The Race Against Time
A charity tie-in to Sport Aid that sends the player on a globe-spanning adventure against the clock.
Image credits and source
Original cover / promotional artwork
Credit: Codemasters — artwork belongs to its respective rights holders
Source: The Oliver Twins archive
Game at a glance
- Status
- Classic
- Released
- 1988
- Platforms
- Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64
- Genres
- Action-adventure
- Developer
- The Oliver Twins (original development)
- Publisher
- Codemasters
Development and publication
Development: The Oliver Twins (original development). Publication: Codemasters.
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
Bob Geldof, the man behind Band Aid which was massive in mid ‘80s, helped organise Sport Aid in May ’86, in which we had taken part. In ’87 they announced they would be doing it again in ’88 culminating in a 10km charity fun run to be held simultaneously in 89 countries on 25 May. Bruce Everiss, Head of Marketing at Codemasters, thought it would be great to be involved and asked if we’d write a game for the event. The Darlings also agreed with all profits going to the Sport Aid charity.
We had about 3 months to write a new game for the event and decided that the player should take the role of the champion Sudanese runner Omar Khalifa, who was going to take a torch around many countries during May to promote the event. We based it on the Dizzy formula and its codebase which was very popular at the time.
We drew a beautiful world map, on Christmas day I remember, and many iconic buildings from around the world. Like a Dizzy game, players would have to explore and unlock routes to visit all the countries.
However, when promoting the game, we realised that a more approachable, arcade game may well have been a more appropriate solution. Something like Bomb Jack.
More than 20 million runners in 76 countries ran in Sport Aid and is still the biggest sporting event ever organized, sadly the game didn't set any records.
Original documents
Archived The Race Against Time document 1 (PDF)
Archived The Race Against Time document 2 (PDF)