit, 8-bit, or if it is working

Not only did the console look space-aged, but the

box was adorned with the images from some bizarre

interstellar battle

Amstrad boss Alan Sugar,

seen here at in 1984 at the

launch of the CPC 464

The bundled game Burnin' Rubber showcased the

power of the GX4000


**25**

with gas or steam or with elasticbands.” His comments had a ringof truth, as the console markethad since proved beyond a doubtthat the buying public will notalways opt for the most powerfulmachine, but six-year-oldtechnology? Surely the publicwasn’t that easy to fleece?

Tech specs

Despite its undeniable 8-bit roots,the console didn’t fare too badlyin the way of technology. It couldbe plugged in to a television inone of two ways: via the aerialsocket or via a SCART connector– not even the Megadrive hadSCART support. It could also beconnected to a dedicated Amstradmonitor. It had a pause buttonwhich froze games mid-way, twoports for game controllers, a portfor an analogue joystick, a slotfor a lightgun and an LED lightthat indicated whether themachine was turned on or off.

When turned on, the screenwould go fuzzy – no PlayStation-style intros – until you inserted acartridge. The game would theninstantly flick into action whenyou moved the switch into the‘on’ position. This also locked the

cartridge firmly in place so itcouldn’t be removed mid-play.

The controllers were verybasic, feeling uncomfortable andcheap, and the direction padswere a tad too small for somehands. Then again, Amstrad’stechnical guru Roland Perry saidthe GX4000 was based on CPCtechnology because the firmwanted something which wouldmake it “easier, cheaper andquicker for us to produce”.Perhaps the quality of thecontroller – like the quality of thejoysticks given away with theoriginal CPC range – was thetrade off.

To hammer home the messagethat Amstrad meant businesswith its new offering, the firmwent for a big launch. Famed forits money-conscious approach tobusiness, it was something of asurprise that the companydecided to unveil their machineat the plush Hotel Meridien inParis, but then the CPC wasalways popular in France and SirAlan was keen to capitalise onthat. The GX4000 was released atthe same time as the Amstrad464Plus and 6128Plus, thedifference being that the formerjust played games while the

latter two were fully functioningcomputers. All had the capabilityto play cartridge games and itwas Amstrad’s way of broadeningthe market for the titles whilegiving people a choice.

Amstrad’s software managerPeter Roback made it clear hesaw the GX4000 as an entry-levelmachine, one which was aimedprimarily at children. He believedparents would buy their kids aGX4000 and after a few yearsdecide to upgrade to a 464Plusor 6128Plus to enable littleJohnny or Jill to word process orwrite their own games. The ideawas they would have a bank ofconsole games which they coulduse on their new machine andalso take advantage of the hugenumber of titles made for theoriginal Amstrad CPC range.

Among the games beingshowcased at launch wereBatman the Movie, ShadowWarriors, Operation Thunderbolt,Chase HQ 2, Fire & Forget II,Robocop 2, Klax, Crazy Cars 2,Escape From The Planet Of TheRobot Monsters and Kick Off 2. Itwas unquestionably animpressive line-up and it seemedto back up Mr Miller’s assertionthat it had the support of somegood, solid names. “Without thesupport of major softwarehouses, our success would beseverely limited,” he said, almostprophetically.

Amstrad tried hard to promotethe machine after its launch,spending £20 million on a pre-Christmas push. Commercialsappeared on television across

Europe and adverts were placedin the press in the lead up to thefestive period. An in-storedemonstrator, similar to thosefound for the PlayStation, Xboxand GameCube in today’s shops,was created for independentcomputer outlets, showing off theconsole in all its glory and with12 games to try out.

Game drought

One of the first games to bereleased was Titus’ Fire &Forget II, a fast and franticdriving game. As the playersped along, blasting baddies,avoiding landmines anddestroying the end-of-levelguardians, it was impossible notto marvel at the wonderfulgraphics. It looked like anarcade game and felt like anarcade game. All that wasmissing was a slot for the 10ppieces. The same was said ofGremlin’s equally fantasticSwitchblade and Ocean’sRobocop 2. The quality of thetitles was there to see andthere was confidence that theconsole would make someheadway and prove the criticswrong. Even after a couple ofmonths, software houses werestill queuing up to get in on theaction. Audiogenic expressedinterest, as did Codemasters.The latter – used to knockingout budget games for £2 or £3– said it was thinking of workingon full-price releases, to retail atthe generally accepted GX4000game price of £24.99.

The cost-cutting controllers closely

resembled official NES joypads

The GX4000 featured a variety of ports and connectors, including a

forward-thinking SCART connection


**26**


But this activity waspapering over the cracks, asthere was quality but certainlyno quantity. 12 games werepromised within eight weeks ofthe launch, yet months later itwas difficult to find even six.Even now, no-one is 100 percent sure how many games wereactually released. Some say 25,some believe as high as 35.

One of those who bought themachine at launch was Amstradenthusiast Chris Weatherley,from Herefordshire. He hadshunned the Megadrive infavour of the GX4000 andbought the machine along withRobocop 2 and Pang. But itsoon became apparent to himthat there were problems. “Asmoney was tight, I had to saveup,” he recalls, “but by thetime I had enough money foranother game, the machine was

already failing.” Within monthson the launch, nobody seemedto care about Amstrad’soffering. Retailers and punterswere shunning the machine andits paltry selection of softwarein favour of Sega and Nintendotitles, whose games,incidentally, were availableeverywhere – from specialistcomputer shops to high-streetchains and supermarkets.Amstrad releases were nowhereto be found.

What exactly was theproblem and who was at fault?Amstrad blamed publishers formissing deadlines, resulting indelayed on-sale dates, whilethe publishers blamed Amstradfor taking months to duplicateand ship games rather than thepromised weeks. When thegames finally did arrive, it wasmore of a wimpy trickle than

the expected rush.Worse still, some software

developers were under so muchpressure to get games out forthe console that they wereporting games straight from theCPC to cartridge, not botheringto use any of the machine’senhanced features. Up untilthen, there was an acceptancethat to do the GX4000 justice,games would have to be writtenfrom the ground up and not justadapted from existing CPC code.Chris said: “I bought OperationThunderbolt and found it wasnear identical to the CPCversion. After reading morereviews, I realised half of thegames released were cartridgeversions of the standard CPCgames. I stopped buying gamesbecause of this, and I thinkmany people did the same.”

“I don’t believe the GX4000

failed because of its technology,cost or most of the games’quality,” continues Chris.“Robocop 2, Pang, Pro TennisTour, Fire & Forget II and evenBurnin’ Rubber prove themachine was capable of greatthings for an 8-bit console –better graphically than both theNES or Sega Master System. Butwhat Amstrad should have doneis released the GX4000 earlier –long before the Megadrive cameout. The signing of softwarehouses like Codemasters wouldhave been a great move. Manygames were being releasedunder these houses at the time.Ocean was Amstrad’s onlysaving grace.”

There were some exceptions.Gremlin released Switchbladefor the console before creating atape/disk version for the oldCPC range. The graphicaldif ferences were stark. Thefour-colour mode was used onboth versions, but because theGX4000 had 16-colour sprites, itenhanced the look of the gameimmensely. And Gremlinadmitted it felt the GX4000version was “slightly better”than the 16-bit Atari ST version.A triumph! But it didn’t stopAmstrad and its loyal customerbase from being caught in avicious circle. There were too

Batman the Movie

OOcceeaannThe first level of this game, whiledifficult, was engaging for onereason: not only did you get to playas the Caped Crusader, but you gotto swing around on the batrope. Itenhanced what would have been avery ordinary platformer. But from

then on in, the game – a straightport of the CPC version – wentdownhill quickly with a sluggishdriving section.

Barbarian II

PPaallaacceeWhile the first game was brilliant,this sequel suffered on the

GX4000, not least because it wasa straight port of the CPC versionreleased around a year earlier. Ittook no advantage of the console’sextra capabilities and in terms ofgameplay it was once again acase of slashing monsters withyour sword. Nice cover art, mind.

Switchblade

GGrreemmlliinnPlaying as Hiro, you had toreassemble a sword smashed tobits by an evil dictator. Most of theaction took place in undergroundcaves – but what stunning lookingcaves they were! As you made yourway through the game you had to

beat up various foes using yourmartial arts skills. It was brilliantlydetailed, featured a great controlmethod and was perhaps the bestgame on the console.

Klax

DDoommaarrkkSome people may yawn, but thiswas one of the better puzzlers.Like many GX4000 releases, it

>GX gamesIt's difficult to say exactly how many games wereeventually released for the GX4000 besides the bundledBurnin' Rubber, but below is a selection of titles that were definitely available

Hopes were initially high with launch titles like Fire &

Forget II delivering near-arcade quality graphics


**27**

few games being written,leading to a lack of peoplebuying the GX4000, which inturn led to even fewer gamesbeing written.

GX4000 collector John King,who has set up a websitelisting all of the games hebelieves are available, said:“The GX4000’s poor luck in themarket was entirely due to alack of good games and for thisreason it deserved to fail.Amstrad should have ensured asupply of interesting andplayable games prior to therelease of the machine.”

Xmas hangover

The post-Christmas sales reportmade for depressing reading. InFrance, sales were good andFrench publishers wereconfident they could shiftaround 20,000 units of eachgame. But in Britain, the gardenwas less rosy. By February1991, the GX4000’s price wasslashed from £99 to £79 byDixons and Comet. AlthoughAmstrad had not officiallydeclared the price drop, the factit allowed retailers to take agreater slice of the profits after

was pretty much identical to theCPC version, but at twice theprice. Nevertheless, it was asatisfying Tetris-style game withcoloured tiles cascading down aconveyor belt into a hole. Theidea was to create rows, columnsor diagonals of the same colour. Itwas fast, furious and fun.

No Exit

TToommaahhaawwkkThis is one of the rarest titles to gethold of, but it really isn’t worth it. Itwas a Street Fighter style beat-em-up with a strange scoring method. Ifyou punched and missed yourenergy level went down. Horrible.

Tintin on the Moon

IInnffooggrraammeessTintin was a short game – and forthat we can be grateful. Tintinsaw the Belgium cartooncharacter defuse several bombsplanted by Colonel Boris. Itlooked good but playedincredibly poorly, being nothingmore than a series of small

games bundled together.Unabsorbing, bitty and too easy.

Pro Tennis Tour

UUbbiissooffttThere was not much to choosebetween this and the regular CPCversion in terms of gameplay, butUbisoft actually made an effort toenhance the graphics, using theGX4000’s hardware sprites tocreate detailed-looking players. Itshowed off the console’scapabilities and was an excellentoffering overall.

Crazy Cars 2

TTiittuussWhy oh why didn’t the publishers

try a bit harder to create bettergames for the GX4000? Here we have a decent enough drivinggame where the onlyimprovement over the regular CPCgame was a little more colour inthe sky. As for the game itself,you raced an Outrun-style FerrariF40 around America whiledodging various obstacles.

Pang

OOcceeaannOne of the best games for theconsole and now highly soughtafter, Pang was simple, addictiveand made owning a GX4000worthwhile (as the game wasn’tavailable for the standard CPC >>>

The cartridge games certainly impressed Amstrad

Action magazine, with a number of titles appearing

in their top games of 1991 round-up

>RetrocollectorAs with all old consoles, eBay is the best place to get hold of the machineand its games. Depending on whether or not it is boxed, the consoles canbe snapped up from between £10 and £50, and the cartridges generallygo for around £8. In August 2004, a fully boxed cartridge version of Pang,complete with instructions, sold for an impressive £72. And a GX4000including 15 games (one of which was also Pang) fetched £220.

One firm, the Shropshire-based Trade In Post, snapped up all of theAmstrad in-store demonstrators – around 200 of them – soon after theGX4000 was killed off. Trade In Post owner John Thackeray then setabout dismantling them, taking the 12 cartridges out of each machine andselling them. For owners of the console, it was a perfect way of gettinghold of the games, but as if to prove how unpopular the machine was,John says he still has dozens of the cartridges left and continues to putthem up for sale.

He said: “I still have one of the demonstrators but all the rest of themwere broken up for the cartridges. I sell them without boxes and manualsbut I can’t say I’ve sold any for a long time. I wasn’t a fan of the GX4000as I already had a 464Plus and a 6128Plus. As far as I was concerned, theGX4000 had nothing extra to offer.” Among John’s items for sale are NoExit, Operation Thunderbolt, Switchblade, Pro Tennis Tour, Navy Seals,Barbarian 2, Robocop 2, Klax, Pang and Plotting, all at £7.99. He also hassome GX4000 consoles for sale.

Chris Weatherley, who has sourced most of his games via eBay, said:“It’s very hard to find some games. If they exist, Spider-Man or ShadowWarriors must be the rarest titles. But of the ones I know exist for definite,Chase HQ, Mystical and Dick Tracy are incredibly hard to get.” MalcJennings added: “I think the rarest game on the console would be Pangby Ocean. It was one of the few games that warranted switching theconsole on for a quick blast. You’ll find very few people are willing to partwith that particular game even now. Robocop 2 is also quite hard to findthese days and is easily comparable to the Atari ST version.”


**28**


Christmas pretty much gave thego-ahead for cuts. At this pointonly Crazy Cars 2, Robocop 2,Fire & Forget II, OperationThunderbolt, Switchblade, andBatman the Movie wereavailable in the shops. Wherewere the rest?

Malc Jennings, editor ofwebsite CPC Zone, said: “Evenwhen the GX4000 was released,it was hard for anyone that everbought the machine to findgames. I remember at schoolwhen we all swapped games forthe CPC, Spectrum and C64 thatanyone with the GX4000 looked

severely annoyed and frustratedthat those games just weren’t inthe shops. I think the GX4000struggled because it wasreleased at the same time asSega’s Megadrive, which ofcourse was a 16-bit console andhad amazing games like Sonicthe Hedgehog to help promoteit, not to mention far moremoney on marketing campaignsand a much bigger share ofdevelopers.

Poor sales over Christmascast gloom over Amstrad eventhough its pre-tax profits for thelast six months of 1990 were

computers). You basically blastedballoons which would then splitinto two, which in turn split again,and so on. It was hectic and fun.

Robocop 2

OOcceeaannThis Robocop sequel blendedgreat graphics, superb soundand gripping gameplay into a

classic 2D platform game whichsaw you shooting at enemiesand avoiding pitfalls. The onegrumble was that dying meantyou had to go right back to thestart, but if other games of thisquality had been released, theGX4000 may have fared better.

Wild Streets

TTiittuussIn this game about drug gangwarfare, you played James Taylor,a man with a pet panther and a357 Magnum. The panther helpedout when you were close todeath, which was a novel twist,but otherwise Wild Streets wasstandard beat-em-up fare.

Op.Thunderbolt

OOcceeaannGreat game, but sadly it was a lazyconversion of an old CPC game.The graphics were not up to thestandard which console ownersexpected, but this Operation Wolfsequel still served up level afterlevel of intense shoot-em-up action.

Plotting

OOcceeaannAnother puzzle game but not up toOcean’s usual standard. The playerhad to match blocks together, watchthem disappear and repeat. It was acartridge only release so naturallymade good use of the GX4000’sgraphics and sound capabilities.

Pinball Magic

LLoorriicciieellNothing can beat proper pinballbut this went close. With 12different tables there was lots tosee, yet the game was so hardyou probably wouldn’t reachsome of the later tables. It wasanother CPC port but well worthtracking down.

PCWKing

wwwwww..ppccwwkkiinngg..nneettffiirrmmss..ccoomm//ccaarrttrriiddggee..hhttmmllThis site run by GX4000 enthusiast John King attempts to keep track ofall of the console’s releases and rates them. There is also a scannedcopy of the console’s manual.

CPC Zone

wwwwww..aammssttrraaddccppcc..ccoommWhile not specifically covering the GX4000, this is a good stop forgeneral CPC enthusiasts.

>Web resources

CPC Game Reviews

wwwwww..ccppccggaammeerreevviieewwss..ccoo..uukkThere is no specific cartridge section, but if you know the name of theGX4000 game you’re looking for, then chances are there will be areview here and download links.

Trade In Post

wwwwww..ttrraaddeeiinnppoosstt..ccoommIf you’re looking forcartridge games andcan’t locate them oneBay, there’s aselection at Trade InPost, a shop basedin Telford. Gamescan be purchasedonline.

£40 million, a rise of £10million. Sega and Nintendo’ssales had rocketed and theGX4000 – as well as the Plusrange of computers – lostserious ground to the twomanufacturers it had desperatelytried to beat. The onlyconsolation was thatCommodore’s 64GS console hadalso fared badly and was alsoon the way out.

In Spring 1991, Amstrad axed37 jobs at its headquarters inBrentwood. Among the bignames to go in the internalshake-up was Amstrad’s

Software and Peripheralsmanager Peter Roback, one of themain men behind the GX4000launch. By the Autumn, with onlya handful of games released,cheap GX4000s werecommonplace. Some high streetstores were offloading stock for£30. The console had crashedand burned in spectacular fashionand Amstrad bailed out of thegaming industry for good. If thedream of a successful Britishconsole had been shattered bythe non-appearance of the KonixMulti System, it died outright withthe failure of the GX4000. ✺✯*


**29**

>CliffLawsoninterviewCliff Lawson has workedfor Amstrad for the past 20 years and was a key member of the team which launched the GX4000. We asked him a few questions about the console

RReettrroo GGaammeerr:: WWhhyy wwaass tthhee GGXX44000000

rreelleeaasseedd aass aann 88--bbiitt mmaacchhiinnee aatt aa ttiimmee

wwhheenn 1166--bbiitt wwaass bbeeccoommiinngg tthhee ssttaannddaarrdd??

CClliiffff LLaawwssoonn:: It took longer to make the

GX4000 and the Plus range of computers

then had been predicted. By the time we

launched the new machines, there were

computers like the ST and Amiga which

were showing what 16-bit CPUs could

achieve. And we were still stuck in the 8-

bit world. Admittedly, the GX4000 had

hardware assistance, but the ST and

Amiga had powerful sound and graphic

support chips too.

RRGG:: TThhee bbiiggggeesstt ccoommppllaaiinntt aatt tthhee ttiimmee wwaass tthhee llaacckk ooff ssooffttwwaarree.. WWhhyy

wwaass tthhiiss ssoo??

CCLL:: Software is the one thing that can make a console a success and

yes, the Amstrad failed in that respect. The GX4000 arrived in the same

era as Nintendo’s SNES and technically the Amstrad was at least as

good. But to explain this properly you have to look at how the

technically superior Nintendo 64 struggled against the first PlayStation,

and how the Xbox struggles against the PS2 today, even though it is

technically better. Amstrad’s main problem was a lack of marketing

budget. If you have millions of pounds and can throw the odd few

thousand here or there to various software companies to persuade them

to target software for your console, you will succeed. But the risk is that

you have to run the entire console business at a multi-million pound

loss, hugely subsidising it for the first few years until it gains a

foothold. That’s what Sony did and it succeeded, but a company as

small as Amstrad, relatively speaking, can’t do that kind of gambling.

Having said that, the company did that with the e-Mailer phones, which

made multi-million pound losses over the first two to three years, but

are now making a very tidy profit.

RRGG:: SSoo ddiidd AAmmssttrraadd hhaavvee iittss hhaannddss ttiieedd oorr ccoouulldd iitt hhaavvee ddoonnee mmoorree ttoo

mmaakkee tthhee mmaacchhiinnee aa ssuucccceessss?? HHaadd iitt,, iinn eeffffeecctt,, ggiivveenn uupp ttoooo eeaarrllyy??

CCLL:: To make the console successful would have required more money to

give software houses a greater incentive to create software. But the

games and consoles needed to have been delivered sooner. And it

would have helped if the machine had been 16-bit.

RRGG:: CCoouulldd AAmmssttrraadd hhaavvee ddoonnee aannyytthhiinngg ddiiffffeerreenntt?? PPeerrhhaappss uusseedd CCDDssiinnsstteeaadd ooff ccaarrttrriiddggeess ttoo mmaakkee mmaannuuffaaccttuurriinngg eeaassiieerr aanndd cchheeaappeerr??

CCLL:: Well, a PlayStation game comes on a 25p plastic disc whereas aGX4000 game came on about 30 dollars worth of silicon. Sony couldlaunch games at £30, reduce them to £20 and then £15 or even £10and still make a profit. Amstrad, and indeed Nintendo, could neverheavily discount games because of the underlying cost of silicon. Somaybe another mistake was to not include a CD drive. But back then aCD drive was about £150, so Amstrad would have had to heavilysubsidise the hardware to include a CD – which brings us nicely backround to Sony and its marketing budget.

RRGG:: DDiidd AAmmssttrraadd lloossee ffaaiitthh iinn tthhee ggaammeess iinndduussttrryy??

CCLL:: No. The firm continued to make quite a lot of money from the CPC.Remember the machines were actually more successful in France thanthe UK. But the fact is that the world was moving on. People eitherwanted a powerful business computer or they wanted to play games ona high-spec console. In the end, the Sony PlayStation delivered.Interestingly, Amstrad’s marketing director left and became marketingmanager for Sega.

RRGG:: DDiidd AAmmssttrraadd eevveerr tthhiinnkk aabboouutt rree--eenntteerriinngg tthhee ggaammiinngg mmaarrkkeett??

CCLL:: At the time, Amstrad was selling business systems – PCWs and PCs– at a rate of about 10:1 compared to home computers and consoles, soit was clear, back then at least, where the money was to be made.

RRGG:: WWhhaatt ddoo yyoouu mmaakkee ooff tthhee ccoonnssoollee mmaarrkkeett ttooddaayy??

CCLL:: Sony is the Microsoft of the console market and woe-betide anyonewho dares to take on either of them in their respective domains. In fact,when you think about the Xbox, only Microsoft could have the balls andmarketing budget to try and take on Sony at its own game, and yetthey still can’t succeed.

RRGG:: IItt aallll ccoommeess ddoowwnn ttoommaarrkkeettiinngg aanndd mmoonneeyy tthheenn??

CCLL:: Yes. At the end of the day Ithink this whole thing comesdown to marketing in both skillsand budget. Just becausesomeone has the mosttechnically superioroffering is in no way aguarantee to success.

These days Amstrad is making a "tidy profit" from its

range of email-enabled phones


**30**

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | FEATURE:HARDWARE | MAC ATTACK |

RETRO11 Mac Attack 06/12/2004 4:56 PM

>Mac Attack

The last 25 years has seen a

multitude of

computers, from the Spectrum

and

Commodore 64 through to the

Amiga and

Atari ST. Of all the compute

rs once

available, only two are in m

ass use

today: the PC and the Apple

Macintosh,

and the PC has changed beyon

d all

recognition. Jason Walsh loo

ks at the

early history of the Mac and

speaks to

two of the key figures in it

s early

development, Jef Raskin and

Andy Hertzfeld

Apple has a history of computing firsts. Consider the Apple II: the first personal

computer in a plastic case and the first personal computer with colour graphics.

Later the company would go on to develop the first PDA, pioneer the use of the

USB standard, and popularise desktop publishing, desktop video editing, CD-ROMs,

portable MP3 players and legal music downloads. It’s clear that Apple takes innovation

very seriously, but it was not all clear sailing for the Cupertino-based company.

**31**


**32**

Afterthe Apple III

debacle (see lastmonth’s Retro Gamer), Apple

was searching for a new machinewhich would see off competitionfrom IBM’s PC and eventuallyreplace its massively popularApple II computer. Insiders at thecompany thought that the AppleLisa, a revolutionary new 32-bitmachine that would introduce aneasy-to-use GUI (Graphical UserInterface) to the public was it.History tells us two things: theywere wrong about the Lisa, butthey were right about the GUI. Itwas not the Lisa, but theMacintosh that was to be the firstpopular personal computer with agraphical user interface. Or asApple itself put it, “the computerfor the rest of us.”

Fashion icon

Most of Apple’s key engineerswere engaged with the Lisaproject. Apple believed thatcomputers were too hard to use.The first word processors andspreadsheets had been a step inthe right direction, but Apple’sgoal was to shift the personalcomputer from being a strangetoy into a productivity device.

IBM first entered the personal

computer market in 1981 andthe rest is history. Over thecourse of the next decade and ahalf, the IBM PCs steamrolledCP/M, the Commodore 64, theTandy TRS-80 and eventually theApple II, Atari ST andCommodore Amiga. The term PCwent from meaning PersonalComputer to signifying acomputer that ran Microsoft DOS– later Windows.

Even before 1981, Apple knewwhat IBM – and Microsoft’s –strategy would be and itdesperately needed to up theante in order to survive. Theanswer was to be the Lisa. TheLisa was the first consumercomputer with a graphical userinterface. It had a mouse, a set ofintegrated office applications, anda 12in monochrome display whichenabled users to see what theirdocuments actually looked likeon screen.

