commodore 64 – Little Bits of Gaming & Movies

Memories Of The Commodore 64, 40 Years Later

The beige breadbin that is the Commodore 64 turns 40 years old this month. I’ve played on a lot of computers and consoles over my 40+ years of gaming, but there has always been something very special about the C64. It wasn’t my first gaming machine and it wasn’t the best or even my favourite… but it was special. Right here, I’m going to take a look at (or at least, try to remember) some of my fondest memories of growing up with the C64. Bearing in mind that I am over the mid-40s now and I’m the kind of person who goes upstairs and forgets what I went up there for. So, recalling things from several decades ago is really going to be a challenge.

As a family, our first gaming machine (like a great many other gamers in my age range) was the Atari 2600. This was where my passion for gaming began, playing arcade games like Space Invaders, Pong and others at home. Getting utterly confused by Raiders of the Lost Ark because it had an actual plot to follow and an ending to see, which was very unusual back then. Family holidays were spent at one of England’s many seasides and that was where I was introduced to the arcade. By the time the Commodore 64 was released in 1982, 6-year-old I was already pretty much heavily into gaming. However, I didn’t even play on the C64 until a few years after its release.

Christmas 1986 was the first time I got my hands on the machine. I have told this story before in one of my books (available on Amazon), but I’m going to tell it again here. Growing up, as a family, we didn’t have a lot. This was largely due to my ‘dad’ being a wanker and walking out, leaving my Mom to bring up three kids on her own with very little money. It was the early 80s and being a single parent back then had a stigma attached to it, the help was not there like it is today and things were very rough. Especially when my dad left my Mom with loads of debts to clear too. Mom would often hold down multiple part-time jobs and struggle to put food on the table. Us kids would have to wear second-hand clothes and such. We couldn’t afford to have the heating on and in winter in England, it was fucking freezing cold. Basically, we had very little and what we did have was never new.

Anyway, Christmas Eve of 1986 and my Mom had to go out to work at a local pub to help bring in some much-needed cash, leaving me and my two older brothers at home for a few hours, with our neighbours checking in on us now and then (yes, this was normal back then). I would’ve been 10 at the time and my oldest brother 16. With Mom out of the house for a few hours, we kids did what kids do on Christmas Eve… we went looking for presents. My older brother, Rob, found a neatly wrapped gift at the back of my Mom’s wardrobe. A pretty large oblong-shaped thing that was quite heavy. The label was addressed to us three kids with love from Mom. With the precision of a surgeon carrying out a tipple bypass operation, Rob delicately removed the sellotape from the present, being careful not to rip the wrapping paper. With one end of the gift open, he slowly slid the heavy oblong-shaped box out. It was a Commodore 64. A brand new, still factory-sealed (well, a bit of tape at the end of the box) Commodore 64. As previously mentioned, we never had anything new it was always second-hand. A new C64 must’ve set my Mom back a good few quid in 1986 even though it was already a few years old, with the Commodore 64 being released at the start of 1983 here in the UK.

Not only was there the computer itself but a joystick, the C64 cassette deck for loading the games and a copy of Gauntlet. which was the big game of 1986. Altogether, that must’ve cost my Mom loads of money. Just doing a bit of basic research and at Argos (prices in the pic above are from 1985) around 1986, the C64 was sold for £180, the joystick was £6, the cassette deck around £30 and a copy of Gauntlet would have been around £7. That’s £223 or almost £540 these days. That was a big chunk in 1986 for a single parent with very little income and all while paying her way out of debt that wasn’t hers. My Mom must’ve worked and saved for months.

So, the computer was unboxed, set up, Gauntlet was loaded and we were playing our Christmas present on Christmas Eve while my Mom was at work. A couple of hours later and everything was packed away, the box slid back into its Christmas paper sheath and the sellotape re-applied and everything was placed back where my brother found it. Ready for Christmas morning when we would have to act surprised. That was my first time playing the Commodore 64, it kick-started my love for the computer and was the start of my journey as a gamer proper. Yeah, we had an Atari 2600 first but I was a few years old at the time and didn’t really understand or enjoy gaming in the same way I did as a 10-year-old playing the C64 for the first time. The 2600 was my introduction to home gaming, but the C64 was the machine that grew me into a gamer.

Piracy was rife back then and incredibly easy too. All you needed was a twin tape deck and some blank tapes. Get a copy of an original game (or even a copy of a copy of an original game) and pop it into one of the tape decks, press play. In the other deck, you’d have your blank tape and press record. A few minutes later and you have a copy of a game. In the 80s during the rise of the microcomputer, everybody I knew was pirating the software. Everybody knew someone who copied games and they knew someone who knew someone who copied games. We had a few original games, sure. But most of our collection were copies. Everyone was doing it, so it never felt wrong. Plus, the whole ‘piracy is bad’ thing didn’t really begin to take off until the latter part of the 80s and piracy was seen as more of a grey area than an outright illegal act. There was a whole swapping community back then and people who owned games on one of the microcomputers of the day would often lend games to people, they would be copied and soon enough, copies of games were everywhere.

People copying original games, people copying copies of original games. The piracy scene grew and grew and due to that, we had a fuck-ton of games to play growing up. Still, there was the occasion when we would get an original game. I remember one time when my brother was really looking forward to The Last Ninja, released in 1987. I think it may have been his birthday and he kept dropping hints that he wanted the game to my Mom. She was always great at pretending to not pay attention or make out that she had no idea what he was talking about… but she was taking notes. My brother was an amazing artist when he was younger, a skill he never bothered to follow through with. Anyway, one of the things he liked to do was take ads in gaming magazines and draw them himself and he was really bloody good at it too. He would save up and spend his pocket money on pencils, paper, poster paint and so on. He once drew the iconic The Last Ninja poster, the one that was mostly black and with a pair of eyes.

He drew the whole lot, the font, the bit of light reflecting off the ninja mask, the red lines details in the eyes and the beads of sweat. It was incredibly detailed and it looked just like the real poster. Sometimes he would put his own posters on his bedroom wall, sometimes he even painted murals directly on his bedroom wall. Why he never kept up with his art, I have no idea because he was really good. So, he had this self-made The Last Ninja poster and showed it to my Mom, saying this was the new game he wanted for the C64. She did what she did best and made out that she had no idea what he was going on about. Then, one weekend, Mom took a trip to Toys ‘Я’ Us and picked up a copy of The Last Ninja for my brother’s birthday… only she didn’t.

Instead of buying a copy of The Last Ninja, Mom actually bought a copy of a game called Ninja. To be fair, it wasn’t a bad little game. A bit basic, very short and could be finished in around 5 minutes but it was okay, with some great music from Rob Hubbard. Needless to say, my brother was not best pleased. The Last Ninja was this sprawling (kind of) open exploration/action-adventure type game with some amazing graphics and combat. It was fucking hard with some very tricky jumping mechanics and awkward controls, but it was getting some amazing review scores at the time and it became the best-selling C64 game ever. Comparing that to the budget game Ninja? Yup, very disappointing. Mom did eventually go out and get a copy of The Last Ninja, after my brother’s birthday.

OutRun is another fond Commodore 64 memory of mine. I love OutRun and still think that it is the quintessential arcade racer. I used to play it a lot in the arcade whenever we went on family holidays. So, when it was released for the C64, it was a must-have game. The arcade version was eye-blisteringly fast, beautiful to look at and great fun to play. The C64 port… not so good. Still, you just could not expect arcade quality in a home computer. OutRun on the C64 was rough, but it was still payable and at the time, it bought me a lot of joy back then. Plus, the tape had the original arcade soundtrack on it. The story behind how the port was made has gone on to become quite a bit infamous within the gaming community. I even wrote an article on that very subject right here.

There was something about that 1987-88 era of the Commodore 64 that was just magical Loads of really great games came out around then. Two I have just mentioned with The Last Ninja and OutRun. but then you also had the likes of International Karate +, Wizball, The Great Giana Sisters (best gaming rip-off ever) and Sid Meier’s Pirates!, just to name a few. Because we didn’t get our C64 until late 86 and as it had already been out for a few years by then, we had a lot of games to catch up on. This is where the whole piracy thing came into full force. There were very few Commodore 64 games that we didn’t own and via a mass collection of previously blank cassette tapes (housed in several boxes) and we made up for all we had missed before 1986. Everybody pirated C64 games and Idris Elba is a liar.

