magazine

1986 turbo esprit
1985 chaos
DEVELOPER: Julian gollop GENRE: turn-BaSed coMBat
With each passing year more and more
amazing games were made available
for the Spectrum. 1985 saw the release
of many fan favourites including Fairlight,
Saboteur, Cyclone, Highway Encounter
and Tau Ceti. This was also the year that
Acornsoft’s all-conquering Elite finally
docked onto the Spectrum and easily
justified the hype surrounding it.
In comparison, Chaos was not a game
that people were waiting for. Creator
Julian Gollop was hardly known and
publisher Games Workshop was better
known as a developer of board games
than computer games. The game’s
appearance certainly didn’t help sell it
in the press, thanks to the sparse black
backgrounds and tiny, twitching sprites.
But if there was ever a game where
its design triumphed over graphics
then Chaos was it. Up to eight warring
wizards battled it out on the ‘Plane Of
Limbo’, taking turns to unleash their
spells and be the last sorcerer standing.
The spells were randomly apportioned,
so every game played out differently.
on spec
Julian gollop
Julian had been developing the game for
years, initially as a board game played
between friends, so the computer version
was impressively deep and perfectly
balanced. And when eight human players
were locked in battle, hurling gold
dragons and gooey blobs around the
place, it was, well, chaos.
The game might not have been a hit
when first released but over the years it
has attracted a devoted following. Many
will have discovered it retrospectively
thanks to Your Sinclair magazine, which
included it on two separate cover tapes
in 1990 and 1993. The magazine billed it
as a “true classic” and it’s impossible to
argue with that.
The legendary designer talks about Chaos
On creating Chaos as a computer game
I was able to add an extraordinary game mechanic – the
illusion system. The idea was that you could summon a
creature as an illusion and they would behave as normal but they could be
‘disbelieved’ by any other player. I still saw Chaos as primarily a multiplayer
game, but the AI proved to be pretty cool – something you can’t really do
for a board game. Many players loved to play a co-op game against the AI
wizards before turning on each other.
DEVELOPER: durell Software
In this year Sinclair launched the
Spectrum 128, a new model that was
supposed to usher in the next generation
of Speccy games. That didn’t happen, of
course, as most publishers were happy to
continue releasing standard 48K games with
some token 128 improvements (Rainbird’s
Starglider and Mastertronic’s Knight Tyme
were two early exceptions). It didn’t matter
too much as the flow of amazing 48K games
continued with gems like The Great Escape,
The Trap Door and Quazatron.
Turbo Esprit from programmer
Mike Richardson was another title that
showcased what could be achieved on the
bog-standard Speccy. It was essentially an
8-bit prototype of Driver from Reflections,
presenting ‘living’ 3D cities which you could
1987
GENRE: driving
freely navigate. The objective was to catch
drug runners but for most players there
was joy in simply driving around, obeying
traffic lights, zebra crossings, junctions
and the general rules of the road – or more
likely, flouting them. Even now, we feel
desperately sorry for those little guys on
their ladders, just going about their work.
head over heels
DEVELOPER: ocean Software
Isometric adventures were hugely popular
on the Spectrum. Ultimate showed with
Knight Lore and Alien 8 that the Spectrum’s
processor had the grunt to make isometric
presentation work well, and then pretty
much everyone else followed its lead.
Games like Sweevo’s World, Movie and
Batman not only optimised the technique
but also added their own unique traits
and quirks. This progression peaked with
Head Over Heels.
Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond’s
follow-up to their Batman game may have
lacked a popular licence but it was strong
enough to succeed on reputation alone. Its
key feature was to introduce two playable
GENRE: iSoMetric adventure
characters, with their own strengths
and weaknesses, which you could flick
between. And when reunited (which was
the game’s first task), you could join them
up and take on the evil Blacktooth Empire
together. Head Over Heels was cute, clever,
devious and delightful. The graphics and
animation were excellent and so was the
sound (on the 128K version at least). All in
all, this was an instant Spectrum classic
and yet another hit for Ocean which was
finding form after a few uneven years.
On the Spectrum
The Speccy was absolutely essential for my career. For strategy games it
was great because you had a whopping 48K available and it was cheaper
than the alternatives. Not only was I able to persuade my parents to buy
me one but I was able to make fairly sophisticated games for it. And the ZX
microdrives never let me down!
46 | RETRO GAMER