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The Early Years
Full of enthusiasm and ready to take on the best, we started contacting
every leading publisher about our latest game ideas. There was only
one way to go and that was up…
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| Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, Commodore 64,
Atari ST, Amiga, Nintendo NES |
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We met David & Richard
Darling at ECTS in September 1985. They had had great
success by writing games for Mastertronics but now they
wanted to go it alone. They had a small stand at the show
to promote their new company Codemasters. We were impressed
that here was a publisher where the directors were programmers
and understood what it takes to write a game. They were
impressed by our games and wanted to work with us on a
game called Super Robin Hood. The amazing thing was that
they estimated a sales figure of 100,000 copies and offered
us royalties of 10p per copy - that was £10,000!
Amstrad
User Review
 Game Footage (ZX Spectrum)
Game Footage (NES)
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Although we were both filled with enthusiasm to write the game, we
only had one computer between us at this point so it had to be shared.
We were still working in a bedroom in our parents' house and our schedule
was to do programming for 23 hours per day, with two breaks of half
an hour to allow it to cool! We worked in shifts for 18 hours per
day, seven days a week, eating while we worked. During the periods
when we were both awake one had to prepare their code on paper, whilst
the other used the computer. It was all worth the effort though because
within a month we'd scored our first number one charting game. Following
this success Codemasters wanted us to write more games as soon as
possible!
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Being big fans of the film
Ghostbusters and haunted houses from TV shows like Scooby
Doo we wanted to write a game where the idea was to rid
a mansion of its ghosts by running around zapping them.
We had been very impressed by the animating man sprite
in Impossible Mission and wanted to include something
similar in our game Ghost Hunters. By using freeze-frame
on a video recorder we worked out how to animate the character
frame-by-frame.
On finishing the Amstrad version the Darlings sent us
a Spectrum and said "put it on that and we'll pay
you another £10,000". At that point the concept
of sleep was fading fast and in another couple of weeks
we'd mastered the new computer and completed our first
Spectrum game! Both versions of Ghost Hunters went to
No. 1 in their respective charts. |
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When the Spectrum turned up with its rubbery keys and infuriating
code input rules it was all too much. We wanted to be able to continue
writing games on our Amstrad but produce them for the Spectrum as
well so we called on our friend and electronics expert Ivan to build
a cable to link the two machines. The specification of this basic
device was that we should be able to write a byte (single number 0-255)
to the printer port on the Amstrad and it was to be received on the
Spectrum parallel port. Once this cable was constructed, we wrote
a piece of code on the Spectrum to control it. This was to be the
only bit of code we ever wrote on the Spectrum itself and was called
SPLINK - SPectrum and LINK (Ivan's surname). It received the numbers
and interpreted them as either memory locations or bytes to write
to the current memory location. This enabled us to write Spectrum
games on our Amstrad, making the most of the benefits of its on-board
source code and graphics, its very fast and reliable disk drive and
a leading Assembler/Machine Code compiler called MAXAM. That way SPLINK
gave us an enormous advantage over our competitors who were trying
to write Spectrum games - using a Spectrum!
In under two years we had gone from being paid £200 for a game
to receiving seemingly endless royalties. We were working the best
part of 18 hours a day but were on a high and as our profile rose
the "Oliver Twins - Whizz Kids" press stories started to
appear.
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| Amstrad CPC Spectrum Commodore 64 Atari
ST Amiga |
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Codemasters had had great success
with BMX Simulator but we thought that the game format
could be improved if it were car racing, as that was a
more appealing image to most people. So Grand Prix Simulator
was born. While we were writing it Atari released Super
Sprint into the arcades and sold the computer game rights
to Activision. Needless to say, GPS being an overhead
racing game looked very similar to Super Sprint and Activision
served a legal notice on Codemasters saying we had copied
it and that it must be withdrawn from sale. However, the
Darlings knew it was just BMX Simulator with cars, so
they didn't take it off the market. Quite the opposite
- they encouraged the press to comment, knowing it would
only help sales. It worked, and the game went on to sell
over 250,000 copies. Usually No.1 best sellers sold around
the 100,000 mark so this was a runaway success.
Amstrad
User Review
Game Footage (ZX Spectrum)
Game Footage (Amstrad CPC) |
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The next game we created was to be the first in a long line of titles
starring our original character Dizzy. Based on a cute little character
who had to explore a strange magic kingdom solving problems. We sold
this as "The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure". The name came
from his main attribute which was rolling, and therefore he would
always be dizzy. Why an egg? Because he was easy to draw!