Meanwhile, Apple employeenumber 31 was already quietlyworking on a side project whichno-one expected to go anywhere.The person in question was JefRaskin, a former professionalmusician, professor of art andvisionary engineer. Raskinactually conceived the idea backin the 1960s, but never had anopportunity to develop anythingsubstantial. In January 1978 hejoined Apple Computer Inc as thehead of the company’spublication unit. From there hemanaged to convincemanagement that he had someideas which were worth pursuing.“I avoided the supposed‘visionaries’ in the company whocould not understand my idea,but instead presented a businesscase,” recalls Raskin.

He conceived a computerwhich would be simple in everysense – suited a limited range oftasks and was easy to use. Henamed it Macintosh after hisfavourite variety of tree-grownApple, the McIntosh. Some claimhe mis-spelt the name, for hispart Raskin states that hechanged the spelling to avoidconfusion with the hi-fiequipment manufacturer.

Jef Raskin is in this sense theindisputable father of the Mac.The fact remains however, thatalthough Raskin created the Macproject, the machine which finallyarrived in 1984 was ratherdifferent from the one which heinitially envisaged.

Home invasion

Raskin’s original vision, asoutlined in the many papers hewrote on the subject prior tocommencing, was not so much acomputer as then understood,but a ‘personal communicationsappliance’ – a networkable boxwith keyboard and integratedmonitor which would connect tothe phone line and become “anindispensable part of everyhome”. That last part ofRaskin’s vision has since echoeddown the decades as the singlemost important premonition inmodern computing.

Raskin toiled away with littlein the way of help from thecompany – possibly just the wayhe liked it as it meant forminimal management-

interference. But in early 1981 hewas joined by two people whowould go on to shape the Mac -industrial designer Jerry Manockand Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.By July 12th 1981, Jobs hadeffectively assumed control ofthe project and his vision of aneasy-to-use multi-purposecomputer supplanted Raskin’s. Atthe time Jobs explained hisvision by stating: “IBM has it allwrong. It sells personalcomputers as data-processingmachines, not tools for theindividual.” Jobs had takenRaskin’s vision and run with it.

Raskin is no stranger tocontroversy. His numerous run-ins with journalists, includingrecently with yours-truly in theGuardian, have often createdfurore in the Mac world. He hasin recent months declared that“the Mac is a mess” and that“there is only a little differencebetween using a Mac and aWindows-machine.” However,Raskin argues that his points arecommonly misinterpreted andmisrepresented. One example is

>DesignclassicsThe Mac has won countless industrial design awards, more than anyother Apple product line, and Apple’s products have a habit of winningdesign awards. The original Mac was a true design classic, but it verynearly looked quite different. Jerry Manock and Jef Raskin designed amachine that sat horizontally with a folding keyboard which could belifted to cover the screen and disk drives for transportation purposes.In the end, this Mac design was only one of several competingdesigns, but all of the proposed models featured one similarity - theywere all appliance-like ‘all-in-one’ units. The key concept as definedby both Jef Raskin and Jerry Manock, supported by Steve Jobs, was tomake the machine as un-computer-like as possible. The Mac was tobe a friendly machine and this was to be reflected in all aspects ofthe design, from the interface through the packaging to the fact thatthe machine was intended to be vaguely reminiscent of a little personsitting on your desk.

The original Mac model, with its classic compact design

Jef Raskin, creator of the Mac

project, actually left Apple in

1981, three years before the

machine came to market



**33**

that many people believe thatRaskin’s Mac would not have agraphical user-interface and thathe preferred a purely text-basedinterface. According to Raskin,this is not the case: “I designedit to be graphical from theground up. But the text portionsof the interface would have beencleaner. People have puttogether my dislike of themouse, confusing dislike for aparticular input device withdislike for graphic input devicesin general, and my carefulattention to text handling tocreate a false legend of mywanting a text-based machine.”

When Retro Gamer caught upwith Raskin’s fellow Mac teammember, Andy Hertzfeld, heconfirmed that the suggestionthat Raskin’s Mac would havebeen text-based was incorrect.“Jef always favored a graphicalinterface. He didn’t like themouse, but he did like othergraphical pointing devices.” Theconfusion seems to arise largelyfrom Raskin’s next project, the ill-fated Canon Cat. The Cat is theMac’s demented brother –designed to do the sole task ofword processing, but do it well. Itis an interesting concept but itlacked the two factors whichwere central to the Mac’ssuccess: true ease-of-use andmassive flexibility.

Hertzfeld, while not wanting toundermine Raskin’s contributionto the project, is clear that theMac of Raskin’s imaginationwould not be the machine that somany know and love today. “IfSteve Jobs hadn’t gotten involvedwith the project when he did, theMacintosh never would haveshipped at all, much less beingaround 20 years later.” Theimplication is that Jobs, having

worked on the Lisa, knew wherehe wanted the Mac to go andmade sure that he had theengineers to fulfill his vision.

Raskin left the project in 1981.He had had a volatile workingrelationship with Jobs and wassent on an involuntary leave ofabsence from which he neverreturned. In those days the‘groovy’ Apple wasn’t in thebusiness of sacking staff, so if thecompany wanted rid of someone itsimply sent them on a permanentholiday until they got bored andquit of their own volition.Ironically, the same fate awaitedJobs a mere four-years later.

Nevertheless, the graphicaluser-interface is what separatedthe Mac from its competitors,such as the underwhelmingearly versions of IBM’s MS-DOS-based PC. Neither the Mac northe Lisa were the first computersto feature a GUI, but the Macwas the first to be a success.The Xerox Alto had arudimentary GUI, and the XeroxStar had a more fully-featuredinterface, but neither proved asuccess as they were overpriced,unwieldy machines and theirGUIs were difficult to understand– the oft cited genius of theXerox project actually lies in itsneworkability and the futurewhich it pointed to, not itsactual usability.

Despite this, a legend hasarisen that Apple stole the GUIconcept from Xerox. While SteveJobs did indeed visit Xerox PARCwhere the Alto and Star weredeveloped, the GUI in factoriginates in computing researchas far back as the 1950s andmoreover, work had alreadybegan on the Mac and Lisa’soperating systems before Job’svisit to PARC. Apple no more stole

the GUI than they invented itthemselves - both stories areapocryphal.

Market reception

The Mac was launched onJanuary 24th 1984. Jobs dubbedit “the people’s computer.” TheMac, with its near-unique point-and-click interface, was destinedto make both technological andcultural history. The Macinspired people in art, graphicdesign and architecture – thecultural and creative marketsthat would go on to form theMac’s key markets, laterincluding photography, musicand audio/video production.Suddenly it looked as thoughboth Raskin’s and Jobs’s ideasmade sense – computers weretools for users, no longer justoffice or laboratory-boundcalculation devices.

A commercial was directed byRidley Scott, the British directorwho had directed Alien andBladerunner and would go on towork on Thelma and Louise andGladiator. It was shown onlyonce – during the 1984Superbowl. Ted Friedman took upthe story at the Society for theHistory of Technology Conventionin Pasadena, California: “In thethird quarter of the 1984 SuperBowl, a strange and disorientingadvertisement appeared on theTV screens of the millions ofviewers tuned in to the yearlyritual. The ad opens on a graynetwork of futuristic tubesconnecting blank, ominousbuildings. Inside the tubes, wesee cowed subjects marchingtowards a cavernous auditorium,where they bow before a BigBrother figure pontificatingfrom a giant TV screen.

But one lone woman remainsunbroken. Chased by stormtroopers, she runs up to thescreen, hurls a hammer with aheroic grunt, and shatters the TVimage. As the screen explodes,bathing the stunned audience inthe light of freedom, a voice-overannounces, ‘On January 24th,Apple Computer will introducethe Macintosh. And you’ll seewhy 1984 won’t be like 1984.’”

Then... nothing. The publicdidn’t buy it. Everyone agreedthat the battle of Apple versusIBM was an Orwellian struggle,but the Mac was not anovernight success.

Meanwhile the press ravedabout the computer, due in nosmall part to the fact that itsimplified magazine andnewspaper production. Be clearon this point – without the Macrevolution you wouldn’t bereading this magazine right nowbecause publishing would simplybe too expensive for many of themultitude of titles we see on thenewsagents’ shelves today.

Hardcore computer hobbyistsweren’t interested in the Mac. Justas Jobs and co. had feared, theyderided it as a toy, but therewere other problems. Jef Raskinhad planned on the Mac costingaround US$600, Steve Jobs hadaimed for US$1,500. When theMac debuted it cost a staggeringUS$2,500. Business-users, alwaysconscious of the bottom-line,were not impressed by the Mac’sprice-tag, even if it did makefor savings in terms oftime spentperformingtasks.

The earliest incarnation of the Mac’s GUI, dating from January 1984


**34**


Nevertheless, the Mac hadfound a market in the creativeindustries and Apple built theuser-base from there. Schools anduniversities picked up on theMac’s possibilities as a learning-tool, developing another keyniche for the company. It wasclear to anyone who cared thatthe Apple Macintosh was noordinary computer; that it was, infact, a potential democraticrevolution in progress. For thefirst time a computer wasdesigned from the ground up inorder to allow the user to doactual things, not simply tinkerwith code or play games.

All the same, not everyonecould see the genius of the Mac.Steve Jobs offered a free Mac toAndy Warhol, but he wasn’t

interested. Sadly it seems thatWarhol was in fact the empty-headed and inchoate buffoon heseemed to be, rather than thereclusive genius many though himto be. With a Mac and a laserprinter Warhol’s experiments withrepetitive and manipulatedimages, not to mention hisquestions about the authenticityof the individual art-object, wouldhave been catapulted into anotherdimension. Meanwhile, Bo Derekalso declared herself uninterested.She was a DOS-user. That Derekis one of the few celebritysupporters of George W. Bushsuggests her radar remainssomewhat off to this day.

Some celebrities did, on theother hand, see the potential ofthe tiny wonder-machine,

particularly comedians. StephenFry, Hugh Laurie and EddieIzzard are all avid Mac users.On the music side of thingsfans include Moby, Fruitbat fromCarter USM and Björk.Radiohead’s album OKComputer even features a cameo singing role for theMac’s built-in Macintalksoftware voice synthesizer.

One infamous Mac-evangelistwas the late-Douglas Adams.Adams enthused about themachines at every possibleopportunity – converting theevolutionary biologist RichardDawkins in the process – evenwriting columns for the UK’sMacUser magazine, which isquite astonishing when youconsider that Adams practicallyneeded to be prodded with a hotpoker to get him to writeanything at all.

Colour Mac

In 1987 Apple’s Macintosh madea great leap forward. By thisstage Apple didn’t have the GUImarket entirely to itself.Microsoft was still pluggingaway with early versions ofWindows, but more worryingcompetitors had appeared in theform of the Commodore Amigaand Atari ST. The ST in particularfeatured Digital Research’s GUInamed GEM (GraphicEnvironment Manager) whichwas a pale clone of the Macoperating system, lumped on topof the CP/M 68000 operating-system which Atari had renamedTOS. The worst part for Applewas that both machines featuredcolour graphics.

Apple knew that itsmonochrome Mac needed to beupdated to deal with the threat

>No stinkin’gamesTo this day the Mac is not known as a gaming platform and there’s a

reason for that. It’s not that the Mac isn’t a capable games machine –

in fact, arguably it could be a better games platform than Windows,

concentrating as it does on multimedia and graphics capabilities.

These days the modern Mac even shares its choice of processor – the

IBM PowerPC – with the Nintendo GameCube and Microsoft’s upcoming

Xbox 2. In the case of the Mac and Xbox 2, the PowerPC G5 is a fully

64-bit processor.No, the reason the Mac traditionally doesn’t have many games is that

in the early days, Apple did everything it could to discourage developers

from producing games for the machine. The reasoning was twofold.

Firstly, Apple already had a home computer on the market – the Apple

II. The Mac was aimed a professional users and Apple wanted to ensure

that the Mac didn’t take a bite out of the Apple II sales which had made

Apple the fastest growing company in American history.

Secondly, although it’s hard to see now, the Mac was a

revolutionary machine and Apple was concerned about how people

would perceive it. Apple-insiders were afraid that the public,

particularly business and IT professionals, wouldn’t understand the

graphical userinterface, insteadseeing graphics as

synonymous with

games, thereforedeclaring that the

Mac was unsuitable

for business use.

Nevertheless, games

were developed for

the Mac.The dubious

honour of being the

first-ever Mac game belongs to another of Andy Hertzfeld’s efforts -

Puzzle. Puzzle wasn’t intended to be a true game, rather it was a proof

of concept. Back in 1984 the Mac was a single-tasking machine

designed to run one piece of software at a time. This was a design

decision - multi-tasking was reserved for the more expensive Apple Lisa.

Hertzfeld was dissatisfied with this and developed a series of small

applications called ‘desk accessories’ which could be run concurrently,

and share memory, with the main application. They were intended to be

simple apps such as a calculator, control panel, keyboard map and

notepad, but Hertzfeld pushed the concept a little bit farther. Puzzle was

a simple sliding number puzzle-game. In the end all of his work paid

off – a year after he left Apple in 1984 he wrote a multi-tasking upgrade

to the Mac OS which Apple was happy to incorporate into the operating

Andy Hertzfeld’s simple Puzzle game,

hidden among a wealth of desk accessories

A typically straight-talking Apple ad for the Mac. As the slogan

says, “If you can point, you can use Macintosh.”

The Mac lived in the shadow of the Lisa for the firstyear or so of its life


Mac, further cementing itsposition in the design andpublishing industries. Despite thefact that this was 1987, thegraphics card could even beupgraded to display up to 16.7million colors. The machine wasan instant success and camewith 1MB of RAM, an 800KBfloppy disk drive and a 40MBinternal SCSI hard disk drive.

Publishing software was thefirst area to make use of the new

Mac’s capabilities, but the gamedevelopers weren’t far behind. Bythe time the 1990s rolled aroundMac games were no longer theunique, quirky Mac-only effortsthat had amused players, if notexactly set the world on fire.Mac owning gamers were soonable to play popular titles likeLoom, Monkey Island I & II,Indiana Jones and the LastCrusade, Doom 2, Lemmings andPrince Of Persia.

>XL: eXtraLisasThe success of the Mac was such that it totally eclipsed Apple’s mainproject: the Lisa. The company tried again with an upgraded Lisa 2 in1984, but finally gave up.

Eventually, on January 1st 1985 the Lisa was modified to run theMacintosh operating system and sold as a Mac fileserver named theMacintosh XL. XL was usedto indicate ‘eXtra Large’,although insiders came tojoke that it stood for ‘eXtraLisas’. On August 1st 1986the XL was discontinuedand the Lisa finally died.Apple dumped thousands uponthousands of unsoldXLs and Lisas in aUtah landfill site.

The Apple Lisa 2/10 model, seen here, featured an

internal 10MB hard drive. It was later modified and

renamed the Macintosh XL

**35**

from these new 68000-basedmachines. In March 1987, Appleupped the ante with the releaseof the Macintosh II. Unlike theearlier all-in-one (compact)models, the Mac II wasdesigned to be the ultimate

expandable Mac. Based on thenew Motorola 68020 processor,the Mac II included six slotsallowing for a number ofdifferent expansion cards.

With the Mac II, Apple alsointroduced colour graphics to the

system as, by this time, the Lisa had proved an expensive failure.

One game which explicitly fell foul of Apple’s no-games policy was

Alice. Developed by Apple staffer, Steve Capps, Alice was marketed by

Apple itself. Or rather it wasn’t. Apple’s reluctance to promote the

game aside, Alice was an intriguing concept. Based on the adventures

of Alice from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, Alice was an

isometric-3D action game which was set on a giant chessboard. Apple

eventually relented on its no-game policy and released Alice, but the

title had to be changed to Through the Looking Glass in order to avoid

confusion with a peculiarly named database program.

If you build it...

Other key early games on the Mac were LodeRunner and MacAttack.

LodeRunner proved particularly popular with Mac-gamers, becoming

one of the few platform games available for the system.

On the whole the Mac faired poorly when it came to action games,

but strategy, war, adventure and role-playing games were a lot more

popular. Sierra On-Line was an early supporter of the Mac- much to

the chagrin of Apple IIGS owners who felt the company was ignoring

their computer. Other early classics included the Ultima series and the

intriguing point-and-click adventures from ICOM. Such a title was

Shadowgate, a fairly typical dungeon adventure, but unusual in that it

made use of the Mac’s built-in GUI; something which had to be

simulated when the game was ported to other platforms.

Outside of the commercial market – and quite possibly because of

its lack of interest –

the Mac developed a

healthy shareware

games scene. One of

the most fondlyremembered games is

Stunt Copter.Laughably primitive

by today’s standards,

it was a simple game

even back then, but it

developed a cult

following. Programmed

by Duane Blehm under the name Hometown Software, users controlled

a helicopter with the mouse. The task was to drop stick-men (stunt

jumpers) onto a hay cart being pulled by a horse – sort of Amish

meets Thunderblade. But not quite.

Duane died in the 1990s but his parents continued to receive a small,

but steady stream of cheques from avid players. In order to honour their

son’s memory and please the game’s fans, the Blehms released Stunt

Copter as freeware. Around 2001, Antell Software released a version of the

game for Apple’s new operating system, Mac OS X.

Another shareware game which was played surreptitiously by

schoolkids in Mac labs across the world was Social Climber. This peculiar

game was a clone version of the VIC-20 classic, Wacky Waiters, for those

with a penchant for a Marxist reading of society. >>>

The quirky Stunt Copter quickly attained a cult

following, and has since been remade for Mac OS X

Steve Jobs, then Apple Chairman of the Board, introduces the

Macintosh on the cover of Macworld issue 1


The Mac versions of these gameswere popular and well-coded –they had to be. Unlike the Amiga,Apple used little in the way ofcustom chips. The Apple way is todo everything in software, and it’sthe software that is the reason theMac is still with us today when somany competitors have fallen bythe wayside. Not only was the Maca vision of the future, it remainsthe most highly-polishedcomputing experience possible

today. The attention to detail isnothing short of staggering – ifonly there were more games...

For further reading werecommend Andy Hertzfeld’s book,Revolution in the Valley: TheInsanely Great Story of How theMac Was Made, published inDecember 2004 by O’Reilly. Thebook features a foreword by Appleco-founder Steve Wozniak and

traces the development of theMacintosh computer from itsinception as an undergroundproject in 1979 to its triumphantintroduction in 1984 and beyond.In this vivid first-hand account,

author and key Macintoshdeveloper Andy Hertzfeld revealsexactly what it was like to be akey player in one of computing’smost important technicalachievements.

**36**


The shareware gaming tradition on the Mac continues to this day. One

company in particular is renowned for its Mac games: Ambrosia Software.

One series of games which has become so popular that it was even

ported to Windows is Escape Velocity. Escape Velocity is familiar gaming

territory. It’s a space combat simulation with trading and mission features

– sound familiar? Yes, it’s basically a two-dimensional version of the BBC

Micro classic Elite, and it’s none the worse for it.

Mac Halo

What? Halo was a Mac game? That’s

right, it was. Sort of. The developer,

Bungie, specialised in Macintosh

games and the Mac-press was at the

time abuzz with rumours of a new

shoot-em-up game called Halo.

Screenshots were leaked. Appetites

were whet. And then Microsoft bought

Bungie. The Mac version was put off

for months on end and was eventually

only released in an effort to placate

Japanese Mac-fanatics who loved the

game but were never going to buy a

PC or, heaven forbid, an Xbox.

In some sense at least, Halo is

actually a follow-up to Marathon,

an earlier Mac first-

person-shooter.Marathon is a legend in

Mac-circles and, rumour

has it, is still played

by the Retro Gamer

art departmentduring the lunch hour. Relatively primitive by the standards of Halo 2

or Doom 3, the Marathon series was leaps and bounds ahead of the

original Doom games. Happily Bungie has released the source-code

and the games continue to be developed by the open-source

movement to this day. Common features in both Marathon and Halo

include the Marathon logo embedded in the Halo logo, Hunters, and

SPNKR rocket launchers.

Halo, the true successor to Marathon, eventually

arrived on the Mac at the tail end of 2003

The Macintosh II was not so compact anymore, thanks

to its built-in 40MB hard drive ✺✯*


>Then & now1984 Apple Macintosh

CPU: 32-bit Motorola 68000 running at 8MHz

RAM: 128KB, maximum 512KB

ROM: 64KBOS: Mac System 0.91

Display: 9in 1-bit monochrome at 512x342 resolution

US Price: $2,500

2005 Apple Power Macintosh G5

CPUs: Dual 64-bit IBM PowerPC 970fx (G5) running at 2.5GHz

RAM: 512MB, maximum 8GB

ROM: 1MBOS: Mac OS X 10.3.5

Display: Up to 30in LCD, 16.7 million colours at 2,560x1,600 resolution

US Price: $2,999

**37**

>Modern

MacsOur story ends in the early 1990s, but as everyone knows the Mac

continues to this day. The 1990s were the best and worst times for

Apple. During the decade the company massively increased its market-

share - and then lost it again. It dabbled with PDAs, licenced Mac

clones, changed processors, re-wrote the Mac OS countless times,

released two versions of UNIX and in the end bought Steve Jobs’s

company NeXT Computer.

Then in 2001 the Mac changed forever. Steve Jobs unveiled a new

operating system, Mac OS X. OS X was not related to the original Mac

OS. Instead it was developed on concepts derived from the NeXTSTEP

project which was brought to Apple when it acquired NeXT.

On the move

Arguably the most successful line of Macs is the laptops. iBooks and

PowerBooks are Apple’s crown jewels, but from the release of the original

Mac in 1984, it took Apple five years to get its first laptop out the door

and it was, well, disappointing.

The first PowerBook was released in 1991. Co-designed by Sony, it

was an instant hit - the most powerful portable computer on the market

and the first in a long line of PowerBooks - but this slender notebook

wasn’t the first portable Mac. That title belongs to the long-forgotten

Macintosh Portable.Released on the 20th of September 1989, the Apple Macintosh

Portable centred on a 16 MHz 68HC000 processor and featured 1MB of

RAM in a rather chunky off-white plastic case. The monitor was a

surprisingly good 9.8in monochrome active-matrix display. The specs

weren’t the problem with this machine, although

by then it was possible to buy a desktop Mac

running at several times that speed. The

problem with the Macintosh Portable was

its weight: it weighed nearly 16 pounds.

Nevertheless, it was an advance towards

the laptop computer which we are all

familiar with today and on the

plus side, the lead-acid

battery gave five to ten

hours of use.

The original Macintosh Portable. Great, if you had

the upper body dimensions to lug the thing about

>Key MacappsMacWrite and Microsoft WordWord processors. How exciting. Yes, well admittedly they are a trifle dull,but both MacWrite and Microsoft Word have a place in computinghistory. MacWrite because it was the first WYSIWYG word-processor withmultiple fonts, and Word, which stole its clothes, because it appeared onthe Mac in 1984 - a full five years before debuting on Windows (the DOSapplication of the same name is actually unrelated).

MacPaint

MacPaint was many people’s first GUI-based bitmap image editingexperience, and as such became the seminal work by which later effortswere measured.

Pagemaker

First introduced in 1985 by Aldus Corporation, PageMaker was the firstdesktop publishing program. When combined with MacPaint and the then-new laser printing technology, Pagemaker spawned a publishingrevolution that the Mac’s been at the centre of ever since.

QuarkXPress

The application which set the standard in design and publishing andcemented the Mac’s hold on the creative industries, Quark XPress wasreleased in 1987. Pagemaker never recovered.

Photoshop

In February 1990, Adobe Systems Inc shipped version 1.0 of Photoshop.While by version 2.5.1 the application would also be available forWindows, today it remains the seminal bitmap graphics editor and centralto many Mac-user’s experiences. In fact, 1990 did not see the birth ofPhotoshop and the application was not developed by Adobe. Adobebought it from the developers Thomas and John Knoll. Prior to Adobe’sinterest, the Knoll brothers had managed to sell two hundred copies ofthe software under the name ImagePro, as they had managed to convinceBarneyScan to bundle it with its slide scanners.

Hypercard

Developed in-house at Apple by the legendary engineer Bill Atkinson,Hypercard was a peculiar application. Seen by most users, and marketedby Apple, as little more than a glorified address book, Hypercard was infact a stack-based hypermedia authoring system which, in many ways,prefigured the World Wide Web. Interestingly, Myst, probably the mostsuccessful adventure game of all time, was actually coded in HyperCard.