Titles like Bruce Lee and Pitstop II became games me and my brother played together for some 2-player action. The first time I even pulled a sicky at school was just so I could stay at home and play some Commodore 64. I became obsessed with Ghostbusters and played it for hours on end. I was getting so close to finishing the game over a weekend too and had to go to school on Monday. So, I played sick Sunday night, telling Mom that I didn’t feel well and that I wanted to go to bed. It just so happened that I had the C64 set up in my bedroom at the time and a small black & white portable TV. So off I went to bed feeling ‘ill’… only to load up some Ghostbusters and play it on the quiet. Listening out for my Mom’s footsteps coming up the stairs as she would come to check up on me as I was so ‘ill’. I’d quickly turn the TV off and cover the red light on the C64, before pretending to be asleep. then when she went back downstairs, flick the TV back on and continue playing.

The next morning and I had to continue the charade of being ‘ill’. Mom got the thermometer out and I did the old trick of putting it near the lightbulb of the bedside lamp when Mom left my bedroom. Not too long as I didn’t want to have a temperature of 200º, but long enough to keep me off school for a day or two at least. It worked and Mom spent the next couple of days going up and down the stairs to check on me, bring me soup, etc. All the time I was playing the C64 and switching the TV off every time I heard those footsteps. I became a bit of a ninja at it. Of course, I couldn’t pretend to be asleep every time Mom came upstairs as being asleep for 2 days straight would look suspicious. I had a backup plan, I had a couple of school books and I would pretend that I was doing some school work every now and then. You know, in an effort to say ‘look Mom, I really want to go back to school but I’m too ill’ and then play come C64 when she went back downstairs.

Skool Daze was another game I would play religiously. Any self-respecting microcomputer aficionado would tell you that playing Skool Daze is a ZX Spectrum thing and not a Commodore 64 one. I agree too, the Speccy version was better, but I didn’t have a Speccy, I had a C64. It still played well though, a few niggles aside. Oh, and I have to tell you the story of when I stole from Toys ‘Я’ Us. I was really into playing Little Computer People. It was basically a precursor to The Sims. The game would give you a person to look after in their own house. You would have to type various keyboard commands to get the person to do things. The problem was that Little Computer People was one of the (many) pirated games that we had, so no instruction manual. No instructions meant that I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. Anyway, I was in the city centre with a couple of friends on a Saturday afternoon and we went in to Toys ‘Я’ Us. After some browsing, I found Little Computer People on the shelf. I opened it (there was no security or cellophane on the games back then) and took the instruction inlay out, popped it into my pocket and left. Yup, I stole the instructions to Little Computer People on the C64. Not the game itself, I put that back on the self, without its inlay.

Memories of getting frustrated while playing Aztec Challenge, trying to dodge those spears in the first stage. I only ever did that once and saw the second level on the stairs once. It was only after watching a playthrough recently that I got to see the rest of the game. Beach Head II: The Dictator Strikes Back and its speech samples. Shooting at all those little stickmen as they screamed ‘MEDIC!’ and leaving bullet holes all over the place. Speaking of speech samples, the ‘Another visitor. Stay a while, stay forever’ of Impossible Mission is something that has been ingrained into my memory forever. It was a great game too, the smooth running animation, somersaulting over robots and searching rooms. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing back then, but I loved playing it.

And what about all of those Games games? World Games, Summer Games, California Games and so on. I remember those being some seriously competitive shit. Me and my brothers would play them together, trying to beat each other’s scores and times. People say that playing Monopoly can be a family destroyer. Well, the Games games were the digital version of that. They were also games that we had to work out how to play them as they were pirated copies and had no instructions. As each of the events in each of the titles had their own control methods, working out just how to play them often took a long time. Rescue on Fractalus!, what a pioneering game. A first-person shooter with exploration. Kind of like a 3D version of Defender with you having to save people on the surface of a planet… just watch out for the jump scare alien. A little tit-bit for you. Rescue on Fractalus! was developed by LucasArts and they were going to make a sequel in the late 90s. It eventually evolved into Star Wars: Rogue Squadron on the N64.

I could sit here for hours listing Commodore 64 games that I played and the ones that moulded me into the gamer I am today. I’ve barely even to touched the tip of the iceberg here. But I am in danger of this becoming a bit of a tome of an article. To be honest, our Commodore 64 didn’t have a very long life. By the time 1989 came around, my older brother was working and bringing in his own money. He bought an Amiga 500 and the Commodore 64 resided in my bedroom for a while, before it was put into the loft and soon forgotten about as the 8-bit computer made way for its 16-bit brother. We only got about 3 or so years of use out of it, but the Commodore 64 was what shaped me into the gamer I am today. It wasn’t my first gaming experience, perhaps not even the best. But it was a time that I look back on fondly and remember all the fun I had.

Sir Clive Sinclair: The Man Who Shaped British Gaming

LBoG: In Memorandum

Yesterday, it came up on my newsfeed that Sir Clive Sinclair had died aged 81. The news spread over the various gaming groups that I’m a part of pretty damn fast. I went to sleep last night with no strong feelings about his passing. Perhaps that sounds a little callous on my part? I mean, yeah, Sinclair dying is a massive blow to the gaming world. Yet to me, last night, it really didn’t hit me. This morning? It’s a very different story.

Last night, I thought I should write something about Clive Sinclair’s death, even if I didn’t really want to. Today, there’s a massive desire to write something after sleeping on the news and reflecting on all he and his ZX Spectrum did for gaming. Before I get to that though, I need to explain why my initial feelings yesterday over Sinclair’s death were ‘lax’, for want of a better word…

Growing up, I didn’t have a ZX Spectrum. We (as a family) had a Commodore 64 and before the whole Sega vs Nintendo war, there was Commodore 64 vs ZX Spectrum… with the Amstrad CPC 464 in there somewhere. Still, there was massive rivalry between the American import and the very British made microcomputers back then. It was our generation’s The Beatles vs The Rolling Stones. Or perhaps more apt, The Monkees vs The Beatles, and you had to be on one side or the other. I was very firmly on the side of the beige breadbin, that was the C64 over the rubber-keyed wafer that was the Speccy.

I was very fortunate as a kid because I had friends who owned one of the other machines. So while I had a C64, I still got to play on pretty much every other machine back then. One of our neighbours had a Speccy and I got to play plenty of games on it. Sometimes, we would even swap computers for a weekend or longer. So I really got to grow up with the best of everything back then. While I was very much in the Commodore 64 camp when it came to the microcomputer wars of the early eighties, I never disliked the ZX Spectrum. Still, it was Jack Tramiel’s American import that captured my heart as a kid and not Clive Sinclair’s very British computer. I think that was why my initial reaction to Clive Sinclair’s death wasn’t all that big, because the ZX Spectrum was more of a background thing for me and not my main computer as a child.

But, as I said, after sleeping on the news and thinking back to the ‘good old days’, Sinclair’s Speccy was a revelation. I wrote a rather in-depth book on the British gaming industry and my absolute favourite era of gaming ever was the early to mid-eighties, bedroom coders age that shaped the entire British gaming industry. When I look back on that era of gaming, it really was the ZX Spectrum that paved the way for the gaming pioneers of the day. That’s what this article is going to be looking at, the games and names that were launched on the ZX Spectrum, the computer that Clive Sinclair brought to the masses and pretty much created the British gaming industry.

Just where do you start with the games and names from the Speccy years? I think I’ll begin with the fella that became a mascot (of sorts) for the computer itself. Horace made his debut in Hungry Horace, which was nothing more than a Pac-Man clone. Still, the character went on to star in several other games and he became the unofficial mascot of the ZX Spectrum. 1983’s Horace Goes Skiing was perhaps the most popular and best-remembered game in Horace’s career, it was the one game that every Speccy owner had… even if it wasn’t very British, it still defined British gaming.

