#sinclair specrum

[retrocgads]

UK 1985

[antiques-for-geeks]

Game Review : Formula 1 Simulator

Mastertronic / 1985 / Originally £1.99 / ZX Spectrum

A promising start with a Lotus 72 F1 car on the loading and intro screen. Check out the size of the rear tyres on this bad-boy!

For many a small child, the dream of speeding along in a sports car is something of a pipe-dream. Past simple go-karts rented at a track, it becomes horrendously expensive to compete in a sport that has long been the plaything of the rich. Yes, the road to Formula One is paved in gold; yours. How far that road stretches depends on how much gold paving you (or more accurately, your parents) are prepared to lay down.

Even the competitors with the most humble of backgrounds will have made it thanks to a benefactor, be it a company such as Mercedes or individuals whose altruism may hide a burning desire to live out their missed opportunity through another.

Thankfully however, the computer revolution gaves those of us who can't afford the fire-retardant underwear, let alone anything else, the opportunity to give motorsport a go. Back in the early 1980s, games like Chequered Flag from Psion and Geoff Crammond’s Revs from Acornsoft put you in a single seater racing car, providing something of a sense of how it would be to race one around the world’s great circuits.

While these titles cost in excess of £6.95, the budget market was taken care of by Mastertronic whose title, Formula 1 Simulator tried to give you an opportunity to race ten circuits that were part of the Formula 1 season of the time. For modern motorsport fans, the names of the tracks might be familiar but the layouts will not. Much like a Hollywood actor feeling the pressure to look the way they did in their 20s while pushing 50, most circuits have had a lot of work done since 1985; Silverstone or Hockenheim as they are in the game are unrecognisable now. Even tracks that have only subtly changed over the years, like Monza seem radically different.

This however, is not just down to the passage of time; the circuits as they are realised in the game are not all that accurate. Back when Formula 1 Simulator was released, it is unlikely that track research involved taking the time to visit the circuits and capture the kind of information that would really be necessary to make this a detailed simulation. And, to be fair, the expense would not have been recouped in sales.

Monza’s been on the F1 calendar since 1950; it’s a solid place to start with long flowing corners.

The turns are in vaguely the right locations; but as you go round the tracks in your car, it soon becomes clear that even on a good day you and the apex of the corner are never going to get close enough to each other to be friends. Taking any kind of speed into a corner pretty much means trundling around the outside of the corner away from the racing line, no matter how hard you steer in.

Then there’s the exit of the corner. While it's hard to get the car into the corner at speed as you try to put the power down to make quick exit, the car becomes unstable. All too often this results you being flung off the track.

You might be as good as Lewis Hamilton down the kart track of a Thursday night; you might rival Damon Hill round the Tesco’s car-park getting to the last free parking space, or you might even be a credible contender to Nigel Mansell when it comes to passing a Rover 45 round the outside of a roundabout on the A34 to Stoke-on-Trent, but these skills will not help you with Formula 1 Simulator.

Each game starts with you choosing which track you’d like to drive, configuring your car with an automatic or manual gearbox to take you through the five gears and the weather (wet or dry). This is about as much setup variation as you’ll get in Formula 1 Simulator; you don’t even get to select which team you are driving for.

We’re off on a qualifying lap.

From there, it’s a choice between practicing a circuit or racing on it. Practicing doesn’t really add much here - it’s the qualifying for the race that is important. Although you can race, there is no championship to go with it. This really is a disappointing omission, the races feel a little aimless as a result. Mind you, there are times when just getting into the race is a victory in itself...

A race begins with qualifying - complete a lap of the circuit against the clock and you’re into a race. At no point are you told what time you are aiming at, which is a major disadvantage, nor is there any indication of how many laps you have to complete in the race should you get there. Everything here is implicit. You are expected to know that qualifying is a single lap by playing the game enough times.

Once a qualifying lap has been completed, then there is the race. While there are other cars on track to compete against, with no perspective on your rivals other than the graphic of their rear it becomes all too easy to hit them, either ramming into the back of them or unwittingly hitting them when you think you have passed them and resume the racing line. You really might think that this is an exaggeration but seriously, your opponents’ cars all seem to be simultaneously narrower and as wide as your car at the same time.