From the word go, the Mac was home to many powerfulbusiness and productivity applications


Untitled-1 1 1/9/06 12:55:47

**39**

Violet is taking this seriously. Even before I’ve sat down, she’s trying

to determine the exact criteria for what games she can take to her

desert island and wondering whether to make it her Retro Island

and not take anything post-SNES. She flirts with the idea of taking eight

titles she’s never played, as this may actually give her more pleasure than

revisiting things past (something she confesses she rarely does – she doesn’t

own a single film on DVD for example). Then she worries whether she should

take her favourite games or those that would be most suitable on an island,

and discusses in some detail what might be involved in training up a team of

monkeys to compete in multiplayer challenges…

>Desert

Island

Disks

>WHO?Violet Berlin, presenter, writerand producer of numerous videogametelevision shows, including BadInfluence! and GamePad

Paul Drury chats with

gaming TV celeb Violet

Berlin, the latest cas

taway

to contemplate a life

of

gaming on our desert i

sland

RETRO11 Desert Island Discs 06/12/2004 4:39 PM

**40**

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | FEATURE:PROFILE | DESERT ISLAND DISKS |

Violet is clearly a devoted gamer.

For nearly 15 years, she has been

the face of videogames on TV. She

has not only presented shows such

as Bad Influence! and GamePad,

she has been heavily involved in

the scriptwriting, research and

production of these and other game

programmes. In the early nineties,

she wrote weekly games reviews for

the Observer Magazine and had a

regionally syndicated column, which

ran for four years. She has even

starred in games, most notably

Micro Machines 2, after being

approached by Codemasters. “I

agreed, as I’d loved the first game,

but only if I could be the fastest

computer-controlled character. They

said I could be the fastest female

character, only Spider could go

quicker. It’s probably my greatest

claim to fame.” As well as featuring

in further sequels, her motion-

captured movements were used in

PC title Normality and bizarrely, her

digitised form falls out of a suitcase

in Peter Gabriel’s typically

understated entry into the world of

videogames, Eve.

With such a history of

involvement with videogames, how

does she feel when people still ask

her if she actually plays games and

seem surprised that a woman is so

passionate about gaming? Has she

punched anyone recently?

“Yeah, people do still ask. I can’t

understand how they think I’d be

able, or even want to, present and

produce videogame shows for this

long if I didn’t love games. It would

be like someone producing a fishing

show that doesn’t fish. But I do find

it bizarre that gaming is seen as

such a specialism – that you either

can or can’t play them; you either

know or you don’t know about

them. It’s so elitist, like a club.”

And of course, it’s been

predominantly a boy’s club from the

beginning. Violet was one of only

two girls that did Computer Studies

the first year it was introduced at

her school, but was profoundly

disappointed that lessons seemed

to focus less on using a computer

and more on writing stories about

what would happen if they took

over the world. “I do remember

standing next to a Space Invaders

machine, really wanting a go, but

being too shy. Arcades were full of

teenage boys and they were pretty

intimidating for an 11-year-old. I did

play Game & Watches and some

handhelds that my dad brought

back from Japan, but I was a girl.

Back then, you wouldn’t have even

thought about buying a Spectrum –

that’s the truth isn’t it?”

Even if young Violet had

procured a Sinclair, it would have

been rather futile, as her strictly

Christian parents refused to have a

television in the house. It’s pretty

understandable then, that during

her teenage years in the eighties,

gaming wasn’t part of her life,

though in an odd twist, she did

end up doing a little programming.

“When I was 15, I worked for a

computer games designer who was

doing a chess programme for the

C64. He employed me to type in

what he dictated and after a while,

I started to see the patterns and

shout ‘I know what comes next!’ So

for a laugh, he’d let me complete

lines of code.”

The Timmy

Mallet

experience

Just as odd, is that Violet managed

to get a job on kids TV without

ever having watched it, though

considering her first break was on

WacaDay, this might be viewed as a

distinct advantage. I wonder just

how annoying Timmy Mallet was in

the flesh? “My first ever trip abroad

for a shoot was with Timmy. It was

in Austria, and on the first day he

said ‘I’ll teach you to ski!’ He took

me to the top of a mountain and

said ‘See you at the bottom!’… I

said I didn’t feel ready but he was

pretty insistent and he was my

boss. I needed 10 stitches and had

to be flown home. He was really

nice to me after that.”

Children’s TV could be pretty

painful without the intervention of

Mallet’s mallet. “It was a lot of

hard work. 5am starts, when you’d

been up till late the night before

making the gunge. That’s how

hands on kids’ TV is. Every team

Violet, left, aged 11 at school, and right,

with madcap TV funnyman Timmy Mallet


**41**

had their own recipe.” It did,

however, lead to Violet presenting

Cool Cube in 1990, a live three hour

kids’ show broadcast at weekends

on BSB before it merged with SKY.

“Michaela Strachan tended to

interview guests, and I’d take on

the science bits, or stuff that

needed researching. Another

researcher called John said we

ought to cover consoles as they

were big with kids. ‘You can do it

Violet’. I was given a NES by the

director of the show and took it

home with Castlevania. I was

immediately hooked. I just loved

it and arranged for a regular slot,

which I think was the first regular

games slot on British TV. It ran

every week for a year. We had an

ST, Amiga, NES and Master System

and we’d get a bunch of kids to

review games, with me presenting

the item. But I needed to play all

the games, so I knew what to ask

them – kids aren’t always very

forthcoming…”

Violet’s obsession with

Castlevania, Mega Man, Zelda and

the like, continued after she left the

programme, and her friends in the

media all knew her as ‘The Girl

Gamer’. So when there was talk of

a new videogame show for kids on

ITV, her experience of television and

games made her an ideal choice to

co-present Bad Influence! with Andy

Crane. Did the fact she was a

woman actually help this time?

“Well, I can’t believe there were

that many other women back then

that had my background in games.

And Andy didn’t play them. He was

the Saturday Morning presenter of

the day and was into techy stuff

like pirate radio. There was a bit of

geek in him. But apart from

Columns on the Game Gear, he

didn’t play games. I was the gamer

on the show, and until the second

series when I got my mate Steve on

board, who’d been the Deputy

Editor at C&VG, I was the gamer on

the production team.”

Ah, so Andy was in fact the eye

candy. I realise how that sounds,

and quickly ask her about her

favourite memory of working on

Bad Influence! “I got to go to Japan

for the launch of the N64. I was

probably one of the first people in

the UK to play Mario 64. It wasn’t

about being first though, it was

just such a revolution. No one had

an inkling of what was to come

and within a second you could see

it was completely amazing. And no

one had seen a single clip. To

report on that live was such a

good feeling.”

Violet smiles broadly, as if she

can still feel the controller in her

hand from that first magical time.

The food arrives, and whilst we

demolish an excellent curry, she

tells me how Zoe Ball was a runner

on Cool Cube and really wanted to

be on TV, so Violet would write her

in to the script as her lab assistant

to give her a first break. Thanks

Violet. She also met her partner,

Gareth Jones, on the show, when

he was starting to present How 2

(which he’s still doing, 15 series

later) and came on to do a piece.

They knew each other for years

(and readers may know him as

elaborately coiffeured eighties

Saturday morning presenter, Gaz

Top), before getting together whilst

working on The Big Bang for ITV.

An appropriately titled show, as by

the final series, they had their first

son, Tycho (it’s a crater on the

moon you can see with the naked

eye, in case you were wondering),

who was soon joined by Indigo. I’m

slightly disappointed to discover

that whilst Gareth likes driving

simulations, they don’t tend to play

games as a couple, but am

heartened to learn that the boys

have already been introduced to

Super Mario World and Mario Paint

on the SNES.

“You know, parenting is similar

to playing god games. You create

an environment and the little

people have to fit in and hopefully

thrive. And watching my sons

learning to walk was a bit like

watching someone working out the

controls on a new game…”

Satellite

of love

The couple have not only

produced two young retro gamers,

they have also produced GamePad

together, which became the

highest rated daytime show on

Sky channel Bravo, with over three

million viewers.

Violet's work on children's TV led her to presenting ITV's Bad Influence!


**42**


“I’d been presenting a show

called Gamespot for Bravo, then

GamePad. The first series had been

made internally – I just turned up

for links and voiceovers. Both were

a huge disappointment. I thought it

was such a shame, as I thought the

channel would be perfect for a

proper videogames show.”

A successful pitch to the Head

of Bravo lead to a further three

series being commissioned, but

this time made not by Bravo but

by Violet and Gareth’s own

production company, WhizzBang TV.

From then on, each series

expanded its audience. Is she

surprised at the success?

“No, not really. I know it’s a good

show and I know there’s a demand

for games on TV. And Gareth and I

try to make it accessible as possible.

I wish it wasn’t repeated so much,

though it has meant people still

coming up to us a year after

GamePad 4, not hardcore gamers,

saying they’ve learnt amazing facts

about videogames from the show.

I’m an evangelist. We have the

tagline for GamePad ‘Made by

gamers, for gamers’ but there’s more

to it than that. I know gamers enjoy

it, but it’s for non-gamers too. TV is

about broadcasting, not

narrowcasting. I don’t want people

tuning in and find me talking about

a load of stuff they can’t understand.

That’s not what TV is about. And it’s

just rude…”

Violet says she would have

preferred to have “no game

reviews, more features and having

fun with games”, a philosophy

clearly illustrated by the appearance

of impressionist Phil Cornwall in

series four and Little Britain star

Matt Lucas reviewing Championship

Manager. There was also plenty of

retro content, including Jon Hare’s

take on Sensible Soccer and an

interview with Jeff Minter.

“Whenever I make a show, I

always think of the retro content,

of how to cover the history. I was

always looking for the right expert

to present the retro bits and I

don’t think we ever got there. But I

have plans for more substantial

retro elements in future projects.

Big plans.”

Rough Diamond

Yet, sadly GamePad has not been

commissioned for a fifth series,

partly due to a new commissioner

at Bravo and also, explains Violet,

four series is about the natural

lifespan of a TV programme.

Instead, the channel is to air

When Games Attack, presented by

none other than arch rival from

back in the day, Dominik Diamond.

“I loved the first series of

Gamesmaster in the church,

though I didn’t watch it much

after that. Everyone acted as if we

were big rivals, but Bad Influence!

was on ITV and got five million

viewers and they got big figures

for Channel 4, but back then it

was a tiny channel. They were

aimed at very different audiences.

Our remit was to get as many girls

as boys watching, whilst they

could use sniggering humour. So,

no, there wasn’t any rivalry,

though I know Dominik has always

slagged me off in the press. I

don’t know why. I suppose it’s his

humour. He’s been really quite

nasty, which is odd, because when

Left, a Yorkshire TV promo pic with co-host Andy Crane,

and right, the cover of Europress' Bad Influence! magazine


**43**

I’ve met him, he’s been perfectly

nice and normal.”

We discuss the somewhat

chequered history of games

television and Violet is surprisingly

upbeat, even finding something

positive to say about Gamezville. “I

find the presenters quite charming

and likeable and even though

people say they don’t know much

about games, so what – they’re not

secretive about that. I find it a bit

dull, with all those challenges and

cheats, but it’s cheap and cheerful

live kids TV.”

Gamestars? “As a PR exercise for

games, it’s OK and I can see what

the makers were trying to do, but I

wouldn’t normally watch that kind of

brash awards show on any subject.’

And how about Thumb Bandits? ‘I

love Aleks [Krotoski], she’s brilliant

and I thought the show was getting

better. I really liked everything about

it, except Iain Lee’s humour. I think

he just puts stuff down. I don’t

dislike him and I thought his

documentary, Thumb Candy, was

excellent. I just don’t find him

funny.”Finally, I wonder if despite not

having a TV in the eighties, she’s

heard of Micro Live, and does she see

herself as a Lesley Judd for the 21st

century? She giggles. “I do know

about it because the guy who came

up with the idea of Bad Influence!

was the producer and director of

Micro Live. His running joke to me

was always ‘Lesley would have done

that so much better.’”

Violet does identify a common

problem with games on TV – that

programme commissioners don’t

play games. ‘It all comes down to it

being seen as a niche. No channel

has ever, or will ever, put a great

deal of money into it, because they

don’t see it as primetime. This

makes a lot of gamers feel insulted

and neglected, but if there were a

popular programme about games,

they probably wouldn’t like it

because it would be too

mainstream. I’ve got formats that I

really think would break the mould

of videogames programming and I’d

love to be the one who really broke

games on mainstream TV, but I don’t

think it will be me…”

She’s being too modest. For

someone who’s carried the daunting

mantle of ‘The face of female

gaming’ for so long without being

phased, someone who can banter

with the hardcore, whilst knowing

how to convey the simple joys of

gaming to the uninitiated, she would

surely be an ideal candidate. And of

course, being easy on the eye

doesn’t hurt a career in television. I

explain that whilst researching for

this interview, several links popped

up for ‘pictures of Violet Berlin you

might like’, something that strangely

didn’t happen when I was preparing

for Matthew Smith and Keith

Campbell, and I wonder how that

makes her feel?

“Really uncomfortable”, answers

Violet. Then follows a suitably

uncomfortable silence, finally

broken when for the first time in

the course of the afternoon, she

struggles for words. “I dunno. You

do your job and you don’t really

see how others see you… It’s odd.

I’ve done lots of games

programmes, but I tend to be

recognised by blokes in their

twenties from Bad Influence!, saying

‘I remember you from my

childhood!’ And I don’t feel any

older than them and it confronts

you that you’re getting older. The

Grandma of Videogames…”

Left, with husband Gareth on ITV's The Big

Bang, and right, presenting GamePad on Bravo



Mega ManNNEESS,, CCaappccoommI’ve still got to nail this game. Years ago, the original was anobsession with me, my sister and my boyfriend. Every day, we’d gethome from work to our shared flat, and start playing straightaway.It required so much stamina that we took turns, each of usbecoming a ‘specialist’ in defeating certain types of robot. The savepoints were so sparse, that overcoming the final gruellingchallenges before getting to Dr. Wiley had to be undertaken in onelong session, which would take us to the early hours of themorning. By this point we’d be so tired and psyched that we’d fail,and have to start all over again the next night, right from thebeginning again. Mega Man 2 took us just two nights to finish, andwe literally wept at the end, but the original remains undefeated.

ParodiusNNEESS,, KKoonnaammiiApart from a brief dalliance with a table-top battery-operatedSpace Invaders rip-off, my first true relationship with a propershoot-em-up was with Gradius on the NES. It wasn’t long afterthat I played Parodius, and I must admit that at first I wasn’taware that they were both made by the same company andthat Parodius was a parody (ah, the penny drops!) of Gradius. Ican’t think why it took so long, as when I first played it, myeyebrows hit the ceiling. Parodius was my personal introductionto a particular kind of cheekiness that can be found in Japanesegames and animé. It wasn’t until years later – Day of theTentacle on the PC, to be precise – that I found a non-Japanesegame that made me chuckle as much. Parodius still brings atwitch to my fingers, and a smile to my face.

Legend Of TheMystical NinjaSSNNEESS,, KKoonnaammiiAction RPG, beat-em-up, side-scrolling platformer… the charmand surprise of this game isn’t just in the mix of genres, butalso in the plots and characters. (LOTMN also had a great two-player cooperative mode, so I’d better train that monkey butlerwell). However, the thing I loved most were the villages youcould enter. Since the first Zelda game, I’ve been a sucker forgames with villages, but LOTMN made more of its villages thanmost games as the little huts held a variety of sub-games, andyou even took part in a bizarre quiz show. Nowadays minigames are common, and the sorts of games in LOTMN (like‘Paint’ or ‘Snake’) can be found on every mobile phone, butLOTMN was a pioneer, and also delivered these simplediversions with a charm that hasn’t been matched since.

**44**

Dr. Robotnik'sMean Bean MachineMMeeggaaddrriivvee,, SSeeggaaI never had much time for Sonic games. The enemies were bland,and there never seemed much more to do than press right. ButDr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine isn’t like that – it’s a puzzler.I’ve made a pact with my mate Steve that we’ll join the same oldpeople’s home when we’re old and grey, just so that we can playthis game together. For quite a long time in the mid-90s, it wasour shared obsession. DRMBM channelled all your strategy andconcentration, lining up falling beans in certain patterns whichwould cause extra mean beans to drop on your opponent’s side ofthe screen. When this happened, the schadenfreude was immense.Even though it was best in two-player, I’d still take this to a desertisland. There’s always the single-player game, or maybe I’d find amonkey butler to train up…

RETRO11 Desert Island Discs 07/12/2004 9:41 AM

**45**

LemmingsAAmmiiggaa,, PPssyyggnnoossiissIt’s the start of the 1990s, I’m in my early 20s, and I’ve gone tostay with my best friend and his skinny Italian flatmate in therecently de-walled city of Berlin. Their company is great. Thecity is renewed, exciting – decadent, even. But here’s thecatch… they’ve got a game I’d never played in their flat, calledLemmings. “Oh no!” (as those little green masochists so love tocry). I think I spent the entire holiday in front of their computer– although, to be fair, they did too. At the end of the week, Ifelt that an obsession with Lemmings wasn’t compatible with aneven close to normal life, so like the holiday romance that itwas, I’ve steered clear of the game since. I always vowed,though, to come back to it one day when I had infinite time.

Micro Machines 2MMeeggaaddrriivvee,, CCooddeemmaasstteerrssHow could I possibly leave Micro Machines 2 behind? It’s anutter classic – this sequel surpassing even the mighty miniatureracing original. But there’s a more personal reason for myattachment, as I’m also one of the characters in the game. I stillget emails asking if Violet in Micro Machines is really me, andoddly enough the answer is ‘yes’ (I’ve got my original contractwith Codies to prove it!) Of course there are plenty of otherreasons to love this game, including the fact that it comes onone of those clever J-Cart thingies so it has two extra controllerports of its own built into the actual game cartridge. In otherwords, if you add a multitap, you can race against up to sevenother players. That’s a lot of monkey butlers to train up…

Wario WareGGBBAA,, NNiinntteennddooI originally decided to be cast away to my own personal retroisland, taking nothing from the PSone era or beyond. However, I’mafraid I can’t help but make Wario Ware my one exception. Thereal reason is that I can’t bear to be without it. My official excuseto myself, however, is that each micro-game provides a memory, aglimpse, a whiff, a tribute, or a parody or even just a ‘sense’ of aclassic gaming moment. The little handheld cartridge is a giant ofa game that itself stands on the shoulders of giants, and doesn’tforget to acknowledge them. Sorry if that sounds pompous, butdespite years of talking about games, I’m lost for words when itcomes to Wario Ware. I think its greatness can only be describedwith a look, a silent moment of understanding between gamers.

Miracle PianoTeaching SystemNNEESS,, SSooffttwwaarree TToooollwwoorrkkssA bemani game before the word ‘bemani’ had been invented,trademarked and marketed; this came with the only controller inhistory heavier than Steel Battalion – an actual electronickeyboard. The PC version was serious, and a bit dull. The NESversion however, was tremendous fun – joyous, even. The easiestway to describe it is ‘Duck Hunt with a piano’, but that probablydoesn’t do the job very well either. The whole kit is currently inmy loft, and I’m in the process of making space downstairs, so Ican start my sons on it as soon as they’re prepared to look atsomething other than Mario Paint. Sometimes I worry that thiswon’t be as fun as I remember it, but at least it means I’ll have amusical instrument on my desert island.

RETRO11 Desert Island Discs 07/12/2004 9:41 AM

Untitled-1 1 1/9/06 12:55:47

>Superplay

So you've completed your

favourite

game on numerous occasio

ns. What's

left to do? Complete it

in the

fastest time possible or

finish it

under crazy conditions o

f course!

Welcome to the world of

speed runs,

where every second count

s and the

slightest slip-up leads

to failure.

Alicia Ashby keeps her f

inger on

the stopwatch...

The element that separates video games from other modern electronic mediums,

such as television and movies, is interactivity. However, this is also the element

that limits the potential popularity of virtually every video game. Players will

only stick with a game as long as it offers them a challenge. Once they’ve mastered a

game, then no matter how good it is, they will grow bored and move on to something

else. This was especially troublesome for NES-generation games like Super Mario Bros

that were designed to be finite, with definite endings. After such a game had been

finished, then there seemed to be nothing left for players to do but move on to

something new. However, the rising popularity of speed runs and challenge runs have

changed the situation entirely. By creating new ways for players to measure their gaming

skills, these styles of competition have breathed new life into classic games.

**47**

RETRO11 Speed Runs 06/12/2004 4:33 PM

**48**

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | FEATURE:SOFTWARE | SUPERPLAY |

A speed run is a style ofcompetition where the goal is tocomplete a game in the shortestamount of time possible. Whilespeed runs using modern gamesare certainly popular, the mostimpressive and heavily contestedtitles are usually for classicgames from consoles like theNES, SNES, and PSone. This isprobably because gamers havehad years or even decades tomaster their playing skills andmemorise maps when it comes toclassic games, but for moderngames players may have onlyhad months to familiarizethemselves with what the gamehas to offer.

The idea that beating a gamequickly indicates a higher level ofskill is inherent in the design ofmany classic games, such asMetroid for the NES. Finishing thegame in less than three hoursrewards the player with therevelation that the hero, SamusAran, is actually a heroine.Finishing in less than one hourdoubly-rewards the player byturning Samus’s leotard into amuch skimpier bikini.

Challenge runs are a similarsort of competition, not yet asprevalent as speed runs butgrowing in popularity. A challengerun requites a player to achievesome objective in a game,usually finishing it, without usingcertain power-ups. Doing so is ademonstration of both masterfulskill and patience, as learninghow to progress in a game withminimal power levels will requiremany sessions of intense play.The basic idea behind thechallenge run doesn’t appearregularly in game design untilthe PSone generation, wheretitles like Resident Evil and MetalGear Solid would penalize aplayer for relying too heavily oncertain items and game features,so the idea has yet to gain thepopularity with classic titles thatspeed runs have. However, itspopularity is growing due to howextremely challenging it is to

finish most classic gameswithout fully exploiting all ofthe resources made available inthe game.

The Internet has done muchto popularise speed runs andchallenge runs, often by givinggamers who are still interested inold titles a medium throughwhich they can communicate witheach other and post media filesof recorded gameplay. TheInternet also makes it possible toplay classic games withoutactually owning a system at all,thanks to the many emulatorswhich are available to freelydownload. While the legality ofusing ROMs is debatable, theyremain perhaps the most popularway of replaying classic games.

However, the popularity ofROMs poses a serious threat tocompetitions involving classicgames. While they make gamesvery easy to obtain, theemulators often possess a lot offeatures that the original consolesdid not. Players can often savetheir progress through any gameat any time, even during mid-jump in a platformer like MegaMan 2. Speed-altering controlscan be used to slow down orgreatly speed up the pace of agame, allowing the player to alterthe original difficulty curve.Perhaps most troublesome of all,though, is the fact that cleverprogrammers can hack ROMs ofclassic console game as easily asany other sort of program, andthen alter the game however theyplease. The effect of a skilfulROM hack can be very similar tousing a game manipulationdevice like an Action Replay orGame Genie, but infinitely moreprecise. Some emulators evencome with hacking features built-in, which potentially allows anyplayer to begin hacking theirROMs, granting themselvesinfinite lives, money, and otherpower-ups.

This feature of games playedthrough emulation throws theauthenticity of any speed run or

challenge run played on a ROMinto doubt. Usually players whowish to prove that theycompleted a certain speed run orchallenge run will use videos orscreenshots as evidence, butfootage produced on an emulatorcan be manipulated in anynumber of ways and still appearto be legitimate. One particularlyfamous ‘faked’ speed run video ofthis sort involved finishing SuperMario Bros 3 in just over 11minutes. It was produced as ademonstration, but ended upbeing widely circulated on theInternet. Just from viewing thevideo, there was no way to knowthat the player was relying onthe careful use of save states andglitches. The player also admittedto assembling the video fromfootage taken in several differentplaying sessions to help createthe appearance of a perfect runthrough the game. While such aspeed run video is entertaining,most players would agree it’shardly a legitimate demonstrationof gaming skill. The open natureof the Internet makes it all tooeasy for such fakeddemonstrations to circulate, oftenmislabelled. In such cases, thereis simply no way to tell thedifference between fake andlegitimate speed run footage.

Galaxy quest

Fortunately, there is anorganization that acts as theofficial arbiter for all sorts ofvideo game world records,including speed runs and a fewchallenge runs. Twin Galaxiesopened in Ottumwa, Iowa as anarcade in 1981, boasting 22games. The founder, Walter Day,began to develop an intenseinterest in the upper limits ofhuman gaming skill. So, duringthe summer of 1981, he begantraveling throughout America,searching for arcades andgathering high scores fromplayers across the nation. Whenapproached by a player aboutbeating a high score that hadbeen published in a recent Timemagazine feature about the then-new video game fad, Daycooperated and went on towatch the player rack up anastounding 24 million pointsover 24 hours of play in thearcade title Defender.