Jet Pac was the game that launched one of the most popular gaming companies ever. A very simple, single-screen shooter with a wonderful arcade-feel. Jet Pac was the first Speccy game that the Stamper brothers (Chris and Tim) released under their new company, Ultimate Play The Game in 1983. Ultimate made some corking Speccy games back then and Jet Pac was one of them. Of course, Ultimate also made Knight Lore in 1984. For me, Knight Lore is one of the most important British video games ever made, right behind Elite (originally on the BBC Micro, but ported to the Speccy) That isometric game engine that Ultimate used for Knight Lore was revolutionary at the time. In fact, there’s a story that Ultimate Play The Game delayed the release of Knight Lore as it was so advanced that it made other games (including some of their own) look dated by comparison. I could sit here and namecheck other Ultimate games on the Speccy, but I have others to cover. Still, when the Stamper brothers became a bit jaded with their company, they created a new studio called Rare… and well, you all know how that turned out.

I don’t think you’re legally allowed to talk about the ZX Spectrum and not bring up Matt Smith’s Manic Miner. This was another one of those games that shaped and even changed the whole British gaming landscape. I’m not going to harp on about the genius that was Matt Smith as a coder (he was an utter genius though), but Manic Miner was and still is one of the most fondly remembered Speccy titles. A single-screen platformer famed for its Pythonesque humour and rather tricky-dicky difficulty. It would go on to spawn sequels with the likes of Jet Set Willy, another Speccy classic. Matt Smith became one of the first bedroom coding superstars thanks to his games and Clive Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum.

The breaker of many a joystick in 1984 was Daley Thompson’s Decathlon. Really, nothing more than a clone of the arcade hit, Track & Field from Konami. This was released when Daley Thompson became a British sporting hero thanks to his success at the 1984 Olympic Games. It was one of the first celebrity-endorsed video games too. A lot of fun and frustration was to be had with Daley Thompson’s Decathlon and it was a stone-cold Speccy classic.

Not just a great British developed ZX Spectrum game but a damn amazing game in its own right. Skool Daze from Microsphere was a very early example of an open-world title. The freedom the game games you was amazing at the time, there was a plot to follow, but you didn’t have to. As a C64 owner, this was the one game that made me envious that I didn’t have a ZX Spectrum. I know a Commodore 64 port came later… but it just wasn’t the same. The C64 version felt clunkier and slower. Skool Daze, and its sequel, Back to Skool were defining games for the Speccy and true British gaming classics.

I think I’ll finish with an egg. Dizzy was the first game in the very popular Dizzy franchise. Codemasters were the publisher, and they’re still going today too… now owned by the evil devil spawn that is EA. Anyway, Dizzy wasn’t a Speccy exclusive as it was ported to pretty much every microcomputer back then. But the first time I played it was on the ZX spectrum. There have been a tonne of Dizzy games released since the first title in 1987 too. I mean, Wonderful Dizzy was released in 2020. There have been numerous sequels, fan-games and remakes of the Dizzy games over the last thirty-odd years. But that first title, the original Dizzy created by the Oliver Twins is where it all started and the ZX Spectrum original is a game that many fans still praise today.

Well, that’s about it. Yeah I know I’m missing some absolute Speccy classics, but I do have to end this article sometime. Still, looking back over the years, the games I have played and just how massively important some of these titles were to the British gaming industry. You really do have to pause, say ‘thank you’ and show some deep respect to Sir Clive Sinclair and his ZX Spectrum…

OutRun, The Teenager And The Commodore 64 Port

LBoG: Editorials

Sega’s classic OutRun is easily one of my all-time favourite games and it turns 35-years-old this very day. Its sense of speed and thrills as you tear around Europe in a blood-red Ferrari Testarossa, sunglasses-wearing dude with his blonde girlfriend by his side. That awesome soundtrack that you can still hear in your head thirty-five years later… even without playing the game itself. OutRun was the eighties encapsulated in an arcade game. As I said, it is one of my all-time favourite games. I couldn’t tell you how much pocket money I spent on the arcade cabinet while on family holidays, where I would always make a beeline for the nearest arcade.

When it was revealed that OutRun would be coming to the home computers of the day, I was beyond excited. It was going to be released for the Commodore 64, we had a C64… I had to have OutRun on it. I would’ve been about 10-years-old at the time when OutRun came to the microcomputers of the day. I never really understood how gaming and ports worked back then, I was expecting OutRun from the arcade on our Commodore 64. Of course, the C64 was way too underpowered to handle an arcade-perfect conversion (which I never grasped as a kid) and when I did finally play Sega’s mighty racer on our computer… I was mildly disappointed. It didn’t really look like the arcade version, it wasn’t as fast (depending on the version) and it most definitely didn’t play as well either. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the home ports of OutRun were bad… okay, some were yes. Just more of a case that 10-year-old me didn’t understand why my C64 version didn’t look like the arcade game that I loved so much. If you look at reviews for the home ports back then, you’ll find a lot of average to slightly above average scores. I’ve been playing the C64 version of OutRun recently now as an adult, it’s really not that bad at all. Pretty damn good in fact. Of course, it is limited given the hardware but it is a fairly competent racer all told.

It was while I was researching my book MicroBrtis and the Ocean/U.S. Gold chapters in particular when I began to uncover the story behind just how that Commodore 64 port of OutRun came about. Pretty much the work of one man… well one boy actually. The-then 17-year-old Martin Webb. A story that I feel could do with being covered as it is a wonderful insight into those early days of British gaming. Oh yeah, Martin Webb was a Brit.

Anyway, Martin had already programmed a few titles before he got the OutRun gig. These games were made for the Texas Instruments TI-99 home computer and they were sold mail-order via Martin’s home in Shropshire. It was his father, Dennis Webb who managed the home-based business as well as managing Martin too. While Martin would take care of the programming of the games, it was Dennis who’d handle the graphics. The father and son team really worked out well, they called their company, Intrigue Software and sold quite a few units. However, game sales on the TI-99 began to dry up when home computers such as the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 hit the market.

Martin Webb favoured the C64 and taught himself how to code on it. As the market grew, it soon became clear that father and son could no longer fund the publication of their own games, they needed a big player in the industry to sell their games. It was an idea that Dennis Webb was not too keen on, he had always handled the business up to this point and he really didn’t relish the idea of a big-name company taking over. The relationship between father and son soon became taut and arguments between the two would often break out. Dennis, more than often, would push his teenage son much further than he ever really should have. It all really came to a head when Martin ran away from home. His father went driving around to find him and eventually brought Martin back.

Still, Dennis finally began to see Martin’s point. They were running out of money fast and perhaps getting a more experienced company to sell their games would be a good idea. Martin created a game called Snap Dragon (AKA Karate Chop) for the C64. It was a beat ’em up thing… and it wasn’t very good, very average. Still, it did show that Martin could program on the C64. Ocean Software were a pretty big publisher in the C64 days and Martin set his sights on selling his game to them. A meeting was set up and Martin showed off his new game. Ocean turned it down because they were working on the C64 port of the arcade hit, Yie Ar Kung-Fu (released under the Imagine label that Ocean owned at that point… read my book!). Ocean didn’t feel like putting money behind another beat ’em up, so they turned Martin away. However, the publisher, Bubble Bus Software, bought the game from Martin for £5,000. Not a bad payday in 1987.

Martin developed another game for Bubble Bus Software, Max Torque. This was a blatant rip-off of Sega’s classic bike game, Hang-On. After that, he started work on a clone of Sega’s OutRun. using assets from his Max Torque game and basically swapping out the bikes for cars. To try and avoid any legal issues, Martin used a Porsche for the star of his car game over the famed Ferrari used in OutRun. When his OutRun clone was finished, he needed to find a publisher. Bubble Bus Software wasn’t exactly one of the big names and while they were paying, they weren’t paying all that much. The money began to dry up again and Dennis once more became abusive towards his son. Arguments often evolved into physical fights as Dennis continually pushed his teenage son to code more games. Their relationship was hanging by a thread.

The Webbs sought out a bigger, better and more established publisher for future games. They went to U.S. Gold. Martin showed off his OutRun clone to U.S. Gold boss, Geoff Brown and a handful of programmers. Martin had added a dashboard and steering wheel HUD to his rip-off as he wanted it to look the like OutRun arcade cabinet. As his hand-drawn Porsche sprite raced over the roads on the game, Geoff Brown and the programmers were very impressed that a 17-year-old kid had programmed a rather speedy looking racing game all on his own. Still, as impressed as U.S. Gold were, they couldn’t buy Martin’s racing game from him to publish.