This game is very unforgiving; any mistake it seems and after a brief message to tell you that you’ve crashed you’ll have to start all over again. This starts to get old very quickly and what’s more, learning the tracks does not seem to make that much of a difference. With the handling of the car the way it is, crashing out feels more like a lottery, rather than down to anything else.

And they’re GO! GO! GO!

Some of Formula 1 Simulator’s shortcomings come from the game having been written with a 16k Spectrum in mind. Unlike a game like Beach-Head on the Commodore 16 where the lameness could have been avoided with some careful consideration and design, many of the problems with the game stem from trying to cram as much realism as you can into such a tiny memory footprint.

Mastertronic certainly took a different approach with the title on the Commodore machines; perhaps it was for the best. While Formula 1 Simulator isn’t going to win any prizes for realism, it should at least be rewarded for being a valiant attempt to try and lever a realistic driving simulator into such a low-spec machine.

Spirit Software and the Kensington CID

Mastertronic’s Formula 1 Simulator was a re-release of a title from another company called Spirit Software who, in 1984 had released the game for the princely sum of £8.95 promising their own steering wheel add-on.

This was quite something for the time; such devices were not really seen outside of the arcades, with games like Sprint or Pole Position having basic wheels and a simple Hi/Low gear shifter.

First versions of the game are alleged to have been sent out with what has been referred to in unflattering terms as a yellow plastic ash-tray that sat on the relevant keys. We’re yet to find a picture of this device in the wild, so it might just be a reference to the instructions in the Mastertronic version that suggested using a Sellotape tin along the keys at the top at the top of the computer.

The announcement from June 1984′s Your Computer magazine. [source - archive.org]

Sadly, while the cash for the enterprise readily appeared from Spectrum owners keen to try out the latest fad in games, the hardware did not and by the summer of 1984, Kensington CID (part of London’s Metropolitan Police) were investigating Spirit Software, eventually returning cheques that had not been cashed to those who had been keen to have a more realistic shot at F1 from the comfort of their own homes. Those that had been cashed, well, it seems that money was lost.

What became of the owners of Spirit Software? And more importantly the cash? It’s not entirely clear as the trail of the story dries up with the Police getting involved; presumably the enigmatic author of the game, S.C. Stephens must have sold the game on to Mastertronic, where it became a real money spinner. Across all formats, Formula 1 Simulator sold in excess of half a million copies for its new publisher...

Buying it today

Given it’s a budget title that was available just about everywhere, it’s not in short supply today. If you’re spending £5 including postage you’re spending a lot.

Commentariat

Tim : How I wish this game was different, just a few tweaks here and there could turn this from being a dog of a game into something far more playable.

The steering controls are shocking, and without the ability to change much about the setup of the car (given the release date of the game, this genuinely would be too much to ask), hobbling the game to such an extent that it’s a chore to play. The solution provided by both original developer Spirit and kept by Mastertronic, to have a control mode that needs you to roll - yes roll - a wheel across the top row of a rubber-key Spectrum’s keyboard is as much bizarre, as to how little it is future proof. Fortunately, Mastertronic also added joystick support as well as a more traditional keyboard control option.

After spending more time restarting the game after a crash than actually driving, I just pootled around Monza with automatic gears turned on at a slow speed to get into the race. Manual gears I found impossible due to their poor placing on the keyboard. I had no idea what time I was aiming for to secure pole position, so for all I knew I might be fastest. I wasn’t. Even so, I was in the race, but with no idea how long it would be. I went for it - and crashed right after passing a car.

That was pretty much it for me.

If you can afford to spend memory on a pretty title screen of a Lotus 72, you can afford to improve the in-game data. Or failing that, include a championship mode, or offer team selection, or just about anything from a long list of things that would have been cheap in memory terms, but have added a lot to the game.

With a simulation so poor it’s incredible, but entirely predictable, that Mastertronic stuck with it for the Amstrad and MSX machines instead of converting the far more playable Commodore 64 version.