After the session was over,he attempted to find out if theplayer had set a new world’srecord with his high Defenderscore, and found that there wasno agency that officially kepttrack of world’s records in videogames. Using his collected

Metroid on the NES. Complete it in under one

hour and Samus will reward you by strippingFinish Super Mario Bros 3 in 11 minutes?Only thanks to a little emulator trickery

Emulators like Snes9X feature built-in cheat

options, throwing any recorded speed runs into doubt


**49**

scores as a basis, Day took upthe duty of record-keeping andannounced the high score inDefender as the official worldrecord. Ever since, the authority of Day and TwinGalaxies as record-keepers forvideogame achievements hasremained unchallenged.

The games that werepopular during this first boom

period for videogames wereessentially open-ended. Playersin arcades would battle on untiltheir lives expired, and thegames were obviously designedwith the programmers assumingthat every player wouldeventually get caught by a ghostor eaten by a centipede. Whilesome extremely skilled playersmastered particular games to the

Walter Day, founder of Twin Galaxies, an organisationthat has been verifying videogame achievements since 1981

The Twin Galaxies' Book of World Records features 12,416 high

scores from players in 31 different countries

>Webresourceshhttttpp::////wwwwww..ttwwiinnggaallaaxxiieess..ccoommIt’s been mentioned before, but it bears mentioning again. This is thewebsite to go to in order to find out who the world record holders are forjust about any game title you can imagine, and there’s a host of otherinteresting information kept on the site, too.

hhttttpp::////bbiissqqwwiitt..iikkii..ffiiThese videos aren’t speed orchallenge runs, but time attacks– videos made to show off thefull capabilities of what someoneusing an emulator can do whileplaying a game. Videos hostedon this site are meant to beviewed using emulationsoftware, but cover a wide rangeof classic NES titles.

hhttttpp::////hhoommee..ccoommccaasstt..nneett//~~aarrcctthheellaaddThis is an archive links to a wide variety of videos, including speed runsand challenge runs. Some link to Bisqwit’s site, while other footage is invideo formats like .avi and .mpg. Fortunately, a handy links section willhelp you download everything necessary to view the archived videos. Aswith Bisqwit, most of the titles covered are classic NES titles, but somemore modern Nintendo titles are also covered.

hhttttpp::////ssppeeeeddddeemmoossaarrcchhiivvee..ccoommThis is Planet Quake’s speed run archive. The default page focuses on theclassic PC title Quake, but clicking the ‘other games’ link will take you to apage that lists all the other speed runs files that are hosted. The sitetends to focus on newer titles than Arcthelad’s page or Bisqwit, but for themost part they’re still classic titles. The archive includes a stunning SuperMario Bros. speed run by world’s record holder Trevor Seguin.

wwwwww..vvoorrttiiggiinnoouuss..ccoommHosts a small but fascinatingcollection of videos in DivXformat, including some trulyimpressive SNES speed runs.Also includes some speed runsfor NES and more modernconsoles. Many of the files onthis site are unique and can’t befound elsewhere.

wwwwww..mmeettrrooiidd22000022..ccoommHuge Metroid fan site, which includes speed run videos in .avi and .mpegformat for virtually every entry. Files hosted include Jonathan Fields’ worldrecord Metroid II run and Scott Kessler’s world record Metroid run.

point where they could playthem until they crashed, the endresult was still the same. After acertain point, early games justran out.

This design trend was short-lived, however, and soon gamesbegan to emerge with set goalsto reach. While most gamescontinued to record points, thetrue measure of skill in theminds of gamers became

finishing the game. This createda problem for keeping records,since all players who finished agame finished it equally. Thereseemed, for many years, no wayto differentiate between the levelof skill with which differentplayers would finish the game.The emergence of speed runswas the inevitable response tothis dilemma. While manypeople could finish Super Mario


**50**

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | FEATURE:SOFTWARE | SUPERPLAY |

Bros and rescue the princess,fewer could accomplish itwithout spending a lot of timeon achieving that goal.

Day doesn’t remember exactlywhen Twin Galaxies began torecord speed run times forcertain games as well as highscores, but estimates that it waswithin the past two to threeyears. There are someprecursors to the speed runexplosion that predate thatperiod, but not many. The USNintendo Power magazine beganchallenging players to completegames in record times in theearly 90s, and published thenames of players who provedthey’d met the challenge in themagazine. Beginning in 1998, awebsite called Planet Quakebegan hosting downloadablevideos of speed runs, but onlyfor the original Quake game.Most major sites that archivevideos of speed runs for classicgames appeared within the two-to-three year period that WalterDay mentioned. It seems thatspeed runs were simply an ideawhose time had come, and in abig way.

Vidi well

While some sites like Bisqwitspecialize in archiving videosthat are primarily meant to bewatched on an emulator, TwinGalaxies does not consider asession played on an emulatorto be a legitimate speed run,and does not archive videos.Instead, it asks players to play asession on an actual console andvideotape the proceedings. Then

the player is to copy the tapeand submit the copy along withan information form requestedfrom Twin Galaxies. The tapeand form are reviewed, and ifthe entry is deemed legitimate,the score will be added to TwinGalaxies’ official database. TwinGalaxies will also accept videosthat are recorded on a PC usingcapture software, provided theplayer specifies the codec usedand records all of the menuselections used to initiategameplay. If an accepted scoreis a new world record for amajor game, then Twin Galaxieswill usually announce the newrecord on its website and with apress release.

Most of the records on TwinGalaxies are for high scores, butthe number of speed runs isincreasing as more gamers revisittitles from the late 80s and early90s. The world record for verypopular NES titles like SuperMario Bros, Ninja Gaiden, Metroid,and Bionic Commando are hotlycontested, and some SNES titleslike Legend of Zelda: A Link tothe Past are also the subject offierce competition. Challenge runsare acknowledged primarily aspart of the conditions ofrecognizing any speed run record.Most speed runs are split intodifferent categories, such as‘minimalist’, ‘complete’, and ‘outof the box’. The categoriesindicate how freely the player canmake use of power-ups andshort-cuts, and tend to requirevery different styles of player. Alook at the different records listedfor the PlayStation’s Resident Evil(Director’s Cut) and Resident Evil

2 give a good example of howchallenge runs figure in to theofficial records. By far the mostdramatic record listed is Mike K.Morrow’s completion of ResidentEvil (Director’s Cut) in a little overan hour using Jill and the leastefficient weapon in the game, theKnife. Other records allow anyweapon to be used, but specifywhich character was used for thatparticular record.

Twin Galaxies does not offerrewards for world record holders,and neither do most other sitesthat host speed run andchallenge run videos. For players,the reward is both in the glorythat comes with having theirskills recognised, and thesatisfaction of achieving a difficultgoal. Walter Day believes therecent explosion of interest inNES-era games, which had beenall but forgotten as little as fiveyears ago, may be mostly due tothe rise of the speed run andchallenge run mentality. It iscertainly a dominating topic onmany Internet forums dedicated tothe subject of classic games, and

some forums are appearing thatare entirely devoted to speedruns and challenge runs for allsorts of video games. The opennature of the challenge invitesvirtually all gamers with acomputer and an Internetconnection to participate in thephenomenon.

Although classic gamers lovetheir old games, there alwayscomes a time when even the besttitles feel like they’ve been playedtoo much. Although the challengea game with a finite ending canoffer on its own is limited, theprospect of competition with otherplayers can break that boundary.Fighting for bragging rights andrecognition gives classic gamers awonderful reason to keep theirold consoles in good shape andpick up their favourite old gamesto see if they’re merely good, orone of the world’s best. In theprocess, a lot of old games maybegin to feel new again asplayers try to push theboundaries of what theprogrammers thought waspossible.

Commendable achievements are listed on the site, such as the news that a

British gamer has recently broken the Galaxians high score world record

Do you think you could complete Resident Evil in

just over an hour using only a puny knife?

✺✯*

RETRO11 Speed Runs 07/12/2004 9:44 AM

System Title Completion time Special conditions Completed by

GameBoy Metroid II 01:11:00 None Aaron Halvorson

GameBoy Metroid II 01:15:11 Must get every item and kill all bosses. Manual timing Jonathan Fieldsstarts as soon as you gain control of Samus to begin the game, and ends the moment the screen freezes when you enter your space ship to end the game.

NES Castlevania 00:14:26 TGTS settings (3 lives to start, 5 lives maximum). Tom Votava Timer begins when you hit the start button on the

title screen and ends when you register the final blow on Count Dracula in his final form.

NES Castlevania II 00:54:33 Factory default (3 lives only, no continues or Mike K. Morrowpasswords allowed). Timer begins the second you hit

start and ends when you lay the final blow on Dracula. You must clear all the mansions!

NES Metroid 00:22:21 Factory default (1 life only, no continues or passwords Scott Kessler allowed). Timer starts upon hitting the start button at and ends when Samus steps on the final elevator and

loses control.

NES Super Mario 00:21:33 Fastest full completion. TGTS settings (3 lives to start, Cam AllenBros 5 lives maximum). Timer starts the instant you hit the

start button and stops the instant you touch the golden axe in the final castle. All 32 levels must be completed! You may only use a warp pipe when it is

essential to continue.

NES Super Mario 00:05:10 TGTS settings (3 lives to start, 5 lives maximum). Trevor SeguinBros Timer starts the instant you hit the start button and

stops the instant you touch the golden axe in the final castle.

NES The Legend 00:34:05 1st quest (1 life only, no saves allowed). The timer Tom Votavaof Zelda begins when you hit start on the title screen and ends

when you touch Zelda.

SNES Super Mario 03:08:34 Must get all 96 exit gates. Start with 5 lives, no life Kelly R. FlewinWorld limit and no continues. Timer begins when you press

start to choose ‘1 Player Game’ and ends when you deal the final blow to Bowser.

SNES Super Mario 00:11:09 Fastest full completion. Start with 5 lives, no life limit Adam SweeneyWorld and no continues. Timer begins when you press start

to choose ‘1 Player Game’ on the title screen and ends when you deal the final blow to Bowser.

SNES Super Metroid 00:51:00 Fastest completion only, regardless of items acquisition Brad Jacksonpercentage. Non-continuous gameplay is allowed

(ie continuing from a save point).

**51**

>World recordsHow do your skills measure up against those of theworld's best gamers? Here are some of the most amazingspeed run records for Nintendo consoles, courtesy ofwww.twingalaxies.com

Some of the ‘special conditions’ rules have been abridged from the original website versions. Pleasecheck the Twin Galaxies scoreboard before attempting to break any of these records!

RETRO11 Speed Runs 07/12/2004 9:44 AM

**54**

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | FEATURE:SOFTWARE | TALKING TRASH |

RETRO11 Trashman 06/12/2004 4:46 PM Page 54

>Talking

Trash

Two decades ago Spectrum

gamers

fell in love with the cu

rious

litter-em-up, Trashman.

With its

20th anniversary upon us

, Craig

Vaughan chats with cult

New

Generation programmer Ma

lcolm Evans

BBack in the early days of 8-bit gaming, Malcolm Evans founded New Generation

Software, a small backroom outfit that went on to enjoy a degree of success with

the ZX81 games 3D Monster Maze and 3D Defender, and the Spectrum games

Escape, 3D Tunnel and Knot in 3D. Then, of course, something quite bizarre happened. For

reasons until now unfathomable, Evans coded the Spectrum version of the world’s first

dustbin-man simulator, Trashman. Despite the off the wall premise, the game went on to

capture the hearts of gamers and was subsequently voted number 86 in the Your Sinclair

Top 100 Spectrum games of all time. Trashman sold over 100,000 copies and spawned the

controversial sequel Travel With Trashman, a game that finished by hinting at Trashman In

Time, a third outing for our litter-collecting friend. That game was never released and New

Generation Software folded several years later, with Evans quickly disappearing from the

scene, leaving gamers gagging for more garbage grabbing antics.

**55**


**56**


The TrashmancomethTwenty years later, with newfans enjoying Trashman viaemulation, and stalwartsclogging retro gaming forumswith talk of remakes and apossible sequel, Malcolm Evansreappeared, completely obliviousto the cult status that Trashmanhad achieved.

Now working as a systemsanalyst, coding onboard softwarefor various scientific endeavoursincluding Envisat, Beagle 2 andCryosat, Evans describes himselfas 33, but admits: “I’m nottelling you to what base I’mworking to these days!” Thetwenty-year-old unansweredquestion remains. What on earthinspired him to code a dustbinman simulator? Evans respondswith an answer so banal that itsveracity can’t be questioned. “Iwarned Sinclair User that theywould never publish the truth.They didn’t and I bet you don’teither. The fact is that NewGeneration needed a winner aftera disastrous Christmas when we

actually made a loss. Ourincreased costs weren’t beingcovered by increased sales. Ouradvertising agent commented that‘all the kids want these days isrubbish’. After that meeting Iwent to the toilet, with mybrother Rod’s parting remarkringing in my ears. ‘Stay in thereuntil you come up with a winner,you always get your best ideason the throne’. I did. Crap turnedto rubbish, rubbish to dustmen,and then to Trashman.”

Surely the game had some ofits ideas taken from previous hot-selling titles? Not as Evans tellsit. “I never looked at or playedother games, so when I came outwith an idea it was usually notinspired by anything in particular.I know Jeff Minter believesTrashman was derived from hisHovver Bovver, but though I’dseen that game when it firstcame out, it wasn’t the source ofinspiration at all. Perhaps Froggerhad an influence, I don’t know. Iremember one magazine coveredthe history of computer gameswith a family tree. It was the firsttime that I’d seen Trashman put

into any sort of context. Iremember Knot in 3D was on ittoo. If anything, that game wasinspired by the BBC title Snake.Still, every one can make uphistory after the fact”.

Recalling the Trashmandevelopment process, Evansremembers: “Like all my games,it was a solo effort. I used aSharp PC with a parallel portdown to the target Spectrum. Ididn’t use a debugger, orgraphics package – it was alldone by hand. By the end I knewevery bit and byte of the code,and had spent most of thedevelopment time actuallyplaying the game. Only thencould I be sure there was nothingready to bite after it waspublished. I started codingduring that Christmas holiday.When Rod returned he saw thebackground for the first streetand declared it a winner. About amonth later our advertising agentsaw it and commented ‘You’vedone it’. It was all veryencouraging. He suggested that itwould be nice for those watchingto have something to amuse

them too. No other game seemedto consider the onlooker. Thatwas how the repartee idea cameup. The player has no time toread the gags for themselves,but the audience couldappreciate the humour.

“Towards the end ofdevelopment, I still hadn’t comeup with any of the banterbetween Trashman and thehouseholders, so all the team sataround for about an hour tryingto come up with ideas. Very littlecame up that was suitable, andwhat was worse was the fact thatsome of my better ideas werethrown out by committee. I havethe clearest recollection of theone about the megalomaniac. Itwas inspired by Clive Sinclair’sreported comment that you couldcontrol a power station with aZX81! That evening I finishedearly and sat down quietly athome and came up with the listof 30 or so quips that finallywent into the game. There weremore but even I groaned at theworst of them, or felt we wouldend up with complaints fromMary Whitehouse for the rest”.

Prior to the release of Trashman, Malcolm released a number of memorable 3D games for Sinclair machi

nes


**57**

new game. He wasunceremoniously kicked off thestand. We’d sold 100,000 Trashmanup until then. We already knew atthat time that one big distributor,who was supplying one of thechain stores, was getting piratedproduct from Portugal. That wasthe level of piracy we were upagainst. It was no wonder that thesmaller software houses like usfound it difficult to survive”.

History recalls that Trashmanshipped bug-free, but Evansremembers that wasn’t always thecase with New Generation games:“It was too expensive in moneyand reputation to send out productwith any known, or worse still,undiscovered faults in it. One majorerror crept in during duplication fora big order of 3D Tunnel forWHSmiths. There was supposed tobe a 16K and a 48K version on thetape but alas the duplicators puttwo 48K versions on it.Unfortunately, it was Smiths whofirst found the error. It instigated acomplete recall of the product andwe had to replace it. I don’t knowwhether that was the cause or not,but we never received another

order directly from Smiths. Since itscustom represented a largeproportion of our turnover at thattime it was an unqualified disaster;an expensive mistake. PityMicrosoft is too big to learn thatsort of lesson”.

Once Trashman hit shelves itreceived glowing reviews from thepress, though it was the positivefeedback from gamers thatenthralled Evans. “I remember oneoccasion when I was walking tothe office. We’d moved from thecoach-house behind our home tooffices in Bath. There was a groupof boys in front of me taking upthe whole pavement. One said ‘Iplayed a great game last night,Trashman’. He then went on toenthuse about it. If they hadturned round they would havewondered what the old bloke withan inane grin on his face was upto. I walked past them wonderingwhether I should say something orat least thank them. I never did,but I thank them now. It made myweek and if I knew what made itso popular I would have bottled it.Ideas for it came spontaneously, itwasn’t a case of ‘design then code’.

Like 3D Monster Maze it slowlycame to life. Perhaps that was themagic ingredient. When you thinkthat the life of a game was onlyfour to six weeks when Trashmancame out, its longevity proves thatthere is life after death”.

Travel woes

The sequel, Travel with Trashmansaw the garbage grabber launch aworldwide anti-litter campaign. “It’sironic that Trashman is moretravelled than I am,” Evans quips.“He flies off in his dustcart andgoes all over the world, on a routechosen by the player. In eachlocation he must tidy up. Hecollects roses thrown by amatador’s adoring fans whilsttrying to avoid a raging bull;catches frogs jumping off tables ata French street-cafe; collectsglasses at a German beer Kelleravoiding the serving frauleins;picks up rubbish as a carnivalpasses in Japan; grabs fleeces inAustralia whilst trying not to betrapped by the agitated sheep.Then there were the notoriouslevels where he had to pick up

Portuguesepirates Minor disagreements withcolleagues aside, developmentwent smoothly: “I suppose in allTrashman was three monthswork at 10 hours a day fromconcept to publication”.

But did the finished productmeet Evans’ original expectations:“It was always time that was theproblem. You had to gaugedevelopment time/costs againstthe decreasing life expectancy of agame. Piracy only exacerbated theproblem. You had to keep comingout with product or the public andmore importantly the distributorswould forget you existed. We triedemploying programmers, but itwas never that profitable eventhough it filled holes in the flowof product. I did start writing agraphic adventure at one time butafter a couple of months itbecame obvious that it was goingto take too long to develop so itwas scrapped”.

With the hard work done, Evansreflects on what happened next.“We took an incomplete version ofTrashman to an exhibition where anumber of distributors praised it.For a change, the topic of ouradvertising budget came up onlylater. Therefore most distributorswere primed for its arrival. It tookoff well and lasted for about sixweeks before legitimate salesstopped dead”. Evans found outwhy later: “We were at one of thepopular exhibitions at about thetime Travel with Trashman cameout, when a guy from Portugalcame up to the stand. He boastedhow well he had done withTrashman, selling nearly 20,000copies. He said he’d given uppiracy and wanted some of the

With its colourful graphics and mock 3D perspective, Trashman was oneof the best looking games during the Spectrum's early years


hankies at the Wailing Wall inJerusalem, and tidy away pilgrim’ssandals in Belize, India. There weremany more screens, each requiringa different technique to avoid thevarious obstacles.

“Each one of my games wasdifferent from the previous. Eventhe software techniques I usedwere a continual development. Itwas this that I found the mostinteresting aspect of games writing.The follow-up game to Trashmanneeded to be another financialwinner. Obviously creating a sequelwould make that more likely. Isuppose some gamers expectedsomething very similar, a mereextension of the original, but sucha repeat was not in my nature. Thetheme was therefore devised toappear as a sequel but thesoftware techniques employedwere wholly different. I hoped Icould satisfy gamers and myself atthe same time. I believed thegameplay would be more complexsince, unlike Trashman, theautomatic movements on eachscreen were completely differentand therefore more unpredictableupon first play”.

Reviews were mixed for thegame, with some commentatorsslating the ‘crass humour’, butEvans gives such criticism shortshrift. “We gave the first copy ofthe sequel to a reporter from

**58**


>Trashman’s litterThe World Of Spectrum and Retro Gamer forums recently began buzzing with the news that Malcolm Evans had been 'found'. His daughter, Rachel Evans explains that her dad didn't even realise he'd been missing

Born in the same year asTrashman, Rachel Evanshas more reason thanmost to celebrate the20th anniversary of herdad’s most populargame. She recalls: “Idon’t think I really knewwhat my dad had doneuntil I was 10 and wehad to do a project atschool about someonefamous we admired, andmy mum suggested mydad. His work has

fascinated me since I saw a picture of him dressed asa trashman for a magazine article and it stuck in myhead. It’s always Trashman that comes to mind whenI think back to my dad’s Speccy days. I didn’t reallyknow a lot about his other games until I startedinvestigating for the anniversary.

“My dad hasn’t been in hiding, but it was only whenI began looking around retro forums and found theTrashman remakes and told my dad about them that herealised his work was still being used and enjoyed. Ionly joined the retro forums because I wanted tocongratulate the remakers. But when people said thatthey he been searching all over for contact details, Irealised my dad had made himself anonymous to thecommunity and I thought that something needed to bedone about it”.

Having reunited her dad with his fans, Rachel hasanother surprise up her sleeve. “My dad knows nothingabout the website I’ve created that’s dedicated to himand his New Generation games. It’s been made with thehelp of people all across the Internet. Fans have beencollecting magazine features, staff photos etc. Hopefully,

when my dad learns about the website, I’ll be able toget hold of some new ‘never seen before’ pictures andother memorabilia to share with everyone. On thewebsite there’s a guest book for people to leavemessages for my dad, as well as a forum for people toask the questions that they’ve always wanted answersto. I hope your readers will visit wwwwww..nnggsswwoorrlldd..nneett andhelp celebrate the anniversary. What my dad is awareof is that I’m currently compiling a collection of all thegames made by New Generation Software. He’s kindlyagreed to sign these, and they will be auctioned offwith all proceeds going to Cancer Research, a charityclose to our hearts”.

With forums members talking about the possibilityof the trilogy finally being completed by Malcolm Evans,Rachel is quick to join the clamour: “A lot of peoplehave spoken to me about it, asking if my dad wouldmake it or not. I personally would love to see my dadcomplete the set, though I’m not sure what it will taketo convince him he should make it though. Hopefully, ifenough people take interest in the website, show himthat the third game is needed and will be enjoyed asmuch as the first two, then that may sway his decision.Along with me nagging him too”.

Rachel Evans, creator

of the NGS World

website. She lives in

Bath and works for

Future Publishing

Rachel's website is a veritable shrine

to New Generation Software. Pay a visit

and show some respect

Malcolm posing for a

photograph, with a Speccy

on the right and a Sharp

PC on the left


some 40 units, the turnover wastoo slow and we went intoliquidation. Being the biggestcreditor, I ended up losing ourhome. Fortunately I managed toreturn to the aerospace industrywhere I had started in the late1960s. I started on hardwaredesign for Envisat, investigating theeffects of global warming. When Iwent to Science Systems as asystems analyst I became involvedin onboard software. I’ve beenheavily involved in Cryosat, whichwill launch in February 2005. It’sdesigned to measure the thicknessof the polar ice to withinmillimetres. This is far moreaccurate than previously achievedand should give us a better figurefor the rate the ice is melting.”

Buried treasure

Having left gaming, Evansdisappeared into relative anonymityuntil recently. “I received aspeculative letter from a writer forComputer and Video Games in1998 and an interview wasarranged. Other than that, my sonkeeps me informed of his exploits

downloading old games, but Iwasn’t aware until very recently,through my daughter, thatTrashman had such a following orthat there were communities ofonline fans reliving games throughemulation. I can guess what thelegal arguments are. From apersonal perspective I think thatprogrammers should be proud ofwhat they achieved and try not tobe too greedy. It’s worthremembering that copyrightdamages can only be based onperceived losses and I don’t think20-year-old games have any greatcommercial value now. I’m pleasedand astounded that Trashman stillgives so many people fun. When Ioriginally wrote it, it was for a verylimited processor. Now with thecurrent level of graphics availableit’s interesting to see whatremakers are doing with it and itgives me a tremendous sense ofpride. Trashman and his friendswere a huge learning curve for me,rather than a millstone”.

A product of its era, there’s littledoubt that such a theoreticallybizarre game would never get offthe drawing board these days, as

Evans surmises. “The cost ofdeveloping a game has now risento six figures. Backers will notinvest in any group whoseprevious products have not made aprofit. Hence the industry doesn’ttake risks. In the beginning wewere cutting a swath throughvirgin territory, so we weregambling with every game. Somewe lost, some we won, but wekept going. The smaller companiesdidn’t have to consider investors.All the time, it was our decisionand our loss. All expandingindustries attract money then diethe same way. Originality is alwaysthe victim. Perhaps there is a wayto break out of the spiral but Idon’t know what it is”.