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| Amstrad CPC Spectrum Commodore 64 |
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Our graphics package Panda
Sprites had the ability to rotate an image through any
number of degrees and save it out. In those days that
was a cool feature so we thought we'd include a cart-wheeling
character in our new game. The only problem was that a
character of any detail broke up too much during this
process so we decided to keep it simple, and maybe that's
part of its charm. Sales were slow at first, but Dizzy
did catch on…
Dizzy
and the Yolkfolk
Click below for THE DIZZY DUO - An interview with the
Oliver Twins:
http://www.mjwilson.demon.co.uk/crash/96/dizzy.htm
Game Footage |
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Million
Sellers Newspaper article
Things were going really well now but it was time to take a small
holiday. After we returned from skiing in Austria we decided it was
an excellent subject to use for a game…
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| Professional Ski Simulator |
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| Amstrad CPC Spectrum Commodore 64 Atari
ST Amiga |
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Marble Madness was in the arcades
at the time and we were impressed by its 3D terrain. We
used this theory to create the ski slopes for Professional
Ski Simulator, drawing trees and log cabins on the snowy
mountainside. It looked great but the scrolling screen
just wouldn't scroll as fast as we'd have liked.
The Oliver Twins learn to ski
We also realised that controlling a left/right character coming towards you down the screen was a little illogical. It sold well anyway and looked very cool.
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| The game was inspired by Tail
Gunner, a vector graphics game, around the same time as
Battle Zone using the same type of hardware. Enemy space
ships swept out from deep space attacking in waves. It
was your job to pick them off like that famous scene in
Star Wars. It was a good blast and took around a week
to write! And it made it out in time for Christmas. The
game was initially called C.H.A.O.S. but on the day of
mastering it was discovered that another title had just
been launched with this name so it was changed to 3D
StarFighter. |
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By this time we were riding high in the charts and at one stage were
responsible for as many as 5
games out of the top 10!
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| Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64,
Atari ST, Amiga |
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Fruit Machine Simulator was
our first conversion project. A Spectrum version of the
game had just been written by the programmer who had converted
our Super Robin Hood title and we took on the work of
converting it for the Amstrad. We hadn't done pure conversion
work before but following the death of a close friend,
who was also our main artist, we decided to take this
on and immerse ourselves in our work.
It sold fantastically well, although reviewers liked to
pick on the fact that you couldn't put money in and you
couldn't get money out of your Amstrad, a fact that most
customers were well aware of when they bought it. Nevertheless
our reviews on our Codemasters games at that point were
averaging around 90% and this game averaged much lower.
However, as they say, it did what it said on the box,
and was good fun. |
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| Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, Commodore 64,
Amiga, Atari ST, PC DOS, (Nintendo NES) |
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The Codemasters offices were
already receiving lots of fan mail about Dizzy so we decided
to write Treasure Island Dizzy as a follow-up.
This went straight to No. 1 and fuelled the ever-growing
press coverage about our games!
Million
Sellers Newspaper article
Dizzy and
the Yolkfolk
Game Footage |
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| Advanced Pinball Simulator |
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| Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, Commodore 64 |
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After the success of Fruit
Machine Simulator it seemed like a good idea to produce
another game with a similar theme so we wrote Advanced
Pinball Simulator. We tended to alternate the type
of games we wrote for two reasons. Firstly because we
wanted a change and secondly because as we finished one
we had no idea how it was going to sell.
We'd been big fans of 'Night Mission' the pinball game
on the Apple IIe. We thought if we could create a specific
engine, as we'd done for the Dizzy games, we could simply
create new tables and release it lots of times. It seemed
an easy game to write at first, but it soon became apparent
that the whole idea was more complicated than we'd first
thought. We had to implement a more complex system, meaning
the game took a lot longer to write than anticipated and
the idea of producing more tables to release later was
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| Amstrad CPC, Spectrum,Commodore 64 |
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BMX Simulator had been a big
hit. It had never been converted to the Amstrad though
and the Spectrum version was looking dated. Codemasters
wanted to go for a higher price point of £4.99 so
it was a good chance to write a better game, with a lot
more features and levels and overall quality. This new
version, Pro BMX Simulator, incorporated several
new levels that we'd created and was converted by Richard
Darling, who had written the original game.
Unfortunately it wasn't that successful, since it was
neither budget or full price. In fact in many shops, it
was simply bought in cheap by shop keepers and retailed
at full price. |
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| Incredible Shrinking Sphere |
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| Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, Commodore 64,
Atari ST, Amiga |
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Commodore 64 developer, Stefan Ufnowski of 'Foursfield',
who had signed a deal with Activision under the label
'Electric Dreams' to write a Marble Madness style game.