If you are a driving sim fan, there is only one word for this. Avoid.

Score Lord : Hmmm. I remember this the first time round for all the wrong reasons. While many companies have taken your money and had a liberal interpretation of 28 days delivery when it came to some of their products, their kit usually turned up. Unless it’s a Spectrum Vega+.

I agree that this is hardly a realistic sim but think about what it did for society. First, it no doubt gave people the opportunity to say “I can do better than that” and produce racing titles of their own. Second, it put to bed the idea that an ashtray could be used as a steering wheel once and for all. Saved British Leyland a fortune in R&D, that.

Meat : The day I got my Spectrum, I bought this title. I was already starting to get a feel for motorsport, mostly thanks to an ever-present Nigel Mansell on the TV each Sunday lunchtime in the summer.

My disappointment as a child wasn’t the graphics or the sound, it was that the game was so hard. Even today, I like the way that the car accelerates away with a little chirp from the speaker to mimic wheelspin and that you have to brake properly into the corners. The sad thing was that it wasn’t arcade-y enough in the way it played for me and not simulator-y enough for my Dad. Formula 1 Simulator is kind of an in between sort of game with elements of both but not enough of either to make it work.

After a while I managed to get around the circuit without bouncing off to make it to the race, but when I did, I crashed more or less straight away. This cycle repeated so often I don’t really ever remember finishing a single first lap. I eventually lost interest. Even today, while I can get into the race most of the time, I don’t really want to go any further knowing that I’ll just end up hitting another car.

Due to a minor misunderstanding I was not allowed to try the Sellotape tin steering wheel back in the day, as my father misinterpreted what I intended to do and refused to let me try it out. Without my Dad to tell me otherwise, I’ve tried this as an adult and, yes, it does work but doesn’t make much of a difference. Just makes you look like a weirdo at a gaming expo.

This really seemed to be a game where the developer’s ambition was way beyond the capabilities of the technology at the time, rather than the other way round. Well, that’s how I like to think of it.

Score card

Presentation 4/10

The exciting cover art and well-drawn loading screen soon give way to a lack-lustre menu and garish colours in-game. Good choice of tracks if you had a 48k Spectrum, mind. The steering wheel control method is just, well, odd.

Originality 7/10

At a time when most driving games were top-down sprint-style games or variations on Pole Position, this certainly tried to be different and succeeds.

Graphics 4/10

Middling; the game’s colour palette is horrific, the other cars basic. The track moves nicely, but the sense of speed is diminished with a dearth of roadside objects. Corner markers while present, are so small you easily miss them, making them more or less pointless.

Hookability 2/10

Unfortunately, the game is unrewarding to play mostly because a tiny mistake means it’s all over.

Sound 2/10

While the C64 version had a cool soundtrack courtesy of Rob Hubbard, which also made it onto the Amstrad and MSX conversions, the Spectrum has some basic engine noises and that’s about all. This does add something to the game, but won't win any awards.

Lastability 3/10

Good selection of tracks, even if they are unrealistically modelled, but the unforgiving nature of the game you’d need to be a masochist to keep playing it.

Value for Money 3/10

It was £1.99 at the time of release by Mastertronic, which meant you got a half decent amount of car sim for your money.

Overall 3/10

It’s really difficult to work out if this was a valiant effort that just tried to do too much with too little, or just something that Mastertronic picked up to fill a slot in a software library. Either way though, it’s not good enough to keep you coming back.

[antiques-for-geeks]

Game Review : On the Busses

Benny Games / April 1st 1988 / Originally £12.95  / ZX Spectrum

`Alright mate? I’ve just got back from the boozer! I’ll need a big plate of mash to soak it all up! Why don’t you give me a hand getting this bus back? Last run of the day, and if we’re quick we can be back in time to chase a bit of skirt too. Phwoar, what a pair! Don’t like the look of yours much though... 

…quick, hide the booze, ‘ere comes Blakey!’

‘On the Busses’ is a licensed game based on the hugely popular 70’s sitcom of the same name.