Sinclair User when he did a featureon our company. Over lunch hementioned he had been a HareKrishna follower in his youth.Whoops. His was the first review tohit the shelves. One man’s opiniondoesn’t make a slating, but it didlead sheep…”

After Travel with Trashman,New Generation began to feel thepinch. “The problem with theindustry was that advertising costsrose dramatically, from £50 for aquarter page when I started tomore than £1000 per page beforewe pulled out. Initially we dealtwith the retailers directly but thenhad to deal with the distributorswho demanded their major cut. Wewere left with only 25% of theretail price, with which we had topay for development, productionand advertising. And to makethings worse, the first question anydistributor asked was how muchwas being spent on advertising.The quality of the product wasimmaterial. What with the life cycleof product becoming increasinglyshorter, it became less viable for asmall company to continue. So wesold the back catalogue to Virginand slipped into another field. Iremember seeing all the unsoldcopies of Trashman, 3D MonsterMaze etc going into an incinerator.It was a tragic part of the deal.

“The company went on todevelop a portable PC with a high-resolution touch screen. This wasin 1986, a long time beforeportables were in general use. Itwas initially directed at thefurniture design business whereplans could be entered using apointer or finger. Within fiveminutes a rep could provide acustomer with a fully-costedkitchen design and produce a hardcopy 3D view. Although we sold

**59**

The sequel was quite different to the original, with each location

playing like a separate mini-game

The conclusion to Travelwith Trashman mentions atime machine, but sadlythe proposed Trashman InTime was never completed


RReettrroo GGaammeerr:: PPlleeaassee tteellll uuss aa bbiittaabboouutt yyoouurrsseellff..

AAnnddrreeww PPooiinnttoonn:: I first startedcoding on a second-hand ZX81,and still have school exercisebooks with my 1K games writtenon them. Eventually, I asked fora Spectrum for Christmasbecause I’d seen one on displayin WHSmiths and spent thewhole day in the shop playingJetpac until I was kicked out atclosing time. Unfortunately, itwasn’t a Spectrum that I endedup with. When my birthdayarrived I was horrified to seethat I’d been bought an Oric-1.My stepbrother fared better – hepaid for a 16K Spectrum butfound a 48K model in the boxwhen he got home. With myOric redundant, I’d sneak intohis room and play on hisSpectrum while he was at work.

He’d often catch me and slap mearound for my trouble, but Ikept going back for more.Eventually I managed to get myown 16K Spectrum and went onto learn BASIC. That was prettymuch the last coding I did untila couple of years ago. After mySpectrum I had an Atari ST, andthen an Amiga, and used themprimarily for playing games, andnever tried to write any softwareuntil two years ago when mywebsite wwwwww..ttcckkssoofftt..ccoo..uukk wasborn. I still love the Speccy andcan understand why it’s thebest-loved machine of all time.It wasn’t the most technicallyaccomplished piece of hardwarein the world, but it was the onewith the most heart and soul.

RRGG:: WWhhaatt aarree yyoouurr mmeemmoorriieess ooffTTrraasshhmmaann??

AAPP:: The game leapt out at meinstantly when I first saw it. Itwas so bold and colourful andthe graphics were silky smooth.It reminded me a lot of theUltimate games. The cars lookedgreat zooming up and down theroad. I’d get hypnotised by themand just stare until I ran out oftime. I’d played Frogger in thearcade, and Trashman seemedto have a lot in common withthat game, but it was also so

much more. It seemed like awhole new world had beenbrought to life, although thatmight seem a stretch to somepeople. Despite having only 48Kto play with, it seemed thatMalcolm Evans had createdliving breathing city streets.

The game was a mixture ofboth fantasy and reality. I thinkit’s a style of game that hascome back with a vengeance –there are so many games nowset in real life situations, suchas the GTA series. MalcolmEvans was years ahead in thisrespect. When the original gamewas released, most of thegames on the shelves werescience fiction and fantasy, andcompletely fictional – 180

degrees away from the realworld. He linked the world ofgames with the real world.

RRGG:: WWhhyy rreemmaakkee TTrraasshhmmaann 2200yyeeaarrss oonn??

AAPP:: One of the very reasons Ichose Trashman to remake isthe very fact that it is twentyyears since it was first released.I had a short list of possiblegames to remake, and this oneseemed to stand head andshoulders above the others. Idid a mini poll to gauge thepopularity of my short list, andthe people I asked insisted thatthis was the game I shouldtackle. The anniversary of thegame was the real clincher.Some of the people I work withwere born after the game wasreleased. It’s pretty scary really,because it seems like onlyyesterday. It was nice to bring itback and it felt like the righttime. This remake is mybirthday present to the original.Happy anniversary, Trashman.

**60**


>Trashman returnsWith Trashman celebrating his 20th anniversary, the thriving Spectrum remake scene has kicked into action with several tributes. We spoke to Andrew Pointon about his recent remake, Trashman

Andrew Pointon, hard

at work bringing

Trashman back to life


I probably could have fritteredaway the rest of the time andaccomplished nothing. As it turnsout I managed to get the lastgraphics and routines in place afew days before the end ofSeptember. So all in all thedevelopment time was around fourweeks, maybe a little longer.

RRGG:: WWhhaatt ssooffttwwaarree//ttoooollss ddiidd yyoouuuussee??

AAPP:: My coding weapon of choice isBlitz Basic, which I have beenusing for around two years now.I’ve learned a lot and hope mygames have improved in quality alittle over that time, but I still haveso much to learn. I used a freemodelling tool called Wings3D todo the houses and some of theother objects in the game. Thiswas my first foray into 3Dmodelling and I think it workedout quite well. Once the plainobjects were built I used PaintShop Pro 5 to created the textures– making them as close to theoriginal Spectrum graphics as I

could, to some people’s dismay. Agreat little shareware sound editorcalled Gold Wave was used forcutting up and re-sampling thewav files for the sound effects.

RRGG:: WWhhaatt aabboouutt rreemmaakkiinngg ootthheerrNNeeww GGeenneerraattiioonn ggaammeess??

AAPP:: 3D Monster Maze already hasa great remake by a cool guycalled Myke P, so I think that oneis covered. Maybe I could beconvinced to do a remake of Travelwith Trashman if people weredesperate for it. I think that gameis the Spectrum equivalent ofMarmite – some people love it andsome people loathe it. It’s a ratherdifferent game to the original, andmaybe that’s what some peopledidn’t like. I’m positive thatCorridors of Genon and Tunnel 3Dcould make good remakes.

RRGG:: HHaavvee yyoouu hhaadd aannyy ccoonnttaacctt wwiitthhMMaallccoollmm EEvvaannss??

AAPP:: I did try in vain to find someway of contacting him to ask forhis blessing but it seemed that hedidn’t have an online presence.The only references I could find tohim were on ZX Spectrum tributesites, such as the one dedicated toCrash Magazine. I decided that Ishould go ahead with the projectand hope for the best. Shortlyafter it was released on October1st, a message popped up in acouple of forums from a usernamed ‘Rach’ saying that she wasthe daughter of the original author,and that she had shown her dadthe game and he thought it waswonderful. After a brief timethinking that it was a practical

joke, I allowed myself to feel arush of pride. I’m still reallystunned to be honest, and neverin my wildest dreams did I everthink that an author of such aclassic original game from myyouth would be commending meon my work. I’m shaking my headright now in wonderment.

RRGG:: WWhhaatt wwaass yyoouurr pprriimmaarryy ggooaalliinn ccooddiinngg yyoouurr rreemmaakkee??

AAPP:: I wanted to make it as faithfulas I could, while attempting to adda little depth to the world to makeit look a little deeper. I think thatthe true 3D perspective on thehouses really works. There werepeople who said I should makethe times lenient or remove themall together, and some whowanted me to make more moderntextured graphics for the houses.For better or worse I decided to tryand make the houses look asmuch like their 2D counterparts asI could.

RRGG:: HHooww lloonngg ddiidd yyoouurr TTrraasshhmmaannrreemmaakkee ttaakkee ttoo ccooddee??

AAPP:: I started work on the firstlines of code in the closing days ofAugust 2004, after wasting almosta month saying I didn’t think Icould do it in the time available.Some of the guys online justwouldn’t take no for an answer. I’mreally glad I gave it a big push, as

**61**

Building suburbia. First the

street layout is defined,

then the skeletal house

structures are created. After

which colour is added and the

final map takes shape

✺✯*


**62**

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | FEATURE:PUBLISHER | GAMES OF THE CENTURY |

RETRO11 20th Century Fox 06/12/2004 4:22 PM Page 62

>Games of

the Century

Cast your mind back to the very dawn of videogaming. A time when the

garish 70s started to seep into the dayglo 80s, and the world of

microchip technology offered a glimpse of a science fiction future filled

with hi-tech leisure and computerized living, all tantalizingly within reach of the

common man.

With such technological advances, it was a turbulent time for the entertainment

industry – and none more so than the movie biz. The 70s had finally seen the

collapse of the old studio system that had served Hollywood so well since the

1920s, and a new breed of movie director was taking over – independently minded

but commercially aware. Names like Spielberg, Coppola, De Palma and Scorsese

were the hottest ticket in town. But it’s a certain Mr George Lucas we need to

discuss for the purposes of this feature.

**63**

In the early 80s, 20th

Century

Fox threw open its arc

hives in

search of movies that

could be

turned into gaming gol

d,

eventually releasing a

number

of movie tie-ins for t

he Atari

2600 console. As Dan W

hitehead

discovers, the results

were

interesting, to say th

e least


**64**


Oh how Fox must have sobbed

when Parker Brothers cleaned

up with its Star Wars games

Prior to the release of its filmtie-ins, Fox Video Games licensedarcade-style games from Sirius

The movie(1979)If Star Wars showed Fox thatsci-fi was a viable genre forfamily films, it was thisbrooding classic that proved itcould also be fertile soil foradults-only horror. Britishdirector Ridley Scott, with onlyone other film to his credit, took

>AlienRon Shusset and DanO’Bannon’s generic monster-on-the-loose script and turned itinto a taut masterpiece of pant-soiling terror, all delivered witha clinical minimalist sensibility.It takes a nailbiting 45 minutesbefore the action kicks off, butby that time the audience hadbeen wound so tight that whenthe titular beast bursts fromJohn Hurt like a badger out of ahot wheelie bin, cinematicinfamy was assured. Classy andscary, it’s a deserved classic.

The game(1982)Aliens. Spaceships. As acandidate for gamehood, Alienwas a no-brainer and so it cameto pass that Scott’s highbrowexperience in relentless movieterror became… a Pac-Manclone. Because, hey, we allremember the scene in the filmwhere Ripley has to run arounda maze collecting dots, right?OK, you can forgive them forconcentrating on the chase

aspect, and for not quitecapturing the essence ofSigourney Weaver in pixel form,but it’s less easy to accept thepresence of no less than threeflashing Venus flytrapsmasquerading as Giger’ssingular and disturbing mecha-sexual xenomorph. Despite suchoddities, including an additionalscreen unimaginatively basedon Frogger, the game was at

least semi-faithful to the filmand pretty good fun to play.

RREETTRROO RRAATTIINNGG 33//55

Once upon a time, the idea offlogging merchandise based on amovie was little more than a nichemarket, used for the occasionalpromotional trinket but nothingmore. It certainly wasn’t seen as avaluable extra revenue stream, sowhen young George asked 20thCentury Fox if it’d be OK for himto keep the merchandising rightsfor this cheap little sci-fi movie hewas making, the studio suitssigned them away without asecond thought.

Along comes 1977, and StarWars explodes into the popularconsciousness. Fox could only sitand watch as Lucas turned hisnow-lucrative merchandise rightsinto the foundation of hisLucasfilm empire by selling off theright to make toys, clothes,lunchboxes, surgical harnessesand – yes – videogames based ona hit film that, technically,belonged to Fox. And so, havingwatched Parker Brothers grow faton the Atari 2600 games based on

its film, the Fox empire belatedlyturned its attention to these newelectronic toys, launching asubsidiary in the shape of FoxVideo Games (“Games of theCentury”). In total the studioreleased eight games for the Atari2600 between 1982/3, and anumber of other titles wereplanned but later dropped.

We’ve rounded up each of thegames and rated them out of five.This simple scoring system doesnot reflect the overall quality ofthe game, but rather howsuccessful Fox was in translatingits movies to the console. In otherwords, if you were an eager-eyedTimothy Dalton fan ripping thecellophane off the Flash Gordongame in 1982, would you havebeen transported into the worldof the movie, or would you havebeen left scratching your headand trying to work out how thesplurge of chunky colouredblocks on screen related to yourcinema experience?


**65**

The movie(1966)As appealing concepts go, theprospect of hosting a miniaturizedRaquel Welch in your bloodstreamresonated quite strongly with themale psyche of the 1960s forobvious reasons. That thecrumpled squint of DonaldPleasance was along for the ridedidn’t seem to put people off.Based on Isaac Asimov’s novel, thedirection may have been pedestrianbut the trippy special effects,representing a journey into thebody of the President in order tosave his life, more thancompensated. Especially as mostviewers were smashed on acidcakes. Damn hippies.

The game(1982)Hurtling along some chunkypixellated veins, zapping clots andevil blood cells, may not be anentirely accurate representation ofthe movie, but its close enough.The game features enough cool

>Fantastic

Voyage

features, like collapsing tunnelsand objects that break apartrather than vanishing completely,to earn it a pass. River Raid didthe vertical scrolling thing better,but this is more than respectable.


The movie(1980)If you dug up the skeleton ofLarry Grayson, dressed it in agold lame basque and made itperform songs from Oklahoma!by using an elaborate puppetsystem constructed from silvertinsel… you still wouldn’t be halfas camp as this gloriouslyexcessive movie. Blue Peterstooge Peter Duncan gets killedby a tree stump! Brian Blessedshouts about everything, whilewearing feathery wings and ahairy nappy! That Princess chick

>Flash Gordonwears almost nothing! Its uttercrap and yet also quite brilliant.

The game(1982)Although the movie offers up adozen sequences that seem tailor-made for even the most primitivegaming experience, this effortinstead opts for a side-scrollingDefender rip-off with no relation toanything that happened in themovie, other than being asked tobelieve that sitting at the controlsof that tiny blocky spacecraftwhizzing from left to right is a

pixel version of blank-facedFlash actor Sam Jones. It’s notbad, as Defender rip of fs go,but it’s too easy to die whenyou’re at the edge of the

screen and without the hairypants of Blessed to distractyou, there’s no incentive tostick around.


The movie(1965)Here’s an obvious choice forvideogame glory, and no mistake –an utterly obscure British sci-fipotboiler about an astronaut whoreturns home (to Surrey, where allastronauts live) only to discoverthat alien robots have taken overand are raising the dead for somereason. Directed by Hammerstalwart Terence Fisher, it’s actuallya very fun offering made all themore endearing for its quaintEnglish village settings. The Earth

>The Earth

Dies Screamingdoesn’t so much die screaming, asdie politely complaining that thealiens have left the door open, andthe draught is spoiling MrsFathersham’s scones.

The game(1983)So, how do you go about adaptinga weird decades-old English movieabout robots, zombies andastronauts from Surrey into anaction-packed videogame forAmerica’s wild-eyed 80s youth?Simple, you discard absolutelyeverything from the movie apartfrom the cool title and shunt out agame where you fly over thesurface of a strangely pink planetshooting flying saucers. Or theymay be scones. It’s hard to tell.



**66**


The movie(1982)Where to begin? Mega Force is ahilariously bad action movie, shotin Israel for a budget that can’thave been more than the price of aMcDonald’s Happy Meal. The‘mega’ force of the title is a go-getting American rapid responseteam that zooms around on dunebuggies and motocross bikes(decked out in what appear to beold washing-up liquid bottles forthat hi-tech sheen) to kill evilfreedom-hating brown people fromoverseas. Not bad enough? OK, the

>Mega Forceleader of Mega Force is called AceHunter. He wears a genital-hampering silver jumpsuit. Andhe’s played by the mayor fromSpin City. Seriously. It’s likesomeone peered into the mind ofGeorge W. Bush, and this is themovie they found playing endlesslyon the inside of his skull.

The game(1982)Perhaps unsurprisingly, amindlessly shallow action movieproduces a mindlessly shallowaction game in which you race

across the screen bombing andshooting all manner of things inthe desert. There’s not much toget right, of course, but itdeserves praise because unlike,

say, Flash Gordon, you can atleast see the link betwixt movieand game in both graphics andgameplay.


The movie(1958)Yet another obscure B-moviesummoned up from the Fox vault,we suspect more for its gamey-sounding title than any actualpotential for interactive fun. Thistalky black and white fillerfeature (originally part of adouble bill with the originalVincent Price version of The Fly)features a voracious space fungusbrought to Earth by unwittingastronauts (not from Surrey this

time). There’s no monster, only afew short scenes of a spaceshipand very little action at all.Perfect! The kids’ll love it!

The game(1982)You control a floating asterisk,and try to batter down the shieldsof an alien base in the centre ofthe screen. As you chip away atthe shield, the base is alsorecharging them, so gameplaycould, in theory, go on forever. Asimplistic and rather dull concept,it’s also got nothing whatsoever todo with the movie so, as you canimagine, all three Spacemasterfans who’d patiently waited twentyfour years for the game wereabsolutely furious.


The movie(1982)While Animal House may havecome first, you can thank thisboob-fixated comedy forpopularising the ‘horny US boys’genre and thereby leading torecent hits like American Pie andDude, Where’s My Car? And by‘thank’, we obviously mean‘blame’. Anyway, this lewd offeringfollows the antics of some 1950shigh schoolers as they try to lookat naked women, and fall foul ofPorky, a corrupt and sadistic localstrip club owner. The lads vowrevenge and scatological mayhemensues, along with an amazinglyill-placed and hypocritical lectureon the evils of bigotry.

The game (1983)Astonishingly, this game not onlyfollows the plot of the movie aswell as any ancient Atari consolecould reasonably be expected to,but the fact that such a filthy-minded movie got adapted forwhat was, after all, a kidselectronic toy is probably worthy ofnote in itself. Set over three

>Porky’s

screens, beginning with a Froggerrip-off in which you have to bravea busy road, the game’s biggestfailing is that there’s no way toever actually die and it’s all tooeasy to end up trapped trying topole vault out of Porky’s cellar inone of the most frustrating pixel-perfect gameplay challenges ever.Also, face it, the Atari 2600 reallycan’t do the female breast justice.


>Spacemaster

X-7


**67**

The movie(1970) Robert Altman was Oscar-nominated for this timelylampoon of military madness, seton a mobile army surgicalhospital during the Korean war,but plainly skewering the parallellunacy of Vietnam as well. DonaldSutherland and Elliot Gouldheadlined as the nihilisticsurgeons who turn to gallowshumour to survive the horrors ofwar. It would, of course, also beturned into a long-running sitcomwhich jumped wildly between

>M*A*S*Hslapstick laughs and maudlinsentiment at the drop of a hat.

The game 1983)The market for satirical medicalwar games has never beenhuge, so you have to wonder at

the wisdom of turning thismovie/TV show into a Choplifterclone, of all things. Even withthe lure of a free T-shirt (men’smedium only, sorry girls). To befair, they did include a nod tothe medical side of things withthe chance to perform pixelsurgery on a patient who, itmust be said, looked a lot likeMr Greedy from out of the MrMen. Sadly, the game did notcapture the imagination of

gamers and thus plans for Dr.Strangelove’s Pole Position andCatch-22 vs Dig Dug werescrapped soon after.


Not all of Fox’s game plans cameto fruition. Some weredeveloped, even finished, but forone reason or another nevermade it onto the shelves. In a1982 product catalogue, Foxannounced games based on suchdiverse movies as the DollyParton office comedy 9 To 5, the50s scholarly sci-fi drama The

Day The Earth Stood Still, theKenny Rogers kid caper Six Pack,and the Rocky rip-off ToughEnough. None of these tie-insever made it beyond the drawingboard, but three other unreleasedtitles have since surfaced andcan be sampled thanks to thewonders of emulation.

Alligator People

This Lon Chaney Jr potboilerfrom the 1950s is yet anotherobscure movie that Fox decidedto dust off. The game inquestion even vaguelyresembled the story of themovie, as you race around theswamp trying to find antidote tostop your friends beingtransformed into mutatedalligator folk. It’s hard to seewhy this wasn’t released, as it

was both completed and rathergood fun.

Planet of the Apes

For years this prototype cartridgewas mislabeled as Alligator Peoplethanks to being stored in thewrong box! However, a littledetective work by AtariProtos.com

soon revealed that this was, infact, the announced-but-never-seenPlanet of the Apes game. It doesn’thelp that they swapped CharltonHeston’s loincloth hero for a manwith a nice shirt and a hugepurple arse, while the supposedlyadvanced simians rampage aroundlike naked savages, but the finallevel does indeed feature adubiously rendered Statue ofLiberty. Sort of like a half-finishedPitfall, this game was finallycompleted by enthusiasts and

released in 2003 as Revenge ofthe Apes. Both versions can befound online.

The Entity

There just aren’t enough gamesbased on movies about demonicrape. Bafflingly based on the 1981schlocker about a young woman(Barbara Hershey) molested by anevil spirit, the game is an utterlyunrelated arcade puzzle in whichyou have to box in the frantic‘entity’ by using magic walls,forcing it ever upwards until youdispose of it completely. Yup.Seriously. Chances are, Foxrealized that most people wouldn’ttouch a game based on such amovie, and those that did wouldbe very annoyed to find the gamein question involved neitherdemons nor molestation.

>Development hell

Titles like Six Pack and

Entity were announced by Fox

but never officially released

✺✯*


Untitled-1 1 1/9/06 12:55:47

>Keep the

Faith

From Saddam Hussein and Hell

raiser’s

Pinhead to Moses and the Hol

y Mother -

when videogame company Color

Dreams found

Jesus and changed its name t

o Wisdom

Tree, it quite literally wen

t through a

change of biblical proportio

ns. Per Arne

Sandvik goes in search of en

lightenment

Color Dreams never was a major contender in the video game industry. It seemed

to spend as much time dodging Nintendo’s sanctions for illegally releasing

games as it did actually developing games. “Nintendo wanted a lot of money

and a lot of control,” explains videogame developer and former Color Dreams employee

Jon Valesh. “Had they been more realistic about how much money they deserved, we

would have been an official developer.”.

**69**

RETRO11 Keep The Faith 06/12/2004 4:25 PM Page 69

**70**

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | FEATURE:SOFTWARE | KEEP THE FAITH |

The games weren’t your usual fareeither. In 1990’s Menace Beach,the hero’s captive girlfriendlamented his absence while herclothes were rotting off to reveala skimpy bikini. In OperationSecret Storm, your mission wasto kill Saddam Hussein. In theunreleased Hellraiser (based onClive Barker’s movie), you joinedthe evil Pinhead in his quest forhuman souls. There was even agame in development where amaggot crawling its way througha human body was theprotagonist. “We all thought the

games were a hoot and simple-minded fun,” says RogerDeForest, former graphic artist,programmer, designer, musicdeveloper and tester. “It kept usoff the streets”

By today’s standards, thesepremises don’t sound veryextreme. There have been severalgames in recent times with Iraq’sformer dictator as the bad guy,and titles like Dead or AliveBeach Volleyball and The PlayboyMansion are practically nothingbut skimpy bikinis. But comparedto the games allowed throughNintendo’s filters at the time,Color Dreams’ catalogue was nextto scandalous.

So did the games stircontroversy? “Due to the titles?”asks Valesh. “No. We receivednegative feedback due to thequality of the games, but neverdue to the titles or the content.”This negative feedback was notentirely unfounded. The titlesoften had major bugs (that in onecase rendered a game impossibleto complete), and the controlsnever could match those of theworld’s most famous plumber.DeForest remembers it wasn’talways fun “staying up all nightworking on games that you knewin your heart of hearts werepretty damn lame. I really wishedwe had jumped on Hellraisermore aggressively when we hadthe license to do so.”

But the Hellraiser licenceexpired, and producing a gamewith its thematic was clearly outof the question after CEO DanLawton announced that the entirecompany was to turn towards thecross in 1991.

Good Lord!

“He was so excited when hepresented it to us,” DeForestremembers. “Like a kid atChristmas.” But what spurred

the radical conversion? Was it avision? A calling? Did Lawtonhave a life-changing experience?

“It was a turn towardsmoney, not religion, that drovethe change,” Valesh says.“Nintendo’s behaviour at thetime has been well documented.It used aggressive and illegalmethods to hold retailers tocertain prices. It wasn’t longbefore we were locked out ofnormal retail channels. We allspent a lot of time thinking ofways to get around Nintendoand find a niche where wewould be secure. That’s whenthe idea of religious games cameup. Nintendo had a well knownreputation for avoiding religion…that gave us a safe haven.”