He was writing the lead version and asked us to convert
it to the Amstrad and Spectrum. Being fans of MM and wanting
to do a full price game we jumped at the opportunity.
We only worked freelance for Codemasters, but they had
often talked about us signing an exclusive deal. We decided
to write this game under a pseudonym of 'Ivan Link' our
friend who had often talked about trying to get into the
industry. |
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| Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, Commodore 64,
Atari ST, Amiga, PC (MS-DOS) |
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We decided it was time to write
a PacMan style game for the Amstrad as there was a gap
in the market for a good PacMan clone. This was great
fun for us as we had a always been huge PacMan fans. It
was incredibly quick to write. The game was up and playable
within three days and we spent a further two weeks implementing
improved graphics, front end and music. We learnt some
interesting lessons about simple artificial intelligence
and playability during this time.
Dizzy and the Yolkfolk
Game Footage (PC-DOS)
Game Footage (ZX Spectrum) |
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At this point a company called PDS (Programmers Development System)
was formed by Andrew Glaister, Foo Katan and industry agent Jacqui
Lyons. They produced an enhancement to SPLINK and made it available
to everyone. It ran on an 8086 PC and could be used on Amstrads, Spectrums
& Commodore 64s. For us it meant our first hard drive. It was
30MB which in those days was fantastic and more than we knew what
to do with, it was also incredibly fast. For other game developers
this was a breakthrough and gave them the opportunity to write games
as quickly and easily as us, but this also generated a lot of competition.
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| Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, Commodore 64 |
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We had always felt that converting
Grand Prix Simulator for the Spectrum had not produced
the best possible version of the game. So we decided to
write Grand Priz Simulator ll a Spectrum specific version
which made full use of the machine's capabilities.
Game Footage (Amstrad CPC) |
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| Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, Commodore 64 |
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Having been impressed by Bob
Geldolf's Live Aid we learnt that he was organising another
huge charity event called Sport Aid which involved half
marathons being run all over the world. Codemasters contacted
the event organisers volunteering our services to write
The Race Against Time game.
We took the Dizzy game engine and based the game on a
runner that had to light beacons at major landmarks across
the world, with puzzles that had to be solved to get to
each beacon.
Codemasters were keen for retailers to give all profits
to charity and as a result the game did not sell as well
as we hoped. Also on reflection, it may not have been
the most suitable idea for a game but it was in a good
cause.
A photograph of Jesse Owens was featured on the first
print run but there were some legal complications with
the photo used, so Codemasters switched to a colour photograph
of Carl Lewis as he was the current world record holder.
National
Newspaper publicity
Amstrad
User Review
Game Footage (ZX Spectrum) |
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We decided it was time to move from our parents' house. Property prices
were low and as an investment we bought a house Trowbridge. We turned
one of the bedrooms into an office and carried on writing the games.
During the Summer of 1988 we spent many Sunday afternoons riding on
a friend's jet ski and this inspired us for our next game...
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| Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, Commodore 64,
Atari ST, Amiga |
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The Jet Bike Simulator game
consisted of courses around lakes and docks and had the
jet skis zooming under piers and over jumps. All the things
you wanted to do on these, but weren't allowed!
The Oliver Twins on Roustabout 1988
Game Footage (ZX Spectrum) |
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| Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, Commodore 64,
Atari ST, Amiga, PC (MS-DOS) |
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In the autumn of 1988 we
decided it was a good time to write another Dizzy game
as Treasure Island had proved hugely successful. Fantasy
World Dizzy already had Dizzy & Daisy and so to
maintain this theme we introduced The Yolkfolk: Dylan,
Denzil, Dora, Dozy and the rest of the gang. The maps
& puzzles were bigger and better and we gave the
player lives which was a great improvement to the game.
Game Footage
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Riding high in the charts
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| Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, Commodore 64,
Atari ST, Amiga |
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When the sequel to Ghostbusters
came out we were approached by Stefan Ufnowski (for whom
we'd written Incredible Shrinking Sphere) to write the
Spectrum & Amstrad versions of Ghostbusters II. We
jumped at the chance. He and his programmer and artist
designed and wrote the game on the Atari ST & Amiga.
Whilst writing the game we only had the script, a few
photos and sketches, the first we saw of the film was
at the premiere, by which time the game had been mastered.
The film company couldn't decide on the final logo and
we kept receiving different instructions on which to use.
Was it with or without that back foot?
Whilst everything went well with development we had problems
with being paid and learned our first lessons of going
through court to chase debt. Although we won he was declared
bankrupt, so we never got the money.