As paunchy middle aged ladies man Stan Butler your task is to drive your bus back to the ‘Cemetery Gates’ bus terminal within a strict time limit, whilst being as indolent and lecherous as possible. The course is split into 6 distinct levels: Suburbs, Park, Tunnel, Outer Limits, Inner City and Terminal. These are distinguished by the background scenery, obstacles and traffic encountered along the way.

Blakey the officious transport inspector is gunning for Stan’s job, so you have to get the bus back to the terminal on time and in one piece ...he’s a proper little Hitler!

No really. He’s a ridiculous caricature of Adolph Hitler. 

The bus is viewed from behind, and controls in a similar way to many other 8-bit racing games. You’re expected to weave through traffic to a strict time limit like those other games too. However ‘On the Busses’ has a few extra tricks up its sleeve which elevate it above the ordinary.

Keep that droop under control!

Being middle aged, Stan suffers from erectile dysfunction, and must try to remain ‘excited’ on the long journey back to the depot. He can do this in a couple of ways. Stopping at a bus-stop to pick up a young lady will steadily lower Stan’s ‘droop’, as long as the player furiously hits the space-bar to simulate making unwanted catcalls, winks and leery comments. But take care! Too much and cheeky Stan will be subject to a slap or knee to the groin, which is sure to send his droop meter soaring.

Stan can also maintain his ardor by doing as little actual work as possible. This can be effectively achieved by ignoring waiting pensioners and only stopping for busty women under 30. They love a rogue, and especially one who is twice their age and still living with mum.

Between levels you get to play out a short face to face exchange with Blakey, where you choose your responses in an attempt to take him down a peg or two ...and raise Stan’s peg a few degrees into the bargain.

These are rendered with excellent digitised graphics, and really add to the feeling you’re taking part in the nation's favourite sitcom. They’re also quite hilarious! Take for example this exchange:

Inspector Blake:

‘Touching her like that is indecent!’

Stan Butler:

‘It’s not indecent! It would have been, but her ticket machine got in the way!’

That’s pure gold.

Still holds up today!

Some might say that sitcoms (and games) like ‘On the Busses’ have become an embarrassing throwback to less enlightened times. Times where Britain had yet to awaken, tired and faded, from the post war era. Where foreigners were commonly treated with suspicion and disdain. Where society expected women to be homemakers whilst their husbands went to work as the sole breadwinner.

I say piffle! How can we be expected to win back the colonies with that kind of attitude!

Score card

Presentation 9/10

The big box packaging is one of the best examples on the Spectrum, fully justifying that high price tag. Inside you’ll find a clipped bus ticket, a comic book, a fold out map of the bus route, a stick on Blakey mustache, and a used condom. 

Originality 9/10

OK, it’s another racing game, but this is quite unlike any you’ll have played before or since!

Graphics 9/10

Excellently drawn sprites, with very clever use of the spectrum’s palette to avoid colour clash. The digitised exchanges between levels are simply amazing, and still hold up today. 

Hookability 8/10

Some might find the erratic nature of driving in this game irritating, but I found the traffic jams, stops and general leisurely pace to be fascinating.

Sound 7/10

Perhaps the one weak point in the game’s presentation, with a spirited rendition of the theme tune on the title screen, but little else other than beeps and tire screeches during the game.

Lastability 8/10

There’s a great deal of variety in the gameplay, with a much more complicated set of mechanics to get to grips when compared against the average Spectrum racer. You’ll want to play again and again to see all the hilarious responses from Blakey between the driving levels.

Value for Money 9/10

There’s a lot of game in here, even if we discount all the amazing extras to be found in the box. One warning; don’t attempt to re-use the condom. It is not an effective barrier.

Overall 9/10

For Benny Games (not exactly the best remembered of 80’s software houses) this was very much a make or break title. Sadly, and despite their best efforts, in the end it broke them. If only this had the marketing budget Ocean Software threw at their bang average ‘Are You Being Served’ license! 

They clearly worked hard to capture the speed and excitement of driving an inner-city bus route, spiced up with the illicit thrill of bunking off work to go to the public house. Just to tip everything over the edge, the developers effectively captured the complex sexual politics at play in a busy council bus depot at the end of the working day. Superlative.