DeForest was, however, notimpressed by the idea at first,and neither were the rest of thecrew. “Lawton offered us agreat financial incentive todevelop religious games, butnone of us wanted to do it.Being the non-innovativedummies that we are, we didn’tthink it’d go over very well.Finally we were forced to makereligious games and it seemsthat practically overnight wechanged from Color Dreams toWisdom Tree.”

Quite a number of gameswere released under the newlogo. First on the market wasBible Adventures, where youplayed as Noah, using yoursuper-human jumping abilitiesto bring cows and monkeys intohis ark. Other stages let youtake on Goliath in the role ofKing David and save babyMoses by manoeuvring hissister Miriam down the Nile.But, according to Valesh, noteveryone was too happy aboutthe change. “One person leftbecause he believed religiousgames conflicted with hisChristian beliefs.”

When you look at the gamesthat were produced, this point ofview isn’t hard to understand. InKing of Kings, a platform gamedocumenting the early years ofJesus, Joseph and the pregnantMary travel to Bethlehem bydonkey. Scenarios include thejungle and the Artic, and polarbears and Pharisees are waitingto maul or cane you aroundevery corner. Even squirrelsseem to have an agenda againstthe unborn baby Jesus.

Rewrites are a fundamentalpart of any adaptation, but noteveryone was too happy aboutchanges made to the Bible.Others may have had a hardtime digesting the sight of theMary jumping across therooftops of Jerusalem in searchof the missing Jesus.

Still, money was made. “Inhindsight it was a smart movebecause the Christian gamemarket had not been tappedthen,” says DeForest. “Thegames were a huge hit. Youcould say Lawton was wayahead of his time on that one. Imean, who else but Dan Lawtonwould think to put The HolyBible on GameBoy, for cryingout loud!”

Over the next 14 years, avirtual flood of games followed,including Exodus, Joshua andSpiritual Warfare. There waseven a title for the SuperNintendo called Super 3D Noah’sArk! This game was in factbased on the Wolfenstein 3Dengine, but instead of killingNazis you now used a slingshotto feed revolutionist animals ona rampage.

“They were supposed to befun,” comments Valesh on theunconventional content of thegames. “The religious shtickwas there to help them sell, butthey were still games. We werenot religious people.”

Before Dan Lawton saw the light,

Color Dreams shocked the big N

with titles like Operation

Secret Storm and Menace Beach

We can't think of many other games which see you rescuing baby Moses from the Nile and helping David

protect

his flock from lions and squirrels


**71**

A new leaf

So, looking back, how do thedevelopers feel about their timeunder the branches? “My mostpositive memory is of the people,”Valesh remembers. “You’ll nevermeet a more intelligent group.”DeForest agrees. “My mostpositive memories would probablynot be work-related at all. It’d behanging out with the crew during

lunch or after work. I’m glad thatwhole experience was a part ofmy life. I’m at the point in my lifenow where I don’t see badexperiences anymore, justexperiences. In my mind, anythingyou experience in life can havepositive repercussions if you justlook for it.”

Today, most of the originalprogrammers of Color Dreams andWisdom Tree have come together

to form Star-Dot Technologies, acompany that mainly producessecurity cameras. Wisdom Tree,meanwhile, is still in business,and most of its old games arestill available throughwwwwww..wwiissddoommttrreeeeggaammeess..ccoomm. Asfor Jon Valesh and RogerDeForest, they have moved on toother things. “At the moment Ibuild systems to interface very

old mainframe applications to themodern world,” says Valesh. “Butthat changes from time to time.”

DeForest has no reason tocomplain either. “I have a wifeand son. I work freelance in thefilm and video industry, makingcommercials, music videos, etc. Ithink perhaps God is thankingme for working on all thosereligious games!”

>SundayBloodySundayDo the screenshots below look familiar? Well that’s because WisdomTree’s Sunday Funday was basically a new version of Color Dreams’Menace Beach. There was one crucial difference though. Whereas inMenace Beach the aim was to jump on your skateboard and save yourgirlfriend from killer punks, in Sunday Funday you had to jump on yourskateboard and make it to Sunday School on time. And yes, you stillhad to deal with killer punks along the way. It was enough to put kidsoff religious education for life!

According to King of Kings, the Three Wise Men travelled

to Bethlehem via the Rain Forest and the North Pole

It may look like Wolfenstein 3D, but instead of knives

and guns you're armed with fruit and feed!✺✯*


**72**

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | FEATURE:SOFTWARE | JET SET GO! |

RETRO11 JSW 06/12/2004 4:29 PM Page 72

>Jet Set Go!

Miner Willy is on the mo

ve, with Jet

Set Willy heading to mob

ile devices

in time for Christmas. L

ead programmer

Carl Woffenden tells th

e tale

behind this brilliant ne

w version,

and reveals that there

was a time

when it nearly didn't

happen at all

One morning I awoke and I decided I’d had enough of working for ‘the man’ and

needed to do my own thing. Go out into the wide world and achieve something. It’s

something everyone must do. Having worked at Jester Interactive as its sole mobile

developer it seemed obvious to continue along similar lines and specialise in mobile Java

games. The suggested first product for my new venture, given how well my earlier version of

Manic Miner was received, was Jet Set Willy. I spoke with the Jesters about it and they were

keen. So far so good. I set up a new company called Numfum, pulled in a few friends to help

out, and away we went. No contracts, none of that messy legal stuff. After all, we all knew

the Jesters and the Jesters knew us. Everyone just wanted to get on with it…

**73**

RETRO11 JSW 06/12/2004 4:30 PM Page 73

**74**


So how, exactly, were we to goabout recreating a well-knownand well-loved game? Do wecompletely update it like theAmiga version? Maybe create awhole new Willy-themed game?After all, given the restrictionsof the most prolific handsets,fitting in sixty-odd rooms wasgoing to be a struggle. Ideaswere tossed around but in theend the answer was simple: ithad to be a perfect replicationof the original otherwise itwouldn’t be, well, Jet Set Willy.

So really, how were we to goabout recreating such a classic?We started by playing theoriginal. Repeatedly.Obsessively. And we found thatnostalgia had glossed over afew things. Dying yet again for

the umpteenth time, one afterthe other until all the lives hadbeen wasted, just didn’t makefor a good game. Not beingable to complete it due to bugsdidn’t help the cause. Maybewe’d been spoiled by Nintendofor too long. Maybe, justmaybe, JSW wasn’t that fantasticafter all.

If JSW was a classic car howwould Lindsay Porter approachit? He’d strip it down, cut out therust, patch up the panels, slapon a fresh coat of paint, drop ina reconditioned engine and becruisin’. So we reckoned if wegot rid of the more buggier ofthe bugs, added some moderntouches, like saving andresuming a game in progress,splashed around a bit of colour,and made it possible tocomplete without poking – if wedid all of that we’d have a gamemore accessible to the moderngamer. We’d have a better Willy.

To make the update asfaithful as possible the onlyrealistic solution was to port thecore of the original Spectrumversion and use its data. I’d seendisassemblies on the Net andthought they would be an idealstarting point, but every one Ilooked at was incomplete, so Idug out my Rodnay Zaksreference book and reacquaintedmyself with Z80 assembler. A fewdays and choice profanities laterI had a very good idea of howJSW worked. About a week afterthat I had detailed notes andenough to make a start.

I had an urge at this point tostart ripping everything out ofthe game. Willy’s jump annoyedme so that had to go, right?Some of the rooms just didn’tmake sense. What purpose doesEntrance to Hades serve apart

from prematurely and unfairlyending the game? The list wenton but these niggles had to stay.

INK 7:PAPER 0

Whilst I literally spent everywaking hour dissecting 20-year-old code, my colleague PaulVera-Broadbent was getting toknow the graphics. We bothspent our time repeatedlyuttering ‘what?!’ whilst staringat what looked like the visualequivalent of white noise. Everyroom, item and baddie wascatalogued, sometimes it was asimple task, other times it wasjust plain impossible.

We decided from the outsetthat the new look game wouldsimply be that, a new look.Little else would change. Lambdressed as mutton if you like.Before a single line of gamecode was written I started onthe tools to help create thegame: a ripper to pull the roomlayouts from the originalcassette, and a tile editor forpiecing together the designs. Ihad a rough idea of how largethe game engine would be, its memory requirements andhow much we would haveavailable to use. We hit uponthe idea of designing ‘full fat’and ‘semi-skimmed’ versions of each room. Depending on the available memory of thetarget handset, certain tileswould be automaticallyconverted to have less detail or simply be exchanged for a plain background.

Dissecting the monster that is Jet Set Willy. Just some of

Carl's detailed development notes

Carl developed a mobile

version of Manic Miner for

Jester, but says he never ever

saw if for sale in shops

RETRO11 JSW 06/12/2004 4:30 PM Page 74

**75**

With Paul now busy on thegraphics I was able toconcentrate on the guts of thegame. I wanted to writesomething less constrained thanthe original so we’d have thepossibility to create sequels, butnot so advanced it would impactthe development time. The gameengine had to be far morecompact than my earlier effortfor Manic Miner. In facteverything would needredesigning and totally rewriting.In the finished product, unlikethe Spectrum version, not asingle line of code was sharedbetween the two.

The game was scheduled togo out in 10 languages,including, and what must be afirst, a Tyke translation, onpractically every handsetavailable; phones sometimes

with little more memory than thecomputer Willy first appeared on,to others with more than a PC ofa few years ago; some with tinyscreens, some with huge screens– it all had to be planned for. Afew weeks were spent draftingthe whole design out on paperuntil eventually I settled on howI would approach it.

To ensure exact gameplay theupdated version still technicallyviews the rooms in much thesame way as the Speccy did,with the pretty graphics simplybeing overlaid, or, for a trulynostalgic child-of-the-80sexperience, we even put back inoriginal two-colour blocks. Spritecollision is based on how theoriginal’s looked, so when Willybumps into a baddie he onlydies if his 20-year-old selftouches his vintage counterpart.All in all it’s just like 1984 washere again, only without the bighair and fluorescent socks.

Testing times

As the game started to cometogether it was time to begintesting. Usually a companyspecialising in quality assurancewould be used, but I wantedseasoned JSW players for this,people who knew the ins andouts, who would just know if it

didn’t feel right. Jester okayed a public beta using YahooGroups and the first builds, withthe original graphics, were putto public scrutiny. About 20people in all volunteered, andover the next few months thisdwindled down to two extremelyactive participants, without whowe wouldn’t have such anaccurate conversion.

The early builds were totallyfeatureless. Willy could walkaround an empty mansion andthat was that. I guess it musthave been very unrewarding forthose playing but it was anessential thing to get right.Eventually the collectable itemsmade an appearance, along withthe baddies and finally theropes… then I realised I’d forgotall about the arrows. So muchfor all the planning! It wasn’t toodifficult to implement fortunately.One of the most satisfyingmoments was when, afterputting in at least 14 hours aday, seven days a week for twomonths, I was finally able toplay all the way through. Whenat last Willy became one withthe toilet I was, I’d like to sayhappy, but I think relieved saysit better. Then I took a nap.

But then, a rumour started tocirculate that Jester had not paidthe wages. When I worked theretardy payments were all part ofthe excitement; the ‘win one forthe Gipper’ speeches around payday followed by a lame excuseon the day itself, it all added tothe Jester Experience. But thiswas different. A week later andthe staff were practically allgone. Remember that little tinyinsignificant bit at the start whenI mentioned having no contract?Yup, that. I’d spent over fourmonths at this point funding thedevelopment myself, paying thewages, buying in hardware, etc.,so I really wanted the Jesters topull through. Everyone else whohad ever worked there washappy the ride was finally overbut I was rooting for the badguys. I’d visited Jester’s officesfor update meetings on occasionsbut nothing much appeared to behappening. The building wasdeserted – just the two directorsrattling around amongst lots ofripped out wires and orphanedmouse mats. Even the cleanershad taken their mops. A fewweeks passed and I realised I’dheard no news.

Being the eternal optimist, Ijust knew it was going to bealright, so work on Willycontinued. We threw ourselvesinto the work. We even createdmore of it with the addition of a‘pure lard’ version to supersede

>Mattattack!

About the time of Classic Gaming Expo UKevent we had most of the game complete.Everything was in and working apart fromthe frontend, so we had the great idea ofbadgering Matthew Smith himself, a guestspeaker at the event, to take a look at thework in progress. The idea was to grab himat the end of his lunchtime talk, but afterlistening to his thoughts on Willy andcopyright, his deal with Jester and themoney he never saw from, as he put it, “a gentleman who isn’t a gentleman”, wedecided it would be for the best if we justcrept quietly out. The mood of the roomhad turned black and I think we’d havebeen lynched!

Matthew Smith at the CGE.

He had more than a few

choice words for his

former business partners

The tile editor used to build the new version.

RETRO11 JSW 06/12/2004 4:30 PM Page 75

>Neversay dieThe same old problem kept cropping up during testing – the

‘infinideath’. If there was one thing guaranteed to put players off it was

having Willy repeatedly commit suicide. JSW II went some way towards

fixing this, but ended up introducing problems of its own. The Amiga

port sort of did the right thing but made the game too easy, and one or

two different patches to the original version came very close. After a few

attempts our final approach was this: for each room we marked out

areas where it was safe for Willy to re-spawn, and whenever the player

would walk on one of those a snapshot of the game would be taken.

Death simply rolled back time, un-collecting items and transporting

everything to where it was.

**76**


the ‘full fat’ build, with double-sized rooms and sprites. Thegame was looking great, muchbetter than we originally hadhoped for. The testers weretesting, Paul was on with thenew graphics and I was pullingit all together.

Ah yes, the ‘pure lard’version. I’d never been happywith the tiny 256x128 playingarea on the huge smartphonescreens; it just seemed a wasteof pixels. At Jester I’dexperimented with resizing ManicMiner, only then it was to cover-up the fact that early phoneswere dog-slow and it wasquicker to put fewer but largerobjects on-screen. Nothing hadbeen redrawn, just scaled up,and customer feedback showedthe public disapproved. Oddly,when I reverted back to thesmaller size a whole differentbunch of people complained!With JSW now having no definitelaunch date we decided we could

take the time required to redraweverything. And since the artworkwas going to take a month or so,adding a few extra bits and bobsto the code wouldn’t hurt.

With the extra code added wefound the game no longer fittedon a few of the target handsets,in some cases we’d swelled overthe limit by almost 20Kb, inothers it was by a few bytes.Some phones had to berelegated to running a lowerversion, going from ‘full fat’ to‘semi-skimmed’ for example,with others it was just a matterof rewriting some sections touse fewer lines of code. Goingto a lower spec’d version was ahard decision to make: whilstthe game still plays the sameit’s a massive step down in theway it looks.

Happy ending?

With no news from Jester, workon JSW started to seem a little

pointless. It had been six weeksor so since I’d spoken withanyone there so we decided toshelve what we had and getback on with our in-house gameprojects. Willy was complete onmost handsets, the game enginehad been thoroughly tested, andthe only missing bits werelanguage translations. Releasingour very own Get Set Billy hadbeen thrown around, which we’dno doubt follow up withParadruid and Iridium.

Two or so weeks after we’darchived everything, stilldesperate for news of Jester, Inoticed the Companies Houserecords had them as inreceivership. We weredevastated. This spelled the endof Numfum, too, as it meant wewouldn’t see any income untilour new game was released,which would be at least sixmonths away.

Then, out of the blue, wheneverything appeared to havequietly slipped away, a journalistfrom Edge got in touch. I neverreally understood the hows orthe whys, I just answered a few

questions and thought nothing ofit. A week later, in the Decemberissue, a piece entitled Where’sWilly devoted half a page to oursituation. On the day ofpublication a few of the majormobile publishers had alreadybeen in touch. After the sedateprevious six months things thenstarted to move again.

During all the Jestershenanigans another company,Advanced Mobile Solutions, hadbeen looking to secure the rightsto Willy. Late October AMS hadsigned a deal with the licensees,giving them the rights to JSW onmobile phones. Remember thatbit about no contract? Well thistime it went in our favour. Aweek after the Edge article we’dsigned the game to AMS.

JSW will be on sale throughmost of the UK networkoperators by Christmas, inEurope at the start of next year,and there’s talk of porting to the‘standard’ used by US phones.We were too late for theseasonal Ho Ho Willy we had onthe go, but future Willy gamesare not out of the question…

Back to basics. Carl and Paul used the original Speccy room map to help

piece together the new version

Future JSW games? Perhaps this picture in Willy's house

is a clue?

✺✯*

RETRO11 JSW 06/12/2004 4:32 PM Page 76

>Format of

the Future

Back in the late 80s, ga

mes stored

on cassette were the nor

m, while

games on diskette were s

till

something of a luxury. S

o when

Codemasters released gam

es on CD-ROM

for the Spectrum and Com

modore 64

in 1989, people were rig

htly

perplexed. Back then we

wondered how

such technical trickery

was ever

possible. Now we look ba

ck and

wonder why it failed to

set the

gaming world alight. Sha

un Bebbington

goes in search of answer

s

Games on CD? It sounded space-age, but the technology was actual quite simple.

The imaginatively-titled CD Games Pack included 30 of the Codemasters’ greatest

hits stuffed onto a single CD along with a neat cable that connected any

standard CD audio player to your computer. Once it was set-up and running you could

load a typical game in around 60 seconds. In comparison, a cassette tape of the same

game would take anything up to five minutes. It was like having the speed of a disk

without the cost of a dedicated drive.

**79**

RETRO11 Codies CD Games 06/12/2004 4:21 PM Page 79

**80**

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | FEATURE:SOFTWARE | FORMAT OF THE FUTURE |

So how did the futuristic thingwork? Well, you simply pluggedone end of the cable into yourCD player’s headphone socket,and the other end into yourcomputer’s joystick port. Thepackage also contained a tapewhich you loaded first. Itworked like a driver, pointingthe computer in the direction ofthe CD data steam. The nextstep was to select the joystickinterface type (this wasn’t arequired step on the C64 as thecomputer had built-in joystickports), then set the volumelevel of your CD player. The firsttrack on the CD was specificallyset aside for the purpose ofgetting the volume right, andyou were prompted to graduallyincrease the volume level untilit was just right for yourequipment. You were then readyto load your first game

There were 30 games on theCD – the cream of Codemasters’budget range – and youselected them as you would atune on an audio CD – skipforward to your desired trackand hit the play button. After abrief pause, and as if by magic,the game would start loading.Thankfully, when you wanted tochange the game, there was noneed to reset the computer andreload the driver tape. You justheld down the keys Q,U,I,T onthe Spectrum, or hit theRESTORE button on the C64,and you’d be taken back to theloader screen. Select anothergame and away you went.

Streaming audio

Streaming audio via the joystickport wasn’t a new thing when

Codemasters released its CDpack. The idea had actuallybeen used for years to samplespeech and short tunes for usein games or demos. GavinReaburn, a Codemastersemployee who worked on theCD pack, recalls that “Thejoystick port could reportvoltage changes when the stickwas activated, which is why itcould also be used for samplingdevices or other devices such asour CD-ROM system.”

The innovation was to usethe joystick port to load datafrom CD, and not just to sampleaudio. In truth, it didn’t evenhave to be CD; the same audiocould have been copied to tapeor even vinyl if they’d haveprovided the same high qualitydigital playback without anybackground noise. It was theconvenience of the way CDplayers worked, combined withthe quality and clarity of theoutput. Potential storage wasalso a factor, as you can storeroughly 74 minutes of audio ona standard 650Mb CD, so witheach game taking around aminute to load, that potentiallyallowed for over 70 games on asingle CD. Codemasters,however, included each gametwice, thus halving the storagecapability. But this was a wisemove as CDs were easilyscratched, so includingduplicate tracks made sense.And of course you couldn’teasily make a backup of the CDat the time. This was seen as aplus point in the fight againstplayground piracy. “That wasdefinitely an added benefit,”says Gavin. “At the time, youcould not copy CDs unless you

had access to a costlyduplication machine.”

R CD LoadingErrorPrior to release, Codemasterswent through a lengthy testingprogram, but problems quicklyarose when the pack was in thehands of the public. For theSpectrum version, on many +2machines (not +2a or +2b) thevolume test didn’t work usingthe built-in Sinclair joystickport, but tended to work with aKempston interface. Secondly,some of the tracks wouldn’tload first or even second timearound; even when the volumewas set according to the testprogram you’d still need totweak it to get it just right. Andif you did get the games toload, constantly quitting out ofone game and loading anothersometimes caused the computerto crash as data wasoverwritten in memory. Finally,

‘dirty’ connections would reducethe chances of the processworking at all.

Gavin remembers thatCodemasters was diligent in thedevelopment and testing of theinterface and software, butultimately it came down to cost.“As I recall, it was a challengegetting the system to workcheaply with so many differentCD players, especially as thequality varied so much in thosedays. I can remember everyonelugging in their CD players fromhome and Codemasters alsobuying some of the cheapest,nastiest we could find tothoroughly test the system.Getting the data transfer ratesand signal levels working wellfor the analogue to digitalconverter took some time to getright.” And yet there were stillproblems with the system. It issaid that some CD playerswould work better than others,and the general rule was thesimpler, the better. Things like

30 games for £20 - that works out at just 66p a game!


bass boost and graphicequalisation would lessen thechances of it working.

The claims that the packoffered “maximum reliability –virtually no load errors” andwould work with any “normalCD player” seemed to bestretching the truth, and it’sperhaps not surprising thatCodemasters never released asecond CD collection. In short,the technology was flawed.

Super Cash Flow Simulator Perhaps it was no great shamethough, as Gavin reveals thatCodemasters had no grandplans for the CD format. “At the time it was implementedas a way of generating revenuefrom our back catalogue ofgames and was not seen as aviable format for individualgames. We knew that everyonehad a tape deck that they couldload games from, but noteveryone had access to a CD

player, so tapes were still thepreferred choice.”

Despite Codemasters lookingback rather than forward,Amstrad Action magazinehypothesised a bright future forsuch a device, saying thatCodemasters would “be able todevelop whole new styles ofgames that use the enormousstorage capacity of a CD. So canwe expect to see a 3,000-screenDizzy? Or film tie-ins with screenafter screen of digitisedgraphics and full-lengthsoundtracks?” So, were thereany plans for bigger and bettergames? “None were plannedthat I can remember, althoughthat was always an option,”says Gavin. “Bigger gameswould have taken longer todevelop for an already restrictedmarketplace and the return oninvestment is unlikely to havemade this a viable proposition.”Seemingly then, this was a littlebit of creative writing andthinking on the part of AmstradAction. And despite receiving a

glowing review from themagazine, the CPC version wasnever officially released.

We wondered if a similar CDinterface was ever planned forthe 16-bit machines? “We wouldhave followed the same plan wefollowed with all of our earlyinventions, namely to trial theproduct and then exploit anysuccess, as we did with theGame Genie, NES gamecartridges and game cartridgeswith built in joystick ports.” So,a no then, it seems. However,with the relevant programmingknowledge you could quiteeasily use a similar interface onan Amiga 500. It wouldn’t haveimproved the loading times over3.5in disk, though.

The final word

Before leaving Gavin in peace,we wondered what otherprototypes and devicesCodemasters still had lyingaround the offices from the 8-bit era, specifically if theschematics or prototype of theCD interface still existed. “They

may be lying around gatheringdust somewhere, but they arenot consciously kept for anyspecial reason other than wherewe are legally obliged to do so.Codemasters had a big clearoutaround five years ago where weskipped and dumped thousandsand thousands of our old gamesand most likely all of ourprototypes and home-built devkits as well.” It makes youwonder what else was indevelopment at the time.

Finally, we asked Gavin whyhe thought the device wasn’t assuccessful as it could (andperhaps should) have been.“Much like any videogamessoftware today that relies on acertain peripheral to work (e.g.Eyetoy, dance mat and lightgungames) you can only sell thosegames to the people who haveaccess to that hardware. If youdidn’t have access to a CDplayer (and most kids probablydidn’t in those days) then youweren’t going to buy a CDbased game. This limited ourtarget audience and is likely tohave affected sales.”

The original advert for the pack boasted loading times

of as little as 20 seconds per game

>Over the

rainbowCodemasters wasn’t the only company to try its hand at creating a CD

interface for 8-bit home computers. Rainbow Arts also produced a device for

the Commodore 64 which worked via the cassette port and loaded discs from

any audio CD player with a headphone output. The perceived drawback was

that it used the tape port and was therefore tied down to the loading speeds

of old. This was not the case though. Because of the higher and clearer

output from the CD, it was

possible to load the data at

faster speeds, with the

exception of the first track

that acted as a header. It

also had compatibility

advantages as the computer

would assume that a

standard tape deck was

attached when in fact it

wasn’t, and so everything

would appear normal.