Geoff took Martin into a separate room to talk to him alone, away from his overbearing father. In that room was a sit-down OutRun arcade cabinet and that was when Geoff Brown hit Martin with the big news. U.S. Gold had very recently signed a deal with Sega to produce the homeports of the arcade version of OutRun and here was this teenager with a prototype of a game that had pretty much exactly what U.S. Gold needed. Effectively, the OutRun port that U.S. Gold had signed up to do partly existed. An hour later and Dennis Webb was signing a contract for Martin to convert OutRun to the Commodore 64. The Webbs were given a £20,000 advance and Martin returned back home and set about turning his OutRun rip-off into an actual, fully licensed OutRun conversion.

The first things Martin programmed were the high-score table and the radio where you select the music. These had to be in the game as U.S. Gold requested them. Also, once he had those in place, Martin knew how much memory he had left to squeeze the massive OutRun arcade game onto a C64 tape. Martin’s clone didn’t have and hills in it, but OutRun did. That was a bit of an issue and programming in hills would take up much-needed memory. Martin got around this by simply moving the horizon in the background up and down. The next big issue was the roadside graphics. The arcade version of OutRun was famed for its very impressive sprite/texture scaling capabilities. This made the game buttery smooth, fast and highly detailed. There was no way that the C64 could replicate what the arcade could do with ease.

Martin had to decide to go for either detailed graphics that looked like the arcade version (or at least as close as he could get them on a C64) or speed. Speed was what made OutRun such a popular game in the first place. Yeah, it looked nice and all, but if the arcade game had been a sluggish racer, it wouldn’t have been as impressive as it was. Martin knew he had to compromise on the graphics to make the game as fast as possible. A lot of the smaller details were dropped and the roadside objects were big, chunky graphics that, truth be told, were not all that pleasing to the eye. Still, Martin’s OutRun conversion may not have been a graphical powerhouse, but it was fast for a racing game on the C64.

Martin didn’t have OutRun’s source code, no design documents to work from either. He was given access to one of the arcade cabinets (U.S. Gold sent him one which he had in his garage at home) and played it for hours on end. He’d record footage of the game on a camcorder and made copious amounts of notes. He strived to make the roads/tracks in his game look and feel just like the arcade version. Put the turns in the right place, hills where they were, etc. But due to the limitations of the hardware, Martin did have to use a few ‘cheats’ as some stages are the same as others, just with different colours, etc. But there was one feature from the arcade that was missing, the forking road/choice of route. Martin did try to implement it into the game, but it was just too problematic. The Commodore 64 just could not handle a multi-loading/branching system that could be played on the fly as in the arcade. He could’ve made the game stop and then have to load each selectable route. But as most games were on cassette tapes at the time (there were disk versions), that would’ve broken up the flow and speed of the game. Plus, being on a tape would mean having to fast forward and rewind the tape to the correct loading spot each time… and that would just be a pain in the arse.

So, as there was no branching system, you just loaded which of the routes you wanted to play (load route A or route B as an example) and then it played out like a single race. Wanted to try a different route? You’ve had to restart and load up one of the other pre-set routes. Still, all stages from the arcade version were included in the C64 port (with some limitations), which was pretty damn impressive for the time. However, having to program every possible stage really was difficult for Martin, who had turned 18-years-old by the time the game had been finished, and was still very much a youngster under immense pressure, mainly from his father.

Speaking of which, Dennis Webb handled the graphics for OutRun and added little Easter eggs onto the licence plates of the cars by including the initials of himself, Martin and friends. The Porsche from Martin’s OutRun clone/prototype even makes an appearance too.

The awesome arcade music was pretty well re-created for the C64 byJason Brooke. Though the game only had two of the three tunes from the arcade. However, the game came with an audiotape of the original arcade music, so you could just pop that bad boy into your hi-fi (look them up kids) and enjoy arcade-perfect music. The Commodore 64 version of OutRun got fair to middling reviews when released. A lot of mid to high-60% scores. Still, the above-average reviews didn’t really matter as, despite the game being released on the 10th of December 1987, it actually became the biggest selling game of the year. That’s pretty impressive for a game that was only on the shelves for a few weeks of that year. Around 250,000 copies were shifted across all formats over Christmas (one was mine). Martin and his dad made plenty of money too. Their first royalty payment was for £17,000 and it had been said that they made about £80,000 total, that’s in 1980 money too. It was the most amount of money the father and son had made from a game.

U.S. Gold were so happy with Martin’s conversion that he was flown out to Chicago to work on the NTSC version of the port, to be published by Mindscape. The US version is arguably better, the graphics are more refined, it runs faster and it has an actual route selector, so no more having to reload a new game if you wanted to play a different route. Quite amazingly, the US version only took around two weeks to program too. The Euro version took closer to six months. While in the US, Martin was headhunted by Nintendo, but his father was too protective of his ‘asset’ and soon put a stop to Martin working for anyone else. When he got back to the UK, U.S. Gold gave Martin another arcade conversion to do, Atari’s RoadBlasters. As this was another arcade racer, Martin just reused and tweaked assets from his OutRun conversion and did the job with relative ease.

Though they were doing well and being offered more jobs, the relationship between father and son was breaking down. While in public, Dennis would always praise and show respect to his son. But behind closed doors, it was a very different story. More arguments, more fights as Dennis pushed his son further and harder to keep programming games. Martin was old enough to move out by then, so he did. He packed his bags, left the family home and the games industry allogether.

Martin now lives in Brazil and has his own cloud software company. He still likes to talk about the ‘good old days’ as he did right here in 2020. He also comments on some of the YouTube videos covering the home ports of OutRun too (he replied to me and gave info for this very article). Still, as upsetting as his past may have been for him in regards to his relationship with his father (that he doesn’t like to talk about these days), Martin did bring one of the biggest arcade games home for so many gamers back in 1987, me being one of them. I still remember that cold Friday Christmas morning, opening my presents. Mom had got me (and my bothers) a copy of OutRun on the Commodore 64, bliss. A game that brought me so many hours of enjoyment and for that, I deeply thank Martin Webb.

Best Of British Game Developers Publishers – An Introduction

LBoG: Retrospectives

Okay so before I get into this one, I need to explain my big plan here. I want to write an insightful book covering some of the best of British game developers and publishers of the 8, 16 and 32 bit bit era of gaming and some of their games. How they started, the games they released and where they are today. This article right here is a small prototype of what I want to book to be, the final book will be a much bigger idea. This is just a quick-ish look at one of many British game developers and publishers I aim to cover. I already have three of these written up, this is only one of them (an abridged version at that too) and there is a lot more to cover.

This article will be a look at Imagine Software just to whet the appetite. I also have write-ups of Psygnosis and Ocean already done too. But those are just the tip of the iceberg as I’m planning on covering Elite, U.S. Gold (despite the name they were British), Gremlin Graphics, The Bitmap Brothers, Ultimate Play The Game (who later became Rare), DMA Design (who became Rockstar) and also cover the great Peter Molynuex’s companies including Bullfrog and Lionhead. Quite possibly more will be added to the list as I continue to write more and more…Codemasters?

I have been researching this for the last 12 months or so, watching documentaries, reading articles, digging up old gaming magazines and of course mining my own memories of growing up playing the games of these companies myself. I have a tonne of information all ready to go, thousands upon thousands of notes and facts that just need re-typing and formatting into readable content. Seeing as retro gaming is pretty big right now, I think a book like this could do very well. Plus I feel it will be an insightful education for non-British gamers who didn’t realise just how strong the British game industry was in the 80s and 90s. You see, while North America was feeling the fallout from the infamous ‘video game crash of 1983’, back in Blighty – we were just not affected at all. Nintendo didn’t save us or the game’s industry the same way its been perceived as doing in America simply because the U.K already had an established gaming industry that was growing stronger and stronger each year. More on my overall plan at the end of this article.

Allow me to introduce you to one of the most popular British game companies of the early 80s – Imagine Software.

Back the the early 80s the ‘bedroom coders’ were on the rise. These were often very small teams of two or three people – sometimes only one, who would sit there in their bedrooms inputting hundreds and hundreds of lines of code into their ZX Spectrums or Commodore Vic-20s creating their own games. The Indie game industry we have today owes a lot to the originators of this modern trend.

