Incredible Shrinking Sphere
A futuristic ball-rolling game where the player navigates hazards and switches ball properties to tackle different obstacles.
Image credits and source
Original cover / promotional artwork
Credit: Activision — artwork belongs to its respective rights holders
Source: The Oliver Twins archive
Game at a glance
- Status
- Classic
- Released
- 1988
- Platforms
- Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Atari ST, Amiga
- Genres
- Action, Puzzle
- Developer
- The Oliver Twins (original development)
- Publisher
- Activision
Development and publication
Development: The Oliver Twins (original development). Publication: Activision.
The named development credit refers to the original or specifically identified version. Other ports and later re-releases may have different development teams.
Making the game
We converted this game from C64 to the Amstrad and Spectrum. Sadly scrolling on Amstrads and Spectrums was always slow since there were so many pixels to move in software, whilst the C64 had hardware scrolling and sprites.
You may notice we took no credit for this game, that’s because we were discussing an exclusive arrangement with Codemasters as the time and thought it best to keep quiet about this game. Instead, it says it was written by our friend Ivan Link who wanted to get into the games industry at the time. Ironically Codemasters gave him job shortly after this, but not off the back of this.