Despite the sound

technology, the device

failed to take off, perhaps

because like Codemasters,

Rainbow Arts exploited its

back catalogue rather

than developing new

games specifically to

show off the advantages

of the hardware.

**81**

ATV Simulator, Dizzy, Jet Bike Simulator and Grand Prix

Simulator, just four of the games on the compilation.

Codemasters certainly liked its simulators!

✺✯*


Untitled-1 1 1/9/06 12:55:47

>IF Comp

2004

The 10th Annual Interact

ive Fiction

Competition is now over

and the

winning entries have bee

n revealed.

Keith Campbell takes a c

loser look

at this year's competiti

on, and

reviews the top three ga

mes and his

personal favourite

The Interactive Fiction Competition is an annual event run by members of the

Usenet group rreecc..aarrttss..iinntt--ffiiccttiioonn. It offers a chance for both fans and newcomers

to the genre to enjoy some good quality, short adventure games.

Authors submit entries that can be freely played, the winning entries being decided

by a ballot of visitors to the site, who must register before being able to vote. Judges are

asked not to play any game for longer than two hours before judging it; authors are

asked to bear this in mind when creating their work.

**85**

RETRO11 IF COMP 06/12/2004 4:27 PM Page 85

**86**

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | FEATURE:COMPETITION | IF COMP 2004 |

The entries

36 games were entered into thisyear’s competition, usingbetween them eight differentinterpreters. Most popular wasthe Z-code or Frotz interpreter,which runs Inform format data,with 19 entries based on it.Those familiar with Infocomgames will recognise the feel ofthe Frotz front end, and some ofthe standard response formats.

Before the results wereannounced, I played about adozen or so of the entries tovarying depths, although I didn’tregister as a judge. Some of thegames I enjoyed, others left mecold, but I have to say thatoverall I was very impressed atthe high standard.

Interactive fiction is similar tonon-interactive fiction, in thathowever well written, it is amatter of individual tastewhether one finds a particularwork interesting andentertaining. Thus, my ownpersonal favourite, A Day In TheLife Of A Superhero, came 23rd.

It just appealed to my sense ofhumour so much that I wanted tokeep on playing it. Again,Splashdown, an excellentInfocom-style adventure, wasplaced only eight. Reminiscent ofPlanetfall and Stationfall, itcomes complete with sidekick,maintenance robot SPDR-13,known as Spider. Son of Floyd,no doubt.

One or two entries promisedto be so frustrating to play that Ididn’t pursue them to any greatdepth. In Zero One, for example,you start off locked in a cell withgrey walls. ‘Examine cell’ elicitsthe reply ‘You must supply anoun’, whilst ‘walls’ proves to bean unknown word. ‘Nuff said.

There’s plenty of varietythere, certainly enough toguarantee that you will find atleast a handful that you enjoy.All 36 entries, along with therequired interpreters, wereincluded on the Retro Gamerissue nine coverdisc.Alternatively, you can freelydownload them fromwwwwww..iiffccoommpp..oorrgg.

The competition results, based on the average

rating received for each game after two hours play

If you missed out on the Retro Gamer issue 9 coverdisc,

you can download all the games and interpreters from

the IFcomp website

>What isIF?‘Interactive Fiction’ is a description given to types of computer gamesmore commonly known as text adventures. When micro computersarrived, their memory – typically 16-48Kb – was too small toaccommodate early adventures like Colossal Cave and Dungeon, whichwere restricted to IBM mainframes and DEC minis. Dungeon waseventually split into three parts, adapted to run on a micro from floppydisk, and now famously known as the Zork Trilogy. At the time, even thiswas available to only the small minority of micro owners who couldafford a disk drive. This inspired Scott Adams to create a series of gamesthat were, incredibly in hindsight, memory resident on machines withonly 16Kb RAM. The games had plenty of devious puzzles to solve, butthe text was necessarily so terse that they could hardly be termed‘Interactive Fiction’.

Micro ownership mushroomed and the technology advanced rapidlyduring the eighties. Before long, graphics were added to adventures. Theterm ‘text adventure’ came into being, used by purists preferring wordsrather than pictures.

Nowadays, RAM is no constraint for a text adventure, and such gamescan be as verbose as the author wishes, as well as being memoryresident and therefore having a fast response. They can now truly becalled ‘Interactive Fiction’.

>ResultsPosition Game

1 Luminous Horizon

2 Blue Chairs

3 All Things Devours

4 Sting of the Wasp

5 Square Circle

6 The Orion Agenda

7 Mingsheng

8 Splashdown

9 Gamlet10 Trading Punches

11 The Great Xavio

12 Goose, Egg, Badger

13 The Big Scoop

14 I Must Play

15 Identity

16 Murder at the Aero

Club17 Bellclap

18 Magocracy

Position Game

19 Typo20 Kurusu City

21 Blink22 Chronicle Play Torn

23 A Day in the Life of a

Superhero

24 Order25 Who Created That

Monster?

26 Blue Sky

27 The Realm

28 Redeye

29 Stack Overflow

30 Zero31 Zero One

32 A Light’s Tale

33 Getting Back to Sleep

34 Ruined Robots

35 PTBAD 3

Scott Adams helped popularise the text adventure

with his Adventure series of games

✺✯*


**87**

Luminous Horizons is the thirdpart of the Earth and Sky trilogy,but playable as a standaloneadventure. An accompanyingdigital comic, illustrated by JRobinson Wheeler, brings you upto date before you start into Part3. You play the parts of twosuperheroes, Austin and Emily,otherwise known as Earth andSky. They’ve been transported toa strange alien planet and mustsearch for their abducted parents.

You can swap between thecharacters to make use of theirindividual special powers.Austin is colossally strong andinvulnerable to impact, whilstEmily can fly, create dense fogs,and throw bolts of electricity. Byswapping between the twocharacters, and asking eachother for help and advice, yougain the advantage of theircombined powers in pursuit ofyour goal, whilst all the time

you are being watched by the aliens, who try to controlyour activities.

But beware, like many agood book, this game does takesome time to get into. However,it is worth persevering with, asthe game doesn’t really startuntil you’re through theprologue, which is notobviously a prologue at thetime. A worthy winner. Try itand enjoy!

Luminous Horizon WWrriitttteenn bbyy:: Paul O’Brian // IInntteerrpprreetteerr:: Glulx // FFiinnaall ppllaacciinngg:: First

This is a surreal story, wherethe player is pitched from onefantasy scenario to anotherwithout warning. Findingyourself in an attic above anoisy party, you are offered abottle of dubious liquid by anequally dubious character, andsubsequently start a search forBeatrice, who is desperatelycalling partygoers on theirmobiles, asking for you.

After solving a few fairly

orthodox problems to get a liftto Beatrice’s place, weird thingsstart happening. Have you reallybeen inaugurated President ofthe US? What is the meaning ofthe strangely familiar statuesaround the White House? Wheredoes the doughnut cabinet inthe mini-market lead? And whatis it about these blue chairs youcome across?

The execution of this game isvirtually faultless, give or take

an unrecognised word or two.An easily legible white on bluefont makes the game easy toplay, and there are contextsensitive Infocom style‘Invisiclues’ built in, to help youthrough some of the less logicalstopping points.

It might be your cup of tea,but it isn’t mine. Thediscontinuity between sectionslost my interest in the gamebefore I got very far into it.

Blue Chairs WWrriitttteenn bbyy:: Chris Klimas // IInntteerrpprreetteerr:: Z-code (Frotz) // FFiinnaall ppllaacciinngg:: Second

Something sinister has beengoing on. Your research lab hasbeen taken over by the military.You have been thrown out, andwhen you sneak back into thebuilding you discover they havebeen working on your prototypemachine, a machine that wasdesigned to prove your doubtsabout the current Quantum

Mechanics model. You decide todestroy the prototype before anyharm can be done by the releaseof pure energy.

Be prepared to die frequently!Saving and restoring yourposition at strategic points takesthe frustration out of trying tosolve one of the main problems– how to safely destroy the

prototype before it destroys theworld. You also have toovercome more trivial problems,such as automatic doors thatwon’t open, and lights that fusewhen you turn them on.

All Things Devours is aninteresting thriller that drawsyou in. I have to say that I ratedit higher than Blue Chairs.

All Things Devours WWrriitttteenn bbyy:: ‘half sick of shadows’ // IInntteerrpprreetteerr:: Z-code (Frotz) // FFiinnaall ppllaacciinngg:: Third

You’re The Masked Defender,greatest Superhero the worldhas known, yet you findyourself hanging from a bridgeby your ankles, fifty feet aboveground. A crowd gathers towatch, taking bets on whetherthey can hit you with a pebble.A seagull starts pecking awayat the rope…

Smelly, your faithful parrot,flies on to the scene. “You’regonna make a dent in thatthere concrete if you don’t do

something pdq” he warns.“You know I don’t like it whenyou use abbreviations!” yourebuke him. “Do somethingabout the seagull!”

“That’s a Mongolian KillerSeagull, that is,” says Smelly.“Vicious swine! Have the headoff a horse it would given halfthe chance. I ain’t messingwith it!”

When you’ve worked outhow to escape yourpredicament, you head for your

grotty apartment (no telly – hadto sell it to buy your MaskedDefender costume) with amission to track down a bunchof Super Villains, The PaperBoys and The Tax Collector.

I found a couple of minorbugs whilst playing, but theywere worth putting up with forthe rich humour in the text,somewhat reminiscent ofMagnetic Scrolls’ Jinxter. Try it,as it’s guaranteed to bring asmile to your face!

A Day in the Life of a Superhero WWrriitttteenn bbyy:: David Whyld // IInntteerrpprreetteerr:: Adrift // FFiinnaall ppllaacciinngg:: Twenty Third


**88**

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | FEATURE:PROFILE | DISCOVERING DURELL |

RETRO11 Durell 06/12/2004 4:59 PM Page 88

>Discovering

Durell

You've played the game

s on this

month's coverdisc, but

what about

the British developer

behind them?

Martyn Carroll traces

Durell's

short but successful t

ime in the

8-bit games market, an

d talks to

founder Robert White a

nd lead

programmers Mike Richa

rdson and

Clive Townsend

Robert White has more to thank his mother-in-law for than most men, as she left

him and his wife a house in Taunton, Somerset. The couple immediately moved

there from Oxfordshire, and with no rent or mortgage to pay, Robert used the

money to set-up Durell Software (the name comes from one of his middle names – Robert

James Durell White). This choice of business was not entirely surprising, as he’d been

introduced to computers while studying for a degree in Quantity Surveying, and then later in

his first job as a CAD specialist working for the Oxford Regional Health Authority.

**89**


**90**


Despite inheriting the house,Robert was still extremelycautious with cash, and theinitial outlay was limited to saythe least. “The shared capitalwas £100,” he reveals, “and thatwas used to buy an Oriccomputer, a black and whitetelly, and a few books onmachine code. It’s still all thereon our company balance sheet.”

As we catch up with Mike,he’s still “very busy” runningDurell, although the company leftthe gaming world behind a longtime ago. Durell Solutions, as it’snow known, designs databasesoftware for the UK insuranceindustry and has a user-base ofaround 300 businesses thatprovide “a nice steady regularincome”. So from small acorns,or in this case an Oric, thecompany grew tall and stilltrades to this day.

Talking of that Oric, Robertwent out of his way to get hishands on the computer. “In early1983 I got one of the very firstOric’s that came off theproduction line. I had beenhassling the people at Oric, and

actually went along to the factorywhere they were making themand got one.” Given the vastchoice of home micros availablein 1983, we’re somewhatsurprised that Robert was so keenon owning an Oric. Was itbecause it was brand new?“Precisely because it was new.Given that I had zero money – the£100 was a huge outlay – Ithought this would be a businessopportunity to go and get one ofthe first machines, literally hot offthe press, as I thought there’d bea better market for it.”

With the Oric in place, nowjoined by a new Epson printer, heset about writing software for thenew machine. “The first thing Idid on it was write a littleprogram called Lunar Landing inBASIC, where the idea was to fillup the program with lots of REMstatements, so that people whowere novices could see how towrite a BASIC game. Then thenext thing I did for the Oric wasto write a very basic assembler.Just a one-pass assembler, withno macros or anything.”

Both programs were advertisedin the specialist press and sold viamail order. Sales were steady butsignificant. “I actually sold asurprisingly large number of both.Even the assembler sold 500copies, which surprised mebecause I didn’t think there’d bethat many people wanting to writeassembler code. I actuallyremember when I got thecardboard box of 500 assemblers,and I put them under the stairs,my wife looked at them and said‘we’ll you’ll never get rid of them!”

Branching out

As orders continued to dropthrough the letterbox, Robertrealised that the day to dayrunning of Durell was taking upall his time. “What occurred tome while I was doing LunarLanding and the assembler wasthat it was impossible to run abusiness and also writeprograms. Even doing the mailorder stuff – there waseverything from getting thelabels printed, getting the tapesduplicated and packing theminto padded envelopes, toanswering the phone andresponding to peoples’ letters. Itwas just not possible.”

The obvious answer wouldbe to hire a helping hand,someone to deal with theeveryday jobs. But there was amore pressing problem, one thatcould not be solved withoutspecialist staff. “I realised thatyou could not proceed with anykind of game unless you didthem multi-platform. We had todo them on the Oric, theCommodore and the Spectrum ata minimum.” Robert neededprogrammers, so he placed asmall advert in a localnewspaper. It ran for just oneweek, and attracted theattention of Mike Richardsonand Ron Jeffs.

At the time, Mike Richardsonwas working as a chemist in anaerosol factory. Programminggames was something of ahobby, and he’d already beganwork on an arcade platformgame for the Spectrum. Robert

liked his game and hired him ona freelance basis. The game waseventually released as JungleTrouble, but his first proper jobfor Durell was far more obscure.“The first game I did for Robertwas a Dam Busters game for theCamputer’s Lynx,” says Mike.“You flew a plane over a damand dropped a bomb. Itbounced along the water…” LikeRobert’s Lunar Landing, thecode was filled with commentsand it was sold as a workingexample of how to create agame in BASIC.

Vertical take off

During its first year, Durellreleased several successful titlesfor the Spectrum and Oric,including the aforementionedJungle Trouble and Ron Jeffs’Scuba Dive. Jungle Trouble wasvoted game of the month byCrash magazine and Scuba Divereceived a 92% review score.Sales were equally positive. “Iremember getting quite excitedwhen we had our first big orderfrom WHSmiths for JungleTrouble which was for about2,500 copies,” remembers Mike.“Then in a few weeks after thatwe had one for 5,000 copies.Then in a few weeks we hadanother one for 5,000 copies.That seemed like a massivevolume to me.”

These figures were good, butthey paled in comparison tothose of Harrier Attack, Durell’searlier bestseller. “Harrier Attackwas my idea,” says Robert, “andit was a crackingly good idea

A selection of Durell's early releases, written for the Spectrum and Oric computers

Clive Townsend, gettinggrappled by a ninja in a1986 Crash magazine feature


**91**

because basically what all kidswanted to do was take off in aharrier and bomb everything.”This was 1983 and theFalkland’s War dominated thenews, so the timing of HarrierAttack’s release was key. Thegame, a straightforwardScramble clone, was originallywritten for the Oric by Ron Jeffs,and then Mike Richardson portedit to both the Spectrum andAmstrad in under four weeks.

Robert remembers that therewas a hell of a lot riding on thesuccess of Harrier Attack.“Around about September 1983or so, I placed the advert forHarrier Attack and I remember Iactually booked 20 grand’sworth of advertising. Again, Ihad a little conversion with mywife, and said if we didn’t sellthem we’d have to get rid of thehouse, because obviously thecompany didn’t have any money.But in fact by Christmas, thatgame had already sold 40,000copies.” The game was laterbundled with the Amstrad CPCand went on to sell over250,000 copies in total. Everyonewas happy, despite reports thatsome people took objection tothe game’s scenario given thefact that the country was at war.Neither Robert or Mike recallanything of this though. In fact,Durell even sold some copies to

Argentina, where the game wasrepublished as Matador Attack!

Throughout ‘84 and ‘85,Durell followed up its earlierhits with a number of criticaland commercial successes. Afterthe month Mike Richardson tookto port Harrier Attack, he spentthe next eight months writinghelicopter sim Combat Lynx forthe Spectrum. New programmersalso joined the company. SimonFrancis wrote Critical Mass(inspired by Frank Herbert’sDune) and Julian Todd wrote FatWorm Blows a Sparky (inspiredby God-only-knows what), whileNick Wilson programmedMineshaft for the BBC Micro.

The release schedulecertainly wasn’t hectic, and thiswas mainly because Robertrarely imposed deadlines.“There were no schedules ordeadlines or anything like that,”remembers Mike, positively. “Wewere left to own devices really.”

In addition, Robert felt noneed to stick his oar in duringthe design process.“Programmers were given ahuge amount of freedom,” hereveals. “In the case ofsomeone like Mike, he was justso good that it was pointless totry and tell him what to do.Some of the game concepts,like Thanatos for example, were100% Mike.”

Gun for hire

One of the most notableadditions to the team was CliveTownsend. He also lived inTaunton, and began hisprogramming career on a friend’sZX81, creating a simple tarotcard program, before buyinghimself a Spectrum. “As soon asit shipped I created some gamesand asked a local shop if theywould sell them. They said yes,but pointed out that there wereother people making games inTaunton too. So I headed forDurell Software.”

Clive was originally employedas a graphics artist, but soonfound himself programminggames. “My first job at Durellwas writing Chicken. It was aside-scrolling puzzle-platformer,very similar to some of the

Game & Watch games. This wascanned in favour of a flip-screenarcade adventure called DeathPit.” Death Pit later befell thesame fate as Chicken, despitebeing advertised by Durell. Wewondered how far along thegame was when the plug waspulled? “Death Pit was actuallycompletely finished and readyfor sale,” reveals Clive. “All thecassette inserts had beenprinted and adverts werestarting to appear in magazines.Despite this, the game wasn’treally up to scratch, so whenRobert saw a side-scrollinggame I was working on (calledNinja), he asked me to developthat instead. It later became flip-screen and was renamedSaboteur.”

Saboteur was released inearly 1986 and quickly becameone of Durell’s best-selling

>Come flywith me

While chatting to Clive Townsend, herevealed that Durell worked on a product forWestland Helicopters, following their earliercollaboration on Combat Lynx. “It was abriefcase containing a Spectrum and a loadof microdrives,” he explained. “The WestlandHelicopters people could visit a client andplug the Speccy into their telly, type in theclient’s requirements (I’d like to fly from hereto here with three people etc) and theprogram would work out the logistics. It wasquite an elaborate program, working out fuelconsumed based on the fuel’s weight,distance travelled, weight of passengers,life-raft if travelling over water, life jackets,and countless other considerations.”

The success of Combat Lynxled to an fascinatingcollaboration withWestland Helicopters

Harrier Attack, Durell's best-selling game, shiftingover a quarter of a million copies

After leaving college, Robert White offered Simon Francis

a job and his first title for Durell was the acclaimed

Critical Mass

Death Pit was axed, but many of the game's routinesresurfaced in Saboteur


>Saboteur

C16Many of the Durell ports were done in-house, although there was one

noticeable exception – the Commodore 16 version of Saboteur by someone

called Barney. “The Amstrad port of Saboteur was done by me,” says Clive

Townsend, “and the Commodore 64 version used the original graphics. The

C16 version was ported externally so I didn’t get to see it until it was

completed. Just as well too – it looked as if it starred Miner Willy!”

The game’s inlay did at least go some way in excusing the shrivelled-up

graphics. “Saboteur was originally designed to run on computers with at

least 48K of RAM. So to fit it into the C16’s smaller memory we have had to

make a number of cuts. This version occupies almost every single byte

available on the C16 – we are sorry for the cuts, but we believe you will

still find it very enjoyable to play.”

Thankfully, the dedicated Plus/4 version was much better, an

improvement over the C64 original even, with a wider colour palette and

faster gameplay.

**92**


games, shifting 100,000 copiesand second only to Harrier Attackin terms of sales. The game wasall very James Bond – infiltrate anenemy complex under darkness,grab an important computer disk,plant a bomb and get the hell out– but it just happened to beinfinitely better than any of theofficial 007 licensed games. It wasso popular that Saboteur was theonly Durell game to earn a sequel,complete with a much bigger mapand a varied mission structure. Italso featured one of gaming’s firstfemale characters – a consciousdecision on Clive’s part. “I wantedsomething original, and it seemedquite different to most other

games. It’s become acceptablenow after Tomb Raider, but at thetime it was a bit strange. Whyshouldn’t ninja characters befemale? I’ve met a few lethal onesin my time…”

While Clive was getting togrips with his new leading lady,Mike Richardson was dealing up adouble-blow in the shape of TurboEsprit and Thanatos. Bothappeared in ‘86, but Mike revealsthat it was taking longer andlonger to finish games. “A lot ofeffort went into Turbo Esprit as ittook me about 10 months to dowhich was the longest I spent onany game.” The time wasobviously well spent though,

because Turbo Esprit in particularrates as one of the Spectrum’sbest original games. It’s often saidthat it’s the detail that make a titlestand out, and Turbo Esprit wasabsolutely packed with littletouches. Within the game’smassive 3D cities were workingtraffic lights, traffic that obeyedthese signals, pedestrians crossingthe road, little men up ladders…

Thanatos was a unique gametoo, featuring one of the largestanimated sprites ever seen on aSpectrum and some head-spinning scrolling techniques.Both games were written for theSpectrum, before being ported tothe C64 and Amstrad, and weasked Robert if the Spectrum wasDurell’s main platform.“Definitely,” he replied, “and thatwas because Mike was so good.There was no way anybodywould give something likeThanatos to Mike as a spec,because quite frankly youwouldn’t think it was possible. Hewould just keep developingthings that would make you sitback and go ‘wow’.”

Business shift

Durell enjoyed a good relationshipwith the press, with its gamesvery often scoring highly andearning awards. Crash magazineeven visited Taunton and ran afeature on the company in itsFebruary ‘86 issue. That featureended with a look towardsDurell’s dabblings in businesssoftware, but reassured gamersby saying that there was “littledanger of the more ‘serious’programs taking over”.

For a short while that wastrue. Sigma 7 appeared in Spring‘87, Saboteur 2 in the Summerand Chain Reaction at Christmas– three solid releases within ayear. But then, at the end of theyear, Durell sold its back

catalogue of 8-bit titles to EliteSystems and concentrated solelyon business software. Robertexplains that this shift in focuswas not a bolt from the blue.“While we were doing thegames, the finances wereabsolutely mind-blowing. Monthby month you could make or lose£80,000 – two bad months in arow and you were in very deepstuff. So almost in the first year Iwas looking at some way ofstabilising it. I thought if wecould do some business softwarethat didn’t tread on the toes ofanything American then thatwould give us a steady living.”

So ultimately it came down tosausages, as Mike explains:“Robert always had this idea ofhaving a sausage machine, whereyou didn’t have to do any work.You simply fed meat into one endand sausages came out the other,and you made money.” And that’swhat good business softwarecould do. Once it was written, itwas just a case of keeping itupdated and providing profitableafter-sales support. It wassteadier and far more secure thanthe volatile games market.

“After we sold off the games”,says Robert, wrapping up hisside of the story, “I used themoney from that to pay wageswhile Ron Jeffs and I developedthe product that we stillessentially sell today. It wasoriginally called Insurance Masterand is designed for the UKinsurance industry.”

Saboteur sequels

As the time of the sale to Elite(who resold the Durell games onits Encore budget label), Mikewas midway through a Spectrumgame called Spitfire. He finishedthe game for Elite, but was readyto move on. “After Spitfire, Ididn’t feel like I wanted to work

Spot the difference. The C64 original and the C16

version by ‘Barney’

Clean up the city streets in Turbo Esprit. Watch out as

the drug runners have armoured car support!

Thanatos is Mike's personal favourite game. "I like it.I don't know if anybody else ever did?"


**93**

with Elite, and Robert suggestedI came and worked with him onhis database systems. I did thatfor four or five years, and thenNick Wilson, who also used towork for Durell, came into theoffice and asked if I’d like towork on an exciting new gamesproject with him.”

The project was a version ofGames Workshop’s Space Hulk forthe Panasonic 3DO. The company,Key Game, was later brought byEidos and renamed Tigon. UnderEidos, Mike worked on two newgames – Thunder for the PC, andSaboteur for the PC, PlayStationand Saturn. Saboteur? Anyrelation to Clive’s earlier games?“It was like Saboteur 3,” admitsMike.” But after working on it fora while we discovered that Clivewas also working on a Saboteur3 for a PC. I’m not quite surewhat happened, but I think Eidosbought the name Saboteur offClive. We had been working on itfor about two and a half years,and it was looking really good,when Eidos decided to drop usand moved the work to Pumpkinin Bath. And then about sixmonths later Eidos droppedPumpkin as well, so it never got published.”