It was in 1982 when Imagine Software was founded in Liverpool, England. But we need to go back a couple more years to another software company also based in Liverpool, Bug-Byte Software Ltd in 1980 who became famous for publishing the massively popular game Manic Miner developed by Matthew Smith. Manic Miner is one of British gaming’s all time classics and often cited as one of the games that made the platforming genre what it is today.

It was sometime in 1982 when several Bug-Byte employees left the company and decided to go it alone including; Mark Butler, David Lawson and Eugene Evans. Staying in Liverpool, they set up Imagine Software which has been suggested was named after the most famous song from Liverpool’s most famous son – John Lennon. Imagine quickly made a name for themselves by employing some of the very best coders of the early 80s. Butler and Lawson were very close friends and had previously worked together at one of the countries first ever (if not THE first) microcomputer shops, Microdigital. Which was in the heart of Liverpool city centre.

When they formed Imagine Software, Butler and Lawson invited their old boss and owner of Microdigital – Bruce Everiss to join them and after selling Microdigital, he agreed. Everiss took on the role of Public Relations and everyday operations within Imagine. Mark Butler became the company director while David Lawson and Eugene Evans were lead programmers. But there was one more member of the team that was hired at the request of Lawson – Ian Hetherington who came on-board as the company’s financial adviser.

Unusual for a game company at the time Imagine loved being in-front of the cameras, they would hold interviews and try to get their name in print as much as they could. There is one major example of this with the utterly engrossing BBC documentary Commercial Breaks originally broadcast in 1984 which followed both Imagine and Ocean that was also a huge help in compiling research for this whole project. One thing the guys at Imagine loved to do was show off their success. You would often find articles written about the company founders where they would gloat about once being lonely bedroom coders to showing off their millions of pounds they were making at the time. Imagine were PR experts lead by Everiss and never turned down the chance to get their names in the press. Yes, Imagine became huge in the early 80s but I feel I’m jumping ahead slightly here and need to go back to how they became successful to begin with as no matter how great your PR is, a game company is nothing if you don’t have the games to sell.

David Lawson had an idea for a title back when he was still working for Bug-Byte Software before Imagine existed. However, he felt that Bug-Byte were too small to sell his game so he sat on it for a while and when he co-formed Imagine, he realised he was now in the right position to get his game sold. That game was Arcadia.

Released in 1982 for the ZX Spectrum, Arcadia was the first game from Imagine Software. It was a pretty good arcade style shoot em’ up that received very favourable reviews in the gaming magazines back in the day. Arcadia was one of the very early games that helped to forge a path for microcomputer gaming as a whole and laid the foundations of what was to come over the next few years. For its time of release, it sold very well indeed and could be credited with setting up Imagine financially and giving them the leg up they needed which allowed them to become one of the most popular developer/publishers of the day.

The money Arcadia brought in allowed Imagine to grow as they hired more programmers who would go on to produce some of the best games of the early 80s and push the ZX Spectrum to its limits. 1982 was their introduction year, but it was 1983 where Imagine would go from strength to strength as they released game after game after game. Titles such as Alchemist, Ah Diddums, Zzoom and Stonkers – just to name a few, all from 1983. It was as if the stars had aligned as everything just fell into place. Bedroom coders were booming meaning Imagine could pick and choose from the best young talent. The ZX Spectrum, which was Imagine’s main computer of choice for their games was fast becoming the gaming computer of choice and was selling well in England and Imagine were right at the forefront with front row seats to what many consider the birth of the microcomputer gaming industry.

Bedroom coders where becoming a hot property, you could pick up a well known newspaper in 1983 and find interviews featuring these (often) teenagers who had knocked up a game at home and managed to sell it to a publisher making plenty of money in royalties along the way. 1983 was most definitely the best year Imagine could wish for…but 1984 would be the year where Imagine would fall.

Once the money started coming in throughout 1983, Imagine would spend it just as quickly as they earned it. They upgraded to state of the art offices and computers, hired more and more staff to a point where they had around 100 employees – which for a game company in the early 80s was stupidly big. Still, improving your work-space and employees is pretty standard stuff but Imagine tried to grow too big, too quickly. Money was not just being spent on improving the office as huge chucks of their profits were going towards lavish parties and sports cars. The founders drove around in Ferraris, Porches and BMWs, even the mid and lower-level employees drove expensive cars including the cleaners. Imagine’s company director Mark Butler owned a custom built Harris motorbike and at some point in 1983, they even planned to get a helipad built on top of their office – just because they could afford to. Oh and let’s not forget the bike racing team…yes Imagine had their own racing team. Most probably set up just so Butler could enjoy riding his bike(s) at high speed.

Imagine loved flaunting all they had, telling their success story to the press as they were becoming the face of the home computer gaming boom. David Lawson gave their programmes complete freedom to create whatever they wanted with no disruption. Which sounds like an amazing job – but with little direction or discipline, it meant many of the employed coders would just sit around doing nothing and getting paid very well for it too. Though all of this with all the money they made in 1983 and all they were spending, Imagine never bothered to hire a professional accountant. By the end of 1983, the cracks had already began to appear at Imagine as the four heads of the company split down the middle with David Lawson and Ian Hetherington one one side while Mark Butler and Bruce Everiss were on the other side. They couldn’t agree on the direction the company should be heading in and while the disagreements continued – so did the spending of money. The slowly forming cracks became more widened and more fractured. Their games stared to suffer too and what were once well developed and polished titles at the start of 1983 became lazy and messy games be the time Christmas rolled around.

But there was one major factor that would be the end of Imagine…well technically two factors. Psyclapse and Bandersnatch – two games that Imagine had planned that would be truly groundbreaking. Two games that Imagine heavily advertised and two games that they were calling ‘megagames’.

If things at Imagine were starting to look bad before, then they were only going to get much, much worse with these titles. These two megagames that were only two of an intended six – were envisioned to push the ZX Spectrum way beyond its limits. Imagine did all they could to hype up these games to boiling point. Publishers Marshal Cavendish supposedly made a deal for the games that was worth around £11 million…in 1983s money. Which was, back then an obscene amount of cash, especially for just two pieces of software. When the deal was signed, Imagine celebrated by spending even more money. More parties, more sports cars, more racing bikes and the like.

In order for these games to work on the ZX Spectrum, they would have to be sold with some kind of expansion cartridge which drove the cost price of the games up through the roof. These megagames were estimated to have been sold for around £40, which by today’s standards is about normal. But back in late 1983/early 84, Imagine’s games typically sold for around £5-£7, just to put things into perspective.

David Lawson threw himself into developing these games and did something he previously refused to do – oversee and manage the programmers. The ads for the games were already running in the numerous gaming magazines at the time, deals had been made for not only the publishing rights but also the cover art, which was commissioned to be done by the legendary Roger Dean who created the artwork for many rock albums, book covers and even other video games. It was Bandersnatch in particular that took up most of Lawson’s time. There were problems…big problems as the game was no where near complete despite all the hype and advertising Imagine had carried out. The programmers just could not get it to work at all and while all of this was going on, Imagine’s company director, Mark Butler was more interested and invested most of his time in the bike racing team than the development of the software. Butler’s apparent lack of interest in the company meant that Bruce Everiss stepped up as unofficial boss – even if he never wanted to be. Everiss fought hard to keep Imagine from going under.

It was Christmas of 1983 and Imagine wanted to take as much advantage of the silly season as they could. Using an aggressive tactic to try and gain a monopoly of Christmas sales, they hired out the entirety of one of the biggest duplicating factories to produce their games. This meant that their competitors would find it more difficult to get games into shops while Imagine would have an abundance of software all ready to go on sale for Christmas. But the plan backfired for one major reason and one very similar to what bought about the game crash of North America, they over produced. Yes Imagine had plenty of games on the shelves for Christmas, hundreds of thousands of them in fact, but after Christmas the sales dropped as they normally do after the festive season and yet there were still thousands and thousands of Imagine software sitting on the shelves that no one was buying. While we here in Blighty didn’t have anything anywhere near as severe as the 1983 video game crash, sales did slow down. With the tonnes of games still on the shelves in early 1984 and sales figures dropping everywhere, Imagine had no other option but to sell of their games dirt cheap to try and reclaim some of that cash that went into producing them in the first place. Once more, Imagine were spending more money than they were making.