[antiques-for-geeks]

Review Special : Talking to Stuart Benny of Benny Games

It’s all the rage these days, tracking down the authors of games you used to play to find out more about them, their game and what happened to them. As you’d expect, some are more difficult to track down than others and even when you do, not all of them are willing to speak with you about the past.

Surprisingly, Stuart Benny was quite easy to find - a quick search on LinkedIn turned up a profile and a quick exchange of messages later, he agreed to do a short interview over Skype as like the rest of us, he’s isolating while the latest Pandemic plays out.

We caught up with Stuart from his home in the Midlands to find out more about Benny Games, how he came to write the seminal On The Busses, the aftermath and were intrigued to hear that he is back on the development trail.

The familiar, minimalist logo of Benny Games as it adorned software shop shelves for those fleeting few years in the 1980s. 

AfG : Hi Stuart, how the devil are you?

Stuart Benny : Not bad thanks. I’ve managed to avoid this Corona thing that’s going around up to now thankfully. Seeing all the news stories, it’s quite scary.

Yeah, it’s quite something isn’t it? We’re all working from home which seemed a bit inconvenient, but at least we no longer have to put up with Meat reading Twitter out loud at us all day and telling us every five minutes that we need to buy more bog-roll.

Fortunately I work from home these days, so not a problem for me. I don’t miss sharing an office.

So what do you do today?

At the moment I work with development teams out in India building commerce software. These days I don’t write the code, I just prepare a specification for the off-shore coders and talk to the clients here in the UK. IT is not as much fun as it used to be. Back in the day I worked in a team of coders that wrote the software the team in India now extend. Seems to be the way of the world.

Your early work led to a career?

Yeah. To be fair Benny Games ending was a good thing as it meant I was able to do things like go to University. I think I would have missed a valuable experience, but it would have been brilliant to have been up there with Peter Molyneux or David Braben.

Tell us about it. Pop, Meat and I tried our hand at a lot of programming but didn’t get very far.

It’s not an easy business.

How did you get involved in it?

I had gotten hold of a Spectrum in 1984, it was one of the rubber key ones that we got from my cousin who changed his for a Spectrum+. I’d played games round my friend’s houses but really wanted to create my own so I spent my lunch break learning how to write BASIC on the school computers. Getting the Spectrum was the final piece in the puzzle because now I wasn’t limited to an hour a day on a computer and had a proper manual that showed you how to write programs.

So I studied the manual and experimented. I created a basic Space Invaders clone called, imaginatively, Invaders from Space and sent it to budget labels, but they weren’t interested. That’s when Benny Games were born, I thought the game would be able to sell so I took some money I’d earned from my paper round, bought a pack of ten computer cassettes from Boots and my brother duplicated the game on his tape-to-tape. My friend Martin [Freeman, no relation to the actor] drew a cover, which I got photocopied on the machine down the library. Once they were all ready, I put a classified ad in the local paper and waited for the orders to come in.

And was it a success?

I managed to sell the ten tapes eventually.

I guess that not having the advertising push didn’t help.

At the time I was really disappointed, but I think that it was definitely a learning experience. It didn’t occur to send a review copy to a magazine, but to be honest, it was probably for the best.

But it still sold, so that must have been a small encouragement.

Maybe, but it underlined that I couldn’t do it all by myself. So I asked Martin if he wanted to help me on the next game. He had a Spectrum too and things like a joystick interface.

And that game would be Star Crash?

Star Crash, Yes. Martin had got a copy of the film on VHS from his Uncle and we used to watch it. We wanted to make a game that closely followed the plot, but we didn’t really know how to make it work, so we focussed on the space battle at the end of the game and made a shoot ‘em up. I did the code for the game itself as well as the sound effects and Martin designed the in-game graphics and box art.

It was a nice little game, influenced a lot by Galaxian, but subconsciously. There was one of those machines at the youth centre and Martin played it a few times. The big difference technically was that we did it in machine code, which sped the game up.

Again, we sold it direct for £4.99, but this time we put our money together and bought an ad in one of the Spectrum magazines and got more orders than the first time.