Local
Press Article
Amstrad
Action Review
Game Footage (Amstrad CPC, starts at 1m45s) |
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| Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, Commodore 64 |
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We'd been big fans of an early
game called Choplifter on the Apple IIe and whilst we
thought this was cool we wanted to add something new.
So when we wrote Operation Gunship we used an aerial view
of a helicopter flying around an island picking up soldiers
to give the player much more scope for choice. A few years
later Desert Strike came out and used a very similar technique,
but sold a few more copies than we did!!!
It was our most ambitious project for the last few years
and as a result took a very long time to write. We were
quite pleased with the final game but it looks so much
better on emulators that can speed things up to 200%.
Here's a funny story about Operation Gunship: Codemasters’
art department was an efficient and fast production line
for creating packaging and illustrations. They had been
given a message that our next game was called Operation
Gunship, the player controlled a gunship rescuing soldiers
from Islands. We thought this was specific enough in those
days. However, just as the game was about to be duplicated
we saw the final box art and the artist had created an
illustration of a battleship not realising that a gunship
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| Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, Commodore 64,
Atari ST, Amiga, PC (MS-DOS) |
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After writing Operation Gunship
we wanted to write a quick game that was just fun to play.
We decided to write Kwik Snax which was a simple Dizzy
Maze game and a follow-up to Fast Food. In this game the
wall moved and you pushed blocks around which jumbled
the maze around you. It turned out more complicated that
we first imagined and it certainly wasn't as quick to
write as Fast Food!
Dizzy
and the Yolkfolk
Game Footage (Commodore 64) |
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We were losing our position in the charts as we'd taken longer to
write these games than we should have, and the Amstrad and Spectrum
formats were dying.
It was time to move formats as the main sales were now on the Atari
ST & Amiga. Other programmers had converted some of our games
up successfully, but we couldn't go on creating the lead versions
on the lowest power machines.
We started living in Leamington Spa sleeping on a fellow programmer's
floor whilst we considered what we should target next. The Darlings
proposed a couple of interesting ideas, one was the ability to load
games from CDs which were just becoming popular.
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| Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, Commodore 64 |
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The arrival of the CD player
gave an alternative to cassettes for loading games. You
could increase the data rate due to the quality of reproduction
on a CD. Codemasters' large catalogue of games could all
fit on to one CD and load really quickly.
It didn't sell well as it soon became apparent that the
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One of the programmers at Codemasters had just finished converting
Pro Ski Simulator to the Atari ST & Amiga. He was programming
a test game to run on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), which
whilst not popular in Europe was incredibly successful in America
with over 20 million sales, compared to the Spectrum which was around
one million. With the help of some electronic engineers at Codemasters
we developed a simple version of Treasure Island Dizzy on the NES.
The development kit was very basic and didn't allow much memory or
graphics. However, it was received well by the trade when shown at
CES in Las Vegas in 1990. Codemasters decided to improve the development
kits and wanted two games at first. They decided to convert their
two best-sellers - Fantasy World Dizzy and Grand Prix Simulator. Obviously
both would be dramatically improved and we were not going to be able
to do both. So we decided that Andrew should do Grand Prix Simulator
while a few others set out to do a BIG Dizzy game - The Fantastic
Adventures of Dizzy.
It was time to move into Codemasters to use these new NES development
kits. We bought a flat in Leamington Spa and teamed up with some artists
and programmers at Codemasters to create Dizzy's best game ever for
the Americans. Codemasters were expanding rapidly. They owned a farmhouse
in the village of Southam. Some out-buildings had been converted into
small offices and they were forever seeking planning permission for
extensions and conversions. Unfortunately, the population was out-growing
the space and a portacabin village grew up in the back garden! For
the next year we were to work from one of these makeshift offices.
The problem with a portacabin is that you are very exposed to the
elements. In the winter there were times we thought we'd be swept
away like the scene from the Wizard of Oz while in the summer they
became unbearable ovens and we'd be working with sweat running down
our faces. Work wasn't much fun, it was slow and the working environment
was bad, but there was a much better social life. The original Codemasters
team had money, could organise themselves and generally we all had
a really good time.
While we wanted to write on the new exciting Nintendo Console, Codemasters
still needed to support its home market, so we worked with some independent
development companies to continue the Dizzy Series.
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| Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, Commodore 64,
Atari ST, Amiga, PC (MS-DOS) |
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Magicland Dizzy was the first
game that we had ever contracted to an outside developer,
and like all new experiences it was very interesting and
we learnt many good lessons for the future. As we were
the creators of Dizzy and had always written the games
ourselves, we had never had to write out a game design
as our ideas just flowed. This game taught us to write
detailed game design documents which proved to be invaluable.
Dizzy and
the Yolkfolk
Game Footage |
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