This all tied into the previously mentioned megagames, if they struggled to sell their current games at discounted prices after Christmas then how were they going to sell the these megagames at £40? Seeing development for these games had ground to a halt, publisher Marshal Cavendish began to get very cold feet over the £11 million deal and eventually pulled out. They also demanded any revenue back…money that Imagine had already been spending. To save hemorrhaging money, Imagine could have cut back on staff, downsized if you will – but no as the company began to crumble in early 1984 they held onto their 100 strong employees refusing to let anyone go. There was a plan put in place where Imagine would sell their non-working megagame Bandersnatch to Sinclair Research who in turn could then sell the game for the Sinclair QL computer. For those not in the know, the Sinclair QL computer is one of the biggest microcomputer failures. So obviously that didn’t pan out either.

It was around Christmas of 83 time when director Paul Anderson was making his previously mentioned BBC documentary Commercial Breaks. Filming both Imagine and Ocean with the idea that he would capture an amazing part of history where young entrepreneurs were riding the wave of the video game revolution selling thousands of games over the Christmas period of 1983. Yet what he actually captured on film was the fall of Imagine. It was now the summer of 1984 and after several months of mismanagement, deals falling through and excessive spending of money the roof finally caved in on Imagine and it was all caught on camera thanks to Anderson’s documentary. There is one part in particular from Commercial Breaks where the bailiffs turn up at Imagine’s office to reclaim anything of value. The bailiffs were reclaiming so much equipment from the Imagine office they there even tired to take the cameras from the crew filming Paul Anderson’s documentary thinking it all belonged to Imagine.

On the 9th of July 1984, Imagine were no more, forced to close and declare bankruptcy. They only lasted around 18 months or so – but what a year and a half it was. Imagine were very young and very stupid. They made their fortune, changed the British gaming industry forever and paved the way for many other companies after them. They were trailblazers in many ways but they also managed to destroy everything they worked to build. Many of the head honchos and staff of Imagine went onto other careers within the games industry, some massively successfully so too…

Now I know what some of you older gamers may be thinking right now – that you remember playing Imagine games long after 1984 and yes, you’d be right. So if they closed in 84 then how were you playing their games right up to 1989? Well this is where Ocean Software stepped in as they brought the Imagine name and released some of their games through the the name even if the company itself was dead…but that is a story for the next chapter of this book.

Oh and about those megagames too? Well information on Psyclapse is nonexistent. As far as I can tell, the game never even begun development at all. Imagine just had a name, a few ideas and a several ads running in gaming magazines to hype it up. But Bandersnatch is a very different story. That one was most definitely being worked on and you can even see as much in the Commercial Breaks documentary where footage is shown of the game being developed. Oh yeah, and it was even eventually released too. Given a name change but it was the first game developed and published by Psygnosis – the company set up by Ian Hetherington after the collapse of Imagine and a game developer/publisher that became one of the best, most loved of the 80s and 90s and again, this is something I’ll cover in another chapter…

My Dream…

So there you have it, just an example of what I want this book to be about. The final write ups will be more in-depth and take a closer look at some of the games. This is just meant as a taster. I also found it really interesting how many of the companies I’m going to cover intertwine with each other over the years, there’s a really fascinating tapestry of British game development/publishing that emerges once everything comes together. Then there are the starts of some of the biggest names working in games today that got their breaks with companies like DICE (not British themselves, but started via a British publisher), Rare and even the mighty Rockstar Games all cutting their teeth in the 80s and 90s British game revolution. Really interesting stories I aim to cover.

As I said before, I have around ten developers and publishers to cover (possibly more added later) so this will be quite a big book when finished and I really want to make it a hardcover, glossy thing of beauty all professionally finished. And here is where I need help. Putting something like this together takes money. I’ve done all the research for the companies I will cover, already have three of the chapters written up in the first draft (this is one of them) and the book with be finished within the next 6 moths or less. But I know nothing about actually designing a book like this – I can write them no problem but putting the whole thing together in one package with a real professional look and feel is something I know nothing about. Plus it being in hardback, then there is the printing and distribution, etc all of this costs coin that I just do not have. So I’ve set up a Go Fund Me where I hope people will chip in to help me make this book a reality.

My Go Fund Me link. Please share.

Even if you don’t feel like donating (I won’t hold it against you), if you could just share this article and/or the Go Fund Me to help me drum up some interest, I’ll be eternally grateful. If I raise the money, I will make the book as professionally as I can – I’ll hire a design artist to help me with the look of the book. I’ll go to the best printers I can find to deliver the best possible finished product in glorious hardback and glossy pages and so on. I’ll even put any and all people who donate into the book as personal thanks.

Even if I don’t manage to raise the cash, I’m still going to write the book but it just won’t be as grandiose as I want it to be and most probably just be an all text (no picture) simple paperback instead. So the more money I can rise the bigger and better the book will be.

I think with the popularity of retro gaming right now that this could be a great book. A really interesting look at the British side of game development and publishing, a window into an important piece of gaming history that many people overlook or just do not know about.

Update: I’m currently letting people read the first three chapters. More info right here.

007: Licensed to Game – James Bond In Gaming

LBoG: Retrospectives

I think it can be said without too much argument that James Bond is a giant cinematic icon. Since his first big screen appearance in Dr. No from 1962 right up to today with Daniel Craig announcing he’s agreed to do one more Bond film which would be the actor’s fifth outing as James Bond and the twenty fifth film in the mega successful franchise. Yup, the Bond name is a big draw for film nuts like myself.

But what about the character’s gaming career – how has James Bond fared up in the world of video games? Well that is exactly why I’ve written this article, to take a look back at James Bond in gaming. I’ll be quickly covering every known James Bond game released over the last four decades as well as taking a look at some unreleased games and a few other Bond related games too. [Insert your own James Bond pun here] and lets get cracking…

The 1980s

The very first James Bond game was released in 1982. Developed by Richard Shepherd for the ZX Spectrum called Shaken but Not Stirred. The game was one of those early text-based adventure games, so graphically – it was lacking…

You play as James Bond and asked by M to track down the nefarious Dr. Death who is threatening to destroy London with a nuclear weapon. The gameplay was pretty basic stuff as you travel the world gathering clues and solving puzzles to help you locate Dr. Death’s secret lair.

For an early Bond game it played pretty well and it was highly praised at the time by reviewers.

In 1983, the game James Bond 007 was released by Parker Brothers for the Atari 2600, 5200 as well as the Commodore 64 and ColecoVision. This James Bond game is set over four different levels all based on various James Bond moives. Diamonds are Forever – you have to rescue Tiffany Case from an oil rig. The Spy Who Loved Me – you destroy an underwater laboratory. Moonraker – where Bond needs to destroy satellites. For Your Eyes Only – you need to retrieve some radio equipment from a sunken boat.

The fourteenth James Bond movie, A View to a Kill was released in 1985 – and so were two games based on the movie. The first game was James Bond 007: A View to a Kill, this one was another of those text-based adventure games by Angelsoft Inc released for DOS, Macintosh and Apple II computers. You really don’t want a screenshot of another text-based game do you?

So moving on, the second game was titled A View to a Kill: The Computer Game. This one was more action orientated and came out for the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum.

This one was from Domark and split into three different action sections based on the movie. The first section has you driving around Paris in a taxi trying to catch May Day who has parachuted from the Eiffel Tower. The next one features Bond trying to escape San Francisco City Hall which is set on fire. The final level is set in a mine where Bond must find the code to disarm Zorin’s bomb.

Then in 1986, Angelsoft Inc released a follow up to their previous text-based game based on the Bond movie Goldfinger.

Developed by Melbourne House in 1987 and released for the Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum (plus others) – The Living Daylights was the next James Bond game. An all action, side scrolling shooter inspired by the film of the same name. Simple and basic stuff, but pretty good fun for the time.

The vehicle became the star of the next Bond game with Live and Let Die in 1988. This one was a combo of racing and shooting inspired by the speedboat sequence from the movie. Developed by Elite Systems International for the Amiga, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum.

Though not originally developed as a James Bond game – this one started out as an original IP called Aquablast, but the development team realised how the game felt and looked like the speedboat chase from the movie and so re-branded the game with the 007 licence. This one was a fast-paced racing game where you had to dodge numerous obstacles as well as shoot at other boats that got in your way.