Looking back, at the time it didn’t occur to us to think about licensing for Star Crash. We were working in such a niche and at such a small scale, we got away with it I guess.

I must confess I struggled to find Star Crash. It’s not on sites like World of Spectrum.

No, I think it’s been largely forgotten. I think that Martin sent a review copy to Crash, but we never heard back from them. Must have got lost in the post.

I recorded over the original tape I saved the game on in the 1990s with a Menswe@r album.

So when would this be?

Probably 1995.

No, I mean when was Star Crash released?

That would have been 1985.

You’ve released two games now, so how did you go from that to writing On the Busses?

Well, Martin and I decided to leave school at 16 and set up for ourselves. We got a small loan with my Dad from the Local Government Enterprise scheme and set up in our garage.

Our plan was to release our own games, but a couple of our mates wanted us to release their efforts. That’s how Fletch (Andrew Fletcher, musician for On the Busses) got involved. He had written a text adventure version of a Doctor Who story called The State of Decay on the Commodore 16 and gave it to us. We changed the names of the characters and the planet and put it out as The Vampires of Proximus 3. It had this in-game music that really added atmosphere. It sold pretty well.

We also were sent a rough and ready version of Track and Field for the Spectrum by a local man who had bought one of the copies of Invaders from Space and wondered if we’d be interested in releasing his game. That was an ego boost. It had this weird bit in it where if you medalled, you had to negotiate with the doping control about why your wee smells funny. No-one else was doing it, so we left it in.

We tried to tie it into the buzz about the 1986 Commonwealth Games. It was called Edinburgh Games ‘86. That was less successful because we rushed it out.

Again, we struggled to find any trace of them online.

Yeah, I’m not sure where they ended up in the end. When Fletch sold his Commodore 16 in the 1990s, he sold his development tapes too. Probably someone out there still has it.

Point is, we were a bit fed up having to compromise bits of our games because we didn’t have access to the IP so decided to set our aim much higher. We were all better at coding, we had better hardware. It just seemed the right thing to do.

A scan of the cover is the only trace of The Vampires of Proximus 3 that we could find. Anywhere.

While Vampires is not licenced, On the Busses is. How did you come by that licence?

It really annoyed Fletch that we changed his game because we didn’t have a licence. My Dad, who was basically acting as manager for our company, said it was too risky to release it without the consent of the BBC as it was.

So, with the monies from Vampires we decided to see what we could do.

Initially we were going for a licence for OutRun. I was writing a game based on the arcade already - the busty woman sprite in On the Busses was originally for that game - and had a version of the first level done. It wasn’t very complete as I had to do it from memory, but it proved the point. At this stage it had no music.

We had no idea that US Gold had that relationship with Sega all sewn up, so after a very polite exchange of letters with Sega to see if they would do a licence with us, it looked like the project was going nowhere.

However, my mind cast back. My Grandma used to love watching On The Buses on a Saturday evening. When I was little we used to go round to hers for our tea and it would be on. I loved the antics that Stan and Jack got up to. So the thing held good memories for me.

I called the film and television company and they weren’t interested in doing a licence. After searching in the library, I eventually found a defunct publisher who had got the rights to produce new fiction books based on the series, but had never used it so I approached them.

The liquidator was only too happy to sell on the licence as they thought it was worthless.

Did it cost a lot?

I think it cost us £500 at the time. The liquidator was just pleased to get something for it.

What inspired the game?

Well, OutRun played a massive role obviously, but also games like Maniac Mansion with it’s dialogue and Infocom games like Hitch-hiker’s Guide with their in-box feelies that we copied in a unique way [the game infamously came with, amongst other things, a “used” condom in the box].

We wanted the game to be as close to the series, in spirit at least, as it could be. We wanted it to be like a new episode. Martin was doing a course in the evenings at the local college where they were digitising video, which is how we got the pictures of Stan and Blakey in and Fletch spent ages learning how to code for the AY chip in the [ZX Spectrum] +2 to get the music right. It took up so much memory though, we didn’t have anything left for the in-game music we’d planned. He was always a lot happier coding for the Commodore 16.