We spoke to Clive about hisSaboteur sequel, and he told usthat the game has been throughvarious incarnations. “Afterleaving Durell I created Saboteur3D for the Spectrum, based onthe Knight Lore perspective. Thiswas dumped in favour of a flip-screen PC version with digitisedsprites. Then this was upgradedto a multi-layer-parallax scrollingversion. Unfortunately, due toother work commitments thiswas never completed. Back in‘96 I thought it was time toresurrect Saboteur. After gettingpermission from Robert White, I

set up Bacchus SoftwareProjects and started work. The3D revolution had hit but 3Dhardware was still a rarity, so Istarted creating a software 3Dengine. After working alone for18 months I finally hadeverything working; all mymaps, models, bitmaps,textures, sound effects… At thispoint I joined up with twofriends – Anatole and DamonBranch – to form Pukka Games.Saboteur 3 was put on holdwhile we created The Ravagingfor Telstar.”

Clive’s work on the PC versionof Saboteur 3 can still be seen onthe Web:(hhttttpp::////eeaassyywweebb..eeaassyynneett..ccoo..uukk//~~bbsspp), but we were intrigued toknow more about the unreleasedSpectrum game. “I think I’ve gota demo of it in a box under mybed. I’ll have a look and get backto you.” Sadly, the search turnedup nothing, but he promises tocontinue looking. “It was atechnology demo – a ninja whowalked around an isometriclandscape (like Knight Lore butscrolling). I remember that theoutdoor scenes were fractallygenerated, so bushes and treeswere positioned based onpseudo-random data. So nomemory spent on map bits otherthan the buildings.”

Events have recently come fullcircle, with Clive’s new companyIncognito Games working on amobile phone version of Saboteurfor Elite. He still hopes to releasea proper Saboteur sequel one daythough. “Saboteur 3 is still waitingto be done. Graphics cards cannow duplicate all of the effectsused in my software version, suchas refraction on water and etchedglass, texture morphing, and full-screen anti-aliasing – so the stageis set. It will still happen.”

Moving on

Before closing the book on Durell(although we gather a newchapter may soon be written), weasked Robert if he had anyregrets about shifting thecompany away from gamessoftware in 1987, especially asthe 16-bit era just about toexplode. “No, God no,” helaughs. “It was very good fundoing the games, certainly thefirst year or two were brilliantfrom every aspect, because youcould exploit the computers youhad to the full all on your own.As the computers got bigger andmore complicated they tookteams of people to work on. So it

just got more and morecomplicated, and more and morescary from a financial point ofview.

“The 16-bit years weretechnically very interesting, butcommercially I can’t begin to thinkhow people manage it nowadays.The real death knell, for the smallsoftware house at least, seemedto be Sonic the Hedgehog. Thatcame out and it had one trick –woo look the sprite whizzesaround – and it was all about bigbusiness and selling to the lowestcommon denominator. And weweren’t going to survive in thatmarket. So no regrets, absolutelynone. I have no regrets about anyof it.”

Out of interest, Clive traced the female character for the Saboteur 2 loading screen

from an 'adult' magazine

Work in progress screens from Clive's unfinished Saboteur

3 for the PC

✺✯*


**94**



**95**


**96**



**97**


❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | REGULAR:COVERDISC |

**100**

The Retro Gamerissue 11coverdiscfeatures

Durell's BigHits - over 40smash-hit gamesincluding suchclassic titles

as Saboteur,Turbo Esprit

and Thanatos.There's a

selection ofemulators, soyou can play

all the gameson your home PCor Mac, plus abonus section

featuring videowalkthroughs ofseveral Durell

titles

Place the coverdisc into yourCD/DVD drive and it should startautomatically. If not, select Runfrom the Start menu and enter

D:\browser.exe (assuming that D: is theletter of your CD/DVD drive). When thebrowser appears, click OK to acceptthe declaration.

Select a format using thebrowser tabs and then click onthe Durell Games button. Thiswill open a window containing a

directory of all the games for thatformat. You can either copy thegames to your Desktop or open themfrom the coverdisc.

You’ve got the games, but whatabout the emulators? Some of theemulators install straight from thecoverdisc, like Caprice32 or

Euphoric. Just follow the on-screenprompts and wait while the files arecopied onto your hard drive.

Many of the emulators are stored inarchives, so you may need an archivemanager like WinZip to access them.You’ll find WinZip under the

Utilities tab. Extract all the filesfrom the .zip archive using the Extractfeature, then run the executable file.

step

1step

2

step

3step

4

If you’re having a problem with a particular program on our coverdisc,please view the help file in the program for assistance. You might alsoconsider visiting the website of the program author for further help. If thisfails, please email: [email protected].

If you are having problems with the CD, first check that it is not dirtyor scratched. CDs can be cleaned by holding them under the cold water tapand gently rubbing the silver side with a tissue. Dry it carefully withanother tissue.

If the disc still doesn’t work, then it may be faulty. Faulty discs shouldbe returned to Retro Gamer, Live Publishing International Ltd, EuropaHouse, Adlington Park, Macclesfield, Cheshire, UK, SK10 4NP. We willreplace all genuinely faulty discs.

Problem solvingCoverdisc helpline

01625 [email protected]

(Monday-Friday 10am-4pm)Helpline for coverdisc problems only

DISCLAIMERSome of the programs on the Retro Gamer disc interact with your PC on a

fundamental level. We strongly advise you back up your personal data before usingthe disc. Due to the way the Retro Gamer disc is compiled, Retro Gamer, Live

Publishing International Limited and/or any associated company and/or individualcannot take responsibility for damage to your PC or otherwise arising from use of the

coverdisc. You use the programs on the disc at your own risk.

RETRO11 COVERDISC PAGES 06/12/2004 4:52 PM Page 100

Deep Strike

Amstrad, C64, Spectrum

Fat Worm Blows a Sparky

Spectrum

Harrier Attack

Dragon 32, Spectrum

Jungle Trouble

C64, Spectrum

Lunar Landing

Spectrum

Mineshaft

BBC

Operation Hormuz

C64

Saboteur

Amstrad, C64, C16, Plus 4,Spectrum

Saboteur 2


Scuba Dive

C64, Oric, Spectrum

Sigma 7


Spitfire

Spectrum

Starfighter

Oric

Thanatos


Turbo Esprit


**101**

Chain Reaction


Combat Lynx

Amstrad, BBC, Spectrum

Critical Mass


The complete Durell back catalogue - dozensof games across seven different formats.Here's what you'll find on the disc...

>Videofiles

To accompany the Durell

games on the coverdisc,

we’ve compiled video

footage of four classic

titles being played right

through to completion.

The games are Critical

Mass, Saboteur,

Thanatos and Turbo

Esprit, and it’s the

Spectrum version in each

case. The video is

standard AVI format so

you’ll be able to view it

in Windows Media

Player or similar (there’s

no need to mess around

with codecs). However,

to fit the video files onto

the coverdisc, we’ve had

to compress them. As a

result, it may be quicker

to extract the files to

your hard drive and run

them from there.

The game walkthroughs

have been taken from the

RZX Archive

(wwwwww..rrzzxxaarrcchhiivvee..ccoo..uukk)

and videoed using the

Spectaculator emulator (wwwwww..ssppeeccttaaccuullaattoorr..ccoomm). Visit the

RZX Archive for many more game recordings.

>Mac

emulatorsThe coverdisc is duel format, so Mac users can access

the Durell game ROMs. We’ve also included several of

the most popular emulators for each platform, although

we regret that we cannot, at present, offer technical

help regarding the use of Mac software. If you’re

experiencing problems, please consult the emulator’s

documentation or visit the author’s homepage (website

details are listed in the accompanying text file).

Alternatively, post a message on the Retro Gamer forum

(wwwwww..rreettrrooggaammeerr..nneett) – we’re sure one of our readers

will be able to help. Please note that all emulators

require Mac OS X 10.2 or later.

Durell software distributed with full permission from

Elite Systems Ltd (wwwwww..eelliittee--ssyysstteemmss..ccoo..uukk). Content

remains the sole property of Elite Systems Ltd and may

not be re-distributed without prior permission. All

trademarks & copyrights acknowledged.


❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙* | REGULAR:COVERDISC |

**102**

Unzip the WinVICE archive to an empty folder on yourdesktop. The folder contains executable files for severalCommodore machines. To emulate the Commodore 64, simplydouble-click x64.exe and wait for the Commodore BASIC

screen to appear.

step

1To run the emulator full-screen, first select Double Sizefrom the Options menu. You can now toggle full-screenmode on and off by pressing Alt+D. To remove thescanlines click Options/ Double Scan. You are now ready

to load a game.

step

2

If you have a PC Joystick then you can use it with WinVICE.Click Settings/ Joystick Setting and select PC Joystick from thedrop down menu. You can also emulate an original Commodorejoystick using your PC keyboard by selecting Keyset A and then

pressing Config Keyset A.

step

3The games on the coverdisc are a mixture of tape and diskimages. To load either type, select Autostart Disk/Tape Imagefrom the File menu and select a game from the Commodore 64folder. To speed up loading times, toggle Warp on and off by

pressing Alt+W.

step

4

Install Caprice32 from the coverdisc. For ease of use, selectto place shortcuts in the Start menu and on the Desktop. Whenthe files have been copied across to your PC, the familiarAmstrad BASIC screen will be displayed.

step

1The Amstrad games on the coverdisc are in the .dsk format. Toattach a disk to the virtual drive, simply drag and drop thefile into the Caprice32 window. A conformation message will bedisplayed at the bottom of the screen.

step

2

Emulate the Commodore 64 (using WinVICE)

Emulate the Amstrad (using Caprice32)


**103**

Run ZX32 from the coverdisc. Press F9, select the Hardware taband choose a machine from the Default Model menu. Most gameswill run on the ZX Spectrum +3 but if you have any problemsselect the ZX Spectrum 48K model. Now click OK and press F5 to

reset the emulator.

step

1Return to the Options dialog (F9) and select the Input tab.Here you can choose which joystick will be emulated usingyour PC cursor keys (and 0 to fire). Most Spectrum gamessupport Kempston Interface and Sinclair Interface so select

either of these.

step

2

You are now ready to load a program into the emulator. SelectOpen from the ZX menu and search for Spectrum file types(.z80, .tap and .tzx files are supported by the emulator).Zip files are supported too so there is no need to extract

files from archives.

step

3Click Open to load the game. To toggle between windowed andfull screen mode press F4. For a clearer full screendisplay, you can remove the scan lines by pressing F9 andselecting the Display tab. Now change the Screen Drawing

option to Normal.

step

4

To run the game, type in CAT and press the Enter key to displaythe contents of the disk. There may be more than one file listed- you need to run the program file. So, using the example inthe screenshot, type in RUN”CHAIN” and press the Enter key.

step

3The game will now load the virtual disk image. If you wouldlike to speed the emulation up, press F8 and move the CPCSpeed slider under the General tab. When you have changed thesetting, click OK to return to the game.

step

4

Emulate the Spectrum (using ZX32)


Unzip the Model B archive to an empty folder on your desktopand run the modelb.exe file. After a brief pause, the BBCBASIC screen will appear. You can manually resize the windowor select Options/ Resolution and choose one of the pre -

defined resolutions.

step

1To load a game, click File/ Drive 0/ Load. Now browse to thefolder on the coverdisc containing the BBC Micro games andselect one. The Model B emulator supports the .ssd filesthat have been included on the disc.

step

2

Emulate the BBC Micro (using Model B)

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙ | REGULAR:COVERDISC |

**104**

Extract the YAPE archive into an empty folder on your Desktopand run the yape.exe file. The Commodore BASIC screen willappear. The first thing you’ll want to do is increase the sizeof the emulated screen. Bring down the Screen menu and select

the Double Size option.

step

1The next step is to setup the control method. SelectInput Setup from the Settings menu and choose to emulatethe joystick using either the PC cursor keys or thenumber pad (both methods use the number pad 0 as the

fire button).

step

2

You can load a game. Select Autostart Image from the Filemenu. Browse to the folder containing the games and selectone. As YAPE is a Commodore Plus4 emulator, it will also loadCommodore 16 games, so you can play both versions of Saboteur

included on the disc.

step

3Once you have selected a game, YAPE will load it almostinstantly. You can reset the emulator at any time by selectingHard Reset from the Machine menu. You can also save yourposition in the game by selecting File/ Snapshot/ Save

Snapshot As and entering a filename.

step

4

Emulate the Commodore 16/Plus4 (using YAPE)


Following the example in the screenshot, type CHAIN”LOAD” andpress the Enter key to load the game. To view the game in fullscreen mode, simply select Options/ Full Screen. To returnback to windowed mode, right-click anywhere on the screen and

again select Options/ Full Screen.

step

3When in full screen mode you’ll notice the authenticscanlines. To remove these, right-click anywhere on the screenand select Options/ Full Screen Scanlines. Choose the Doublesetting and the scanlines will disappear.

step

4

**105**

Unlike many emulators, Euphoric will actually install itself onyour PC. Run the setup file and follow the onscreen prompts.When the files have been copied across, you will need torestart your PC. When you’re back up and running, select

Start/ Programs/ Oric to open a shortcut window.

step

1By default, Euphoric will associate itself with the .tap fileextension, so you can launch any of the games in the Oricfolder by simply double-clicking them. After a brief pause,the emulator will open in full screen mode and the game you

have selected will be automatically loaded.

step

2

You can easily control games using your PC’s keyboard. Thecursor keys will control movement, while the Space barusually acts as the fire button. In Harrier Attack, forexample, Space fires rockets while any key on the row above

will drop bombs.

step

3At any time during play you can press F1 to bring up theEnvironment Screen. Here you can turn sound on and off,increase the Oric-1 clock speed and reset the emulator amongstother things. You can close the Environment Screen by pressing

F1 again, and F10 will quit out to Windows.

step

4

Emulate the Oric-1 using Euphoric


❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙ | REGULAR:RETRO MART |

**108**

❙❋❙�✄�❇❙Your place to buy and sell all things retro!

Reach thousands of retro collectors with a classified advert in the magazine. Your advert will also be included free of charge on our website!

To advertise in Retro Gamer, simply follow the steps below

SStteepp 11 - Fill in the text of your advert in the box below (one word per box, first 30 words free - Maximum 5 adverts per person).Please use BBLLOOCCKK CCAAPPIITTAALLSS

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56 57 58 59 60££1100..2200 ££1177..0000 ££3344..0000 ££1188..2200 ££3366..4400

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££55..1100 ££1111..9900 ££2233..8800 ££1133..1100 ££2266..2200

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££11..7700 ££88..5500 ££1177..8800 ££99..7700 ££1199..4400

SStteepp 22 - Choose the category for your advert to appear in and tick the box� SINCLAIR FOR SALE� SINCLAIR WANTED� COMMODORE FOR SALE� COMMODORE WANTED

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� RETRO GAMING CLUBS� ANYTHING ELSE RETRO FOR SALE� ANYTHING ELSE RETRO WANTED�MERCHANDISE FOR SALE

SStteepp 33 - CCoommpplleettee yyoouurr nnaammee aanndd aaddddrreessss ddeettaaiillss

Mr/Mrs/Miss

Address

Postcode

SStteepp 44 - PPaayymmeenntt

My advert is no more than 30 wordsand free

My advert is more than 30 words, Ienclose payment as follows

Please tick � PRIVATE � TRADEAdvert amount £............

I am not advertising pirated,pornographic or any other kind of illegalsoftware and my advert is both honestand legitimate. RG reserves the right torefuse or alter adverts at the discretion ofthe management. RG cannot be heldresponsible for the condition or quality ofgoods advertised. Your advert will beprocessed on receipt and will appeara.s.a.p. subject to space and availability.

I enclose a cheque payable to ‘LivePublishing’ OR Please debit myVisa/Mastercard/Switch for the aboveamountName

Tel EmailCard No. Expiry date

Start date Issue No.

IISSSSUUEE NNUUMMBBEERR OORR VVAALLIIDD FFRROOMM ((IIFF SSWWIITTCCHH))

CCAARRDDHHOOLLDDEERR’’SS SSIIGGNNAATTUURREE

Please note: The standard RG conditions ofadvertising apply to all classifiedadvertisements. Cancellations andamendments are not accepted on free ads.The publishers may refuse any advertisementsand cannot guarantee insertion into anyspecific issue. Live Publishing will use yourinformation for administration and analysis. Ifyou do not wish to receive offers from RetroGamer please tick here �

SStteepp 55 -- RReettuurrnniinngg yyoouurr aaddvveerrtt

AA BByy FFaaxx - Complete this form and fax it to 0011662255 885555007711

BB BByy PPoosstt - Complete this form and return it to RReettrroo MMaarrtt,, LLiivvee PPuubblliisshhiinngg,, EEuurrooppaa HHoouussee,, AAddlliinnggttoonn PPaarrkk,,MMaacccclleessffiieelldd,, CChheesshhiirree,, SSKK1100 44NNPP

CC Visit our website at: wwwwww..lliivveeppuubblliisshhiinngg..ccoo..uukk and complete the formonline

IIff yyoouu aarree aa bbuussiinneessss aaddvveerrttiisseerr llooookkiinngg ttoo ppllaaccee aa ddiissppllaayy aaddvveerrtt,, pplleeaassee ccaallll DDaannnnyy oonn 0011662255 885555008866

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RETRO11 Retro Mart 08/12/2004 11:15 AM Page 108

**109**

SINCLAIR FOR SALE

LLooookkiinngg ffoorr nneeww ssooffttwwaarree ffoorr yyoouurrSSppeeccccyy?? – Look no further, asCronosoft offers a range of titlessupporting all Spectrums, includingthe 16K model! ******NNOOWW AAVVAAIILLAABBLLEE****** ZX FootballManager 2005. For more informationhead over to www.cronosoft.co.uk

COMMODORE FOR SALE

DDooeess aannyybbooddyy wwaanntt mmyy QQuuiicckk JJooyyFFoooott PPeeddaall ffoorr tthhee CCoommmmooddoorree 6644aanndd AAmmiiggaa jjooyyssttiicckkss?? – Make thoseretro driving games more realistic.Only £10 including postage andpackaging. Email me for moreinformation –[email protected]

PPrroodduucciinngg nneeww CC6644 ggaammeess!! – Sellingan exciting new range of C64 games,coming soon! More information canbe found athttp://generationxgames.tripod.com

WWee mmaakkee CC6644 ggaammeess ffoorr yyoouu!! –Check outhttp://www.redesign.sk/tnd64for downloadable games, demos,SEUCKs and tools

CCoommmmooddoorree 6644 SSCCAARRTT ccaabbllee – 2m,high quality, fits C64, C128, SX-64,VIC-20, Plus/4, etc. £8 + £1 postage.PayPal or Nochex accepted. Phone07713 630087 or [email protected]

CCoommmmooddoorree SScceennee mmaaggaazziinnee – For allC64, C128, GEOS and emulator users.Subscribe today! Further details areat www.commodorescene.org.uk

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COMMODORE WANTED

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ATARI FOR SALE

AAttaarrii 88--bbiitt SSCCAARRTT ccaabbllee – 2m, highquality, fits 800, 600XL, 800XL, 65XE,130XE etc. £8 + £1 postage. PayPalor Nochex accepted. Phone 07713630087 or [email protected]

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insured postage and [email protected] forphoto and details.

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NINTENDO FOR SALE

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SEGA WANTED

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OTHER FOR SALE

RReettrroo ccoommppuutteerr aanndd ccoonnssoollee ccoolllleeccttoorrsseelllliinngg vvaarriioouuss rraarree iitteemmss – SegaMulti CD, MGT-Plus-D, Oric, andvarious Spectum, Commodore, Atari,Nintendo, Game & Watch, TIcalculators, Saturn and Dreamcastitems. For more information andphotos email me [email protected]

VVeeccttrreexx iinn VVGGCC – Plus 14 cartridges,unboxed but with manuals andscreen overlays. All housed in originalVectrex carrying case. Awaiting offers.For more information [email protected]

WWooww!! LLooookk!! FFiinnaall DDoooomm ffoorr PPSSoonnee –UK version, boxed with instructionsand in good condition. £12 + £1insured P&P. [email protected] forphoto/details

MMiinntt ccoonnddiittiioonn ZZeellddaa’’ss AAddvveennttuurree –For the Philips CD-I. In original case.£85 inclusive of postage. [email protected] forfurther information

FFoorr ssaallee!! HHuunnddrreeddss ooff rreettrroo ggaammiinnggiitteemmss – Check outwww.retroscene.co.uk for moredetails.

HHiigghh--qquuaalliittyy DDrraaggoonn 3322//6644 22mm SSCCAARRTTccaabbllee ffoorr ssaallee – £8 + £1 postage.Phone 07713 630087 or [email protected]

VViiddeeooppaacc 6633++ FFLLAASSHH PPOOIINNTT – Nowavailable on cart. For more infoplease check www.dieterkoenig.at/ccc

NNeeooGGeeoo PPoocckkeett FFaattaall FFuurryy – New inplastic case only. UK version £14 plusfree postage. PayPal and Nochexwelcomed. For more NeoGeo pocketgames and prices, please ask. [email protected]

MMyy eennttiirree rreettrrooccoolllleeccttiioonn ffoorr ssaallee –Nine consoles and 86games, including NES, SNES,GameBoy, Sega Megadrive,Game Gear, Saturn, Atari Jaguar,Supervision and an Amstrad GX4000.£285. Email me for a full list [email protected]

SSppeeccttrruumm aanndd CC6644 ggaammeess ffoorr ssaallee –Please email me for a list [email protected]

JJoobb lloott ooff ccoommppuutteerr bbooookkss – Variousformats, such as Oric, C64 andSinclair. Will split for around £1 each.Postage and Packaging at Royal Mailcost. Email me for photos and detailsat [email protected]

JJoobb lloott ooff WWiinnddoowwss aanndd IIBBMM PPCCggaammeess – Mostly UK versions. Most areboxed with instructions and on CD.Will split at around £1 each. Postageand Packaging at Royal Mail cost. [email protected] forphotos and details

OTHER WANTED

JJAAMMMMAA AArrccaaddee bbooaarrddss ((PPCCBBss)) wwaanntteedd– Will pay cash or trade for one of myJAMMA boards or some NES, SNES,Megadrive or Amiga games. Telephone07736 044 993

RETRO GAMING CLUBS

RReettrroo GGaammiinngg IInntteerreesstt GGrroouupp – Basedin Ingham, Australia. For furtherinformation about us, please phone0431 815 151

HHeelllloo,, II’’mm llooookkiinngg ffoorr ssoommee mmeemmbbeerrssffoorr mmyy IInntteerrnneett ffoorruummss aattwwwwww..iinnggoommaanniiaa..ccoo..uukk – Talk aboutanything retro! (NES Classics layoutcoming soon, and extended retrozone)!

DDrreeaammccaasstt nneewwss aanndd rreevviieewwss – Pastand present (including new imports),with open discussion forums. Checkout http://www.dreamcast-lives.tk

IInntteerreesstteedd iinn tthhee ZZXX SSppeeccttrruumm?? –Check out ZXF – THE free onlinepublication for all of your Speccyneeds. Issue 9 is out now with all thenews and views that matter.Download your copy fromwwwwww..ccwwooooddccoocckk..ccoo..uukk//zzxxff

TThhee MMAAMMEE DDoommaaiinn!! – Come andexperience the best emulator there is,all you need to relive those arcadeclassics. Check it out athttp://mamedomain.0catch.com. Youwon’t regret it

SSEELLLL YYOOUURR

RREETTRROO GGEEAARR --

3300 WWOORRDDSS FFRREEEE!!

RETRO11 Retro Mart 08/12/2004 12:07 PM Page 109

Untitled-1 1 1/9/06 12:55:47

ISSUE 12 HITS THE SHELVES�

A POSITIVE BOUNTY OF RETRO GOODNESS�

20TH JANUARY 2005�

RETRO10 Next Month 08/12/2004 11:40 AM Page 113

❙❋❙�✄❍❇�❋❙ | REGULAR:ENDGAME |

**114**

This month it's the explosiveconclusion to Special CriminalInvestigation (Chase H.Q. II), in which our sharp-dressed heroeshave just 30 seconds to rescuethe mayor's daughter from awarehouse before it explodes...

Endgame

There’s only seconds left.

Hit the

turbo button and hold onto

your hat!

The car screeches to a halt ou

tside the

factory with a single second t

o spare

But that’s plenty of time to

get

Jennifer out before the roof

blows off

The mayor hugs his daughte

r. “Oh

Jennifer - are you alright

, baby?”

Thank you very much for pl

aying.

Good night and God bless!

RETRO10 Endgame 08/12/2004 11:39 AM Page 114

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