The final game of the 80s was based on the sixteenth Bond flick – Licence to Kill. Released in 1989 and developed by Quixel for the Amiga, DOS, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum platforms. This one was a top-down shooter with you controlling various vehicles as well as Bond on foot.

Set over six levels all based on scenes from the film. I always remember this one being quite tough with a fiddly control scheme – but still an enjoyable game once you got used to its difficulty.

Well that’s about it for the 80s, the 90s brought many more Bond games – including what many consider not only the best James Bond game ever, but one of the finest games of the decade.

The 1990s

It was a new decade and in terms of the films, the James Bond franchise had halted production. Long story short, there were all sorts of behind the scenes shenanigans preventing any new Bond films being made. In fact we wouldn’t see a new Bond film for six years from 1989 with License to Kill until 1995’s GoldenEye. But while the film series was in serious doubt (it almost never came back at all) the James Bond games were still being made. We even got two Bond games in 1990.

The first Bond game of the new decade was based on the 1977 picture The Spy Who Loved Me. Developed by The Kremlin (game development team, not the Russian fortified complex at the heart of Moscow).

The majority of the game was a Spy Hunter style top-down racer/shooter with you in control of the infamous modified Lotus Espirt from the film. You pick up tokens to spend on upgrading the Lotus by driving onto the back of a moving truck. While fending off bad guys and pulling off stunts. There were other levels inspired by scenes from the movie – but I found them a bit dull and just kept replaying the awesome Louts level over and over.

Also from 1990 was a point n’ click adventure developed by Delphine Software called Operation Stealth. Now I know what you are thinking if you played this game outside of the U.S – this had nothing to do with James Bond, and you’d be right. However in the U.S the game was released using the James Bond license as James Bond 007: The Stealth Affair.

You play as John Glames (James Bond in the U.S.) a CIA secret agent (though Bond works for MI6) who is tasked to finding a stolen, high-tech stealth plane. Typical point n’ click adventure fare that was massively popular in the late 80s/ealry 90s.

In 1991, an animated TV show inspired by the spin-off novel The Adventures of James Bond Junior 003½ was made that featured James Bond’s nephew – titled James Bond Jr. The series became quite successful spawning a toy line, novels, even a series of Marvel comics and of course a game – well two in fact. Okay so they really are the same game, first was the NES version in 1991 and then an updated SNES version in 1992.

These were simple action/platformers and to be honest, not very good either. With you playing as Bond Jr. having to find some missing scientists.

James Bond 007: The Duel was the next game released in 1993 for the SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis, Master System and Game Gear platforms. The game featured Timothy Dalton as Bond for the marketing and in-game introduction. So technically, this was the last time T-Dalts was (officially) Bond.

If you ever played the arcade classic Rolling Thunder – then this game was similar… only not as good. You run trough levels shooting bad guys and rescuing girls while crossing paths with familiar Bond baddies like Jaws and Oddjob. With your main goal being to place a bomb to destroy the enemy’s secret base.

It was in 1997 when THE James Bond game was finally released. Based on the movie of the same name and developed by Rare for the Nintendo 64 – GoldenEye 007. Often cited as the best Bond game ever as well as being one of the defining FPS games of the 90s. This really was one of the all time great games that not only did the film justice, but it also managed to become the 3rd best selling N64 game ever only beaten by Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64… yes GoldenEye 007 even outsold The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Chock full of content from unlock-able cheats that added so much fun to the game to hidden levels based on other Bond films and even the trailblazing 4-player split-screen mode that offered endless fun. I really should do a more in-depth look at this game at some point – but now is not the place as we have many more Bond games to cover. But in short, GoldenEye 007 was awesome!

Next up was James Bond 007 released for the Game Boy in 1988 and developed by Saffire Corporation. This was a top-down action game that incorporated enemies and locales from numerous Bond films. Bond has to explore the world to track down a secret weapon cache. Set over eleven levels and also includes gambling minigames like Blackjack.

And here we are, at the end of another decade. 1999 saw the release of Tomorrow Never Dies for the PlayStation based on the movie of the same name. This one was a third person shooter as Bond teams up with Wai Lin to take down maniacal media mogul – Elliot Carver.

A somewhat awkward game that lacked the depth and fun set by GoldenEye 007 previously. The game became more infamous for its terrible controls and short length.

And so the 90s ended with a quiet whimper from a silenced Walther PPK instead of a shark-inflating pellet style bang when it came to James Bond games. GoldenEye 007 had set the bar so high that we would never see another Bond game even get close to its quality and high praise.

That’s two decades of Bond games down, lets move onto the 2000s.

The 2000s

Okay, time to get a little confused. We have two games that are both based on the same movie – 007: The World Is Not Enough. Both are FPS titles and both released around the same time in 2000 – but they were developed by different companies and are in fact two very different games. One for the PlayStation and the other for the Nintendo 64.

While both games follow the plot of the movie, the N64 version featured more levels and to be honest – was the best of the two by far. Smoother controls and better gameplay. The N64 version also featured a great multiplayer mode that was missing from the PlayStation.

Also in 2000 saw the release of 007 Racing. Developed by Eutechnyx for the PlayStation. This game was a vehicle based racing game (in case the title didn’t give it away) where you drive the numerous cars made famous by the moives such as the Aston Martin DB5 (Goldfinger), Lotus Esprit (The Spy Who Loved Me) and the BMW Z8 (The World is not Enough) plus others. There is an original story that sees the return of some of Bond’s most famous adversaries. Despite some really great mission ideas, the game is rather flat and dull with terrible controls.

Just when you thought it was safe, yet another 007: The World Is Not Enough game was released in 2001 – yes, that’s three games in total all based off the same movie. This one was for the Gameboy Color and again is yet different from the other two games. A top-down action game set over eight missions based on the film.

Also in 2001 was a James Bond game not based on any movie but in fact its own unique story. James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire sees Bond rescuing CIA agent Zoe Nightshade and investigates a botanical research firm which is a possible front for a weapons-smuggling ring. The story eventually leads to Bond discovering a plot involving world leaders and cloning.

This one was okay, a blending of FPS and vehicle based missions. A little short to be honest but a half-decent Bond game non the less.

A direct sequel to the previous James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire was released the following year in 2002 titled; James Bond 007: Nightfire. Bond teams up with agent Zoe Nightshade once more. James Bond goes up against industrialist Raphael Drake and sees Bond travel the globe and even venture into space as he tries to stop the villainous Drake. Much like the previous game, this one is also a melding of FPS and vehicle action. An improvement over the last game, but still just okay and mediocre.

James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing is the next game in the Jame Bond timeline. Moving away from the FPS games and instead opts for a third person view. It also features the likeness and voice talents of (then) Bond actors; Pierce Brosnan, Judi Dench, John Cleese playing James Bond, M and Q respectively.

One of the better Bond games of that era and really does feel very Bond-like. Released for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Gamecube consoles – there was another version released for the Gameboy Advance…

This one was an isometric action/shooter that suffered from terrible controls and gameplay mechanics. The bigger console versions were good, but this GBA one was terrible.

The Bond games were coming thick and fast in the early-mid 2000s and next up was a ‘sequel’ to the best Bond game ever. 2004’s GoldenEye: Rogue Agent tried to cash-in on the success of GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 by tricking people into thinking the two games were related. In truth, they shared nothing outside of using the name GoldenEye. You see, this was not really a sequel despite what developer/publisher EA Games wanted you to think.

Going back to the tried and tested FPS genre – this game’s deceptions don’t end with the title as you don’t even play as James Bond. Instead you are an agent known only as GoldenEye after losing his real eye and having it replaced with a gold one. Though 007 himself does make an appearance along with other familiar Bond faces like; Goldfinger, Dr. No, Blofeld, Scaramanga, Odd Job, Pussy Galore and others. Some of the levels are also based on scenes from previous Bond films. As for the gameplay itself? Its just another one of those distinctly ‘okay’ games.

2005 saw the release of a blast from the past. James Bond 007: From Russia with Love based on the Sean Connery starring 1963 James Bond picture – they even utilised the likeness of Connery himself for the game along with other actors from the film like; Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell, Robert Shaw and Desmond Llewelyn. This one was pretty good actually going for a third person view (probably to make the most of the Sean Connery licence). Not only did Connery lend his likeness, he also recorded all new dialogue for the game too – so this marks the final time he played James Bond. The game hits all the main scenes from the movie, yes even the jet-pack scene.