And the droop meter to monitor Stan’s ardour?

Yeah, we got that from Martin’s Mum. She said that she had no idea why young women in their twenties would be attracted to middle aged men with a gut who probably had the droop when there were plenty of virile young men about. Martin’s Dad shuffled awkwardly when she said it.

We put it in there because it was funny. If I did the game again today I’d probably leave it out because you can get Viagra now so there’s no need to worry about that kind of thing.

Yeah, I think that there might be other reasons.

How do you mean?

I mean, it’s a bit inappropriate isn’t it?

Loads of men have a wives half their age. You see them all the time in the celebrity pages of the papers. I think that Stan and Jack were proved right in the end.

Erm, the attention to detail in the game, like the digitised cut-scenes, were a bit of a breakthrough for the time and lauded in the reviews. How long was development in the end?

It was something we were all proud of, the lengths we went to to recreate the experience. It meant development took ages though, like nine months in the end. To get the dialogue for the arguments between Stan and Blakey, I spent ages watching tapes of the original series and writing it down. Things like that ate in the schedule and we were lucky to get it out for April 1988.

Why is the name spelt wrong though?

This again. I’ve had to explain this so much over the years. It was spelt wrong on the licence document we had so we followed that on my Dad’s friend’s advice; he was a solicitor.

So when the big moment came, the launch, were you happy?

I was thrilled. We rented a room at the local pub and invited the gaming press as well as the local paper and some people from an On the Buses fan group.

We had a bloke turn up from Video and Computer Games and he went very quiet when he saw the game. He took it away and after some negotiation with my Dad, we managed to get a full page advert opposite the review. We scored 91% from them which we were all ecstatic about.

The local paper did a nice article on us - you know, local boys done good - and said some nice things about the game. The On the Buses fan mob put us in their quarterly magazine for Summer 1988 complete with a glowing review.

Which was absolutely useless as we were out of business by then.

Out of business?

Well, yes. After we put out the game, it became clear that we’d not followed the rules of the licence. It was for original content only. As we’d used the digitised grabs and also the dialogue from the episodes, it didn’t count.

Ah, I can see why that might be a problem…

Always read the small print. After a couple of days on sale, we had to pull the entire thing for risk of getting sued.

So what happened then?

We ended up with a load of tapes duplicated that we could not sell, promotions we couldn’t run that still had to be paid for and so on. We were not able to absorb the cost of all of it and with no money coming in to fix it or release new games and try to keep going, we had no choice but to pull the plug.

Everything we had relating to the retail version of On the Busses ended up being thrown away, it had no value.

Closing the company must have been tough.

Fletch took it hardest; he had nearly finished a Commodore 16 game called Road Racer that was an unofficial port of OutRun. It was seriously good considering how weedy the system was. Our plan was to release it to the duplicators when the first payments for On the Busses came in. We’d have cleaned up with that one. It had started as a port of On the Busses, but we quickly realised it would be better to make it it’s own distinct game.

After we collapsed, he took it to a couple of other labels but could not find a market for it; everyone said it was two years too late. No doubt he felt like he’d wasted a year of his life, I know I did.

And you all left the industry at that point?

As I said earlier, I decided to quit while I was still not too far behind and get myself to University while Fletch and Martin decided to carry on with another company of their own. Sadly theirs didn’t see out the transition to 16-bit, but they had some success with a couple of budget games on the Commodore 64. Not sure what they are up to now.

Benny Games was a name that seemed to disappear without much explanation and there is precious little on the internet about them.

Now you know!

Are you involved in the retro scene these days?

Not really, I’m aware of people streaming games and things like that, but I’ve not sought the limelight.

I have been doing some coding though to keep my skills sharp. I’ve wanted to go back to OutRun for some time and do it like I wanted to back in 1987. Now there’s stuff like MAME I can see the reference material without shovelling 20p coins into a machine and get your mate to make notes.

Sounds interesting. We can’t wait to see what happens next. Thanks for your time Stuart!

Thanks; it’s been nice. It’s not often I get to talk about Benny Games these days outside of a job interview.