From 1963 to 2008. The final game of the 2000s was based on the then newest film 007: Quantum of Solace was released the same year as the movie. Using Daniel Craig’s James Bond along with the rest of the main cast from the film. Like with some of the previous Bond games in this list, there were different versions developed for different consoles. The Xbox 360, Wii and PlayStation 3 versions were FPS games – but the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS versions were third person games.

No matter which version you played, this was another ‘middle of the road’ very average games. Hitting all the major scenes from the movie and doing them justice – but the gameplay itself was just very stale and boring… just like the film itself.

So that’s another ten years covered. Next up is the fourth and final decade and the James Bond games started to slow down… a lot. I mean, there’s only three to cover! And we get off to an almost blasphemous start…

The 2010s

GoldenEye 007 was released in 2010. Yes you read that right the best James Bond game ever was remade! Originally for Nintendo’s Wii and DS platforms – the game was re-released in 2011 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and re-titled GoldenEye 007: Reloaded. They had the sheer brass-balls to remake the all time classic GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64, but was it any good? Well gone are original developers Rare and replaced with Eurocom. Then Daniel Craig was used as Bond – replacing Pierce Brosnan… just like real life. The game also re-works the film’s story and updates it so it now takes place after the events of Quantum of Solace. This was more then just a simple remaster that we see everywhere in games today, this was completely rebuilt from the ground up.

Not as classic as the N64 original, but this version was still pretty damn good. The main game follows the film pretty damn well (like the original) and still manages to keep things fresh at the same time to by adding new content. Plus the awesome multiplayer mode form the original returns complete with hidden secrets to find. A good remake and a good Bond game.

James Bond 007: Blood Stone was also released in 2010 even on the exact same day as the previous GoldenEye 007. So if you wanted James Bond games in 2010 on the same day, you had your choice. James Bond 007: Blood Stone once more featured Daniel Craig as Bond but was not based on any movie or book – an all new story set sometime after Quantum of Solace, the story was written by James Bond screenwriter Bruce Feirstein. The game ends on a cliffhanger which some fans have connected to Ernst Stavro Blofeld from the movie Spectre. A third person cover/shooter game with a few vehicle sections. This is an above average game better than some of the latter Bond game efforts – but still lacking in substance and gameplay.

And we get to the last James Bond game released so far, 2012s 007 Legends. Released to celebrate the 50th year celebration of the Jame Bond film franchise. The game starts using the opening of the film Skyfall when Eve Moneypenny accidentally shoots Bond and he falls into a river. This kick-starts a series of flashbacks were Bond recalls some of his most dangerous missions. Basically, this is a ‘Bond’s greatest hits’ game as all the missions are based on scenes from previous films.

Much like the previous GoldenEye 007 remake – this game modernises and re-tells classic James Bond stories – updating them for toady’s audience. It takes one mission based on one film from each of the James Bond actors on the big screen: Goldfinger (Sean Connery), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (George Lazenby), Moonraker (Roger Moore), Licence to Kill (Timothy Dalton), Die Another Day (Pierce Brosnan) and Skyfall (Daniel Craig) with each Bond now played by Craig.

This one was pretty bad. What was meant to be a grand celebration to James Bond turning 50 ended up coming across as a cheap cash-in, lazily and haphazardly thrown together. A great idea but poorly executed – a very bellow average game.

So there you have it, the entire James Bond game catalogue (aside from a few iOS/Android games and fan-made remakes) and it ended badly. Overall, James Bond has been a mixed bag when it comes to his gaming life. For every all time great game like GoldenEye 007 – there’s been more then a few average games and more then a couple of just outright terrible games.

There have been no Bond games since 2012s 007 Legends and that was a bad one. There have been no new Bond games announced either, is this the end of James Bond in gaming? I hope not as the franchise has a lot of legs.

But there’s still more Bond games that I just quickly want to cover as there were a handful of unreleased/cancelled titles.

Cancelled Games

Not long after 1983s James Bond 007 was released – a game based on the movie Octopussy was announced. There have been rumours that the game was completed – some have even said they played it at the Electronic Fun Expo in 1983. Rumour also says that the Octopussy game originally started out as a level in the James Bond 007 game from 1983 before the decision to turn it into its own separate game came about. There was even an Atari brochure from 1983 that showed a screen shot of the train sequence as part of the James Bond 007 game. Parker Brothers also released a poster to advertise the game in 1983.

But the game was never released. Why it never saw the light of day is unknown.

GoldenEye 007 Racing was set to be released for Nintendo’s Virtual Boy. Very little is known about this one other than it was set to be released to coincide with the release of GoldenEye for the SNES… yes originally the GoldenEye game was being developed for the SNES before it was shifted over to the N64. I did manage to find a blurb from a publicity brochure for the Virtual Boy which read:

“If you thought rush-hour traffic was a nightmare, wait ’til you get behind the wheel of 007’s car. Avoid obstacles and blow the other cars away. Buckle up for safety because, in this game, you never know what’s gonna happen.”

Along with two screen shots, one is a bury mess which looks like it may be the title screen and the other…

A slightly less bury image of what looks like a racing game on the Virtual Boy, quite possibly GoldenEye 007 Racing? The game was cancelled due to the infamous and huge failure that was the Virtual Boy console.

At the end of the original VHS release of the flick Tomorrow Never Dies – there was a trailer introduced by legendary Q actor Desmond Llewelyn. This trailer was for a game titled: Tomorrow Never Dies: The Mission Continues and was said to “start where the film ends”. You can see the trailer right here. The footage shows a mix of first and third person shooting as well as scuba diving, driving and skiing sections and to be released for the PC and PlayStation in 1998. Now, of course we did get a game based on Tomorrow Never Dies but this one followed the plot of the movie – the unreleased game was meant to be a direct sequel that follows on where the film ends.

It was also being published by MGM Interactive and not Electronic Arts who released the 1999 Tomorrow Never Dies game. So this was definitely a completely separate game. Why it was never released is unknown, but most probably has to do with EA obtaining the rights to the James Bond licence in November of 1998 and them wanting to make their own game based on the movie.

There was going to be an updated version of the PlayStation game of The World Is Not Enough released for the PlayStation 2 – set to be out for 2001. It was going to feature improved graphics, gameplay mechanics and new levels. But EA who held the James Bond license felt that too much time had passed and no one would be interested in a Bond game in 2001 based on a film from 1999 (side note: the best Bond game ever – GoldenEye 007 was released 2 years after the movie). The improvements to this updated version could have put it more inline with the far superior N64 game, but EA dropped the idea in favour of releasing Agent Under Fire instead.

The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were set to have a game based on Casino Royale. Daniel Craig was on-board to lend his likeness and voice to the game. EA had access to the filming locations and script as the film was being shot, so they could make the game as authentic as possible. It was scrapped after only around 15% complete. A few early screens of 3D models for the game were later found.

Thanks to MI6-HQ.com and you can read more about why the game was never finished right here.

It was 2012, January of 2012 when it was announced there would be a game based on Skyfall. A full game was never released, but a mission based on Skyfall was made available for 007 Legends via DLC. I’m not sure of this is a case of crossed wires and the announcement was just for the 007 Legends DLC or if it was for a full game.

Bond 6 was the working title for a new game from EA. To be released in 2005 and starring Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. The game was dropped when Brosnan announced that he would be stepping down as Bond – so the From Russia With Love game was quickly put into development instead. But interestingly enough – CGI work for the game was used for the advertising of GoldenEye: Rogue Agent.

In 2010 some early screen shots of a new Bond game began to appear online. There was never any official statement as to what game it was – but it was widely believed to be a possible Blood Stone sequel developed by Raven Software. The images have since been removed (at least I can’t find them) and we never did get that Blood Stone sequel.

There was also a rumour of a sequel to 007 Racing for the PlayStation 2, but I couldn’t find any info at all on this.

There you go, as much Bond gaming as anyone could wish for. I think I covered everything and I’ve taken up way too much of your time with this lengthy article – there’s really only one more thing for me to do…

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My Dream…

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The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

Cancelled Games

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