Forget about ET on the Atari 2600. For British computer owners, the Great Space Race was one of the most hyped commercial disasters of the 1980s. Let’s look back.
By the mid-1980s, British computer owners were ready for something different. And the market is full of similar clones of old arcade games, such as: space invaders galaxian or pacman, great space It felt like I had glimpsed the future.
At a time when games were typically developed in a matter of months at a fraction of the cost, Interactive Space Opera was “a year in the making” and had a reported budget of £250,000, a huge amount for the time. did.A few months earlier, in a news article for Home Computing Weekly published in August 1984, he wonderful spaceWith the release of “, developer Legend is said to have parted with what is believed to be the largest amount of money ever spent on the production of a single game.”
Where did that money go? According to Legend co-founder John Peel, his games were a huge leap forward in what he thought was possible on 8-bit computers at the time.
“Legend John Peel says this will be the first game to feature truly three-dimensional 3D characters, and the first to feature full facial animation,” Personal Computer Games magazine preview is written. The latter is activated when another character is talking to you. Their faces will appear on the screen in close-up, and they should smile or frown depending on what you say. ”
great space race It will be nothing more than a “computer movie” filled with “strategy, adventure, and arcade combat elements.”
That sounded extraordinary, but then again in 1984. elite – Space Trade Simulation by Ian Bell and David Braben. Pushing the boundaries of technology with 3D graphics and hundreds of procedurally generated planets. Perhaps the game’s developer, Legend, really could have found a new way to extend the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 beyond their respective limits.
Legend was no unknown developer either. It had already been an acclaimed adventure, valhalla, used a game engine called Movisoft to render the 2D world and characters. Mr Peel said the studio spent around £70,000 making his 1982 game, but the game was so successful that he reportedly sold 150,000 copies, so he and Mr Peel His wife Jean co-founded the studio and co-founded it for several years. A few years ago, I could afford to trade in my old red Mini for a black Porsche.
success of valhalla It also gave Legends room to spend even more money. great space race. There was a creepy rumor published in Sinclair User magazine that Mr. Peel and his team of programmers had rented a luxurious mansion in the countryside to further their development.
Anticipation grew so high that magazines were filled with double-page ads for the game, and retailers demanded to know when copies of the game would be released. great space race It was planned to be displayed on shelves. Meanwhile, distributors were pre-ordering the game without seeing it in action, a business decision they would soon regret.
After several delays, great space race It finally appeared in December 1984. Just in time to take advantage of his lucrative Christmas market. The game was packaged in an oversized box similar to the cases rental VHS tapes were packed in at the time, and came with a poster and a 56-page illustrated book designed to expand on the science fiction lore. .
The problem occurred when the player took the audio tape out of the box and loaded it onto the computer. Far from being the boundary-pushing 3D interactive movie that was expected, it turned out to be a simple space adventure that required very little input from the player. In fact, the game is famous for playing automatically if you let it.
Not all claims about great space race At least it actually featured large (for the time) animated portraits of the characters, although they weren’t in 3D and weren’t as expressive as previously advertised. This game was also a space trading game as well. elite – However, in the end, Legends’ games just suffered compared to the technical wonders of Braven and Bell.
great space race This involves transferring quantities of exotic alcohol (called Natof) from one side of the galaxy to the other, and the game begins by giving players the choice of four pilots; Next you will be asked which weapons you would like to have on your ship. These weapons will come in handy as you travel through the galaxy. elite Before that, raids by pirates were common.But here elite Depict real-time space combat using 3D wireframe graphics and lots of lasers. great space raceDuring the skirmish, small 2D sprites could be seen twitching and flashing across the screen. Even worse, players had no direct control over them.
review of wonderful space It was derisive, to say the least. “The two ships on screen look like two misshapen fried eggs sliding around in a pot,” wrote a Sinclair user. Several news outlets have noted that the game was written in BASIC, the ZX Spectrum’s built-in programming language, and questioned whether such a simple game was worth the then-high price tag of £14.99. presented.
What about the distributors who were blindly and eagerly pre-ordering copies of the game? They weren’t too impressed.
“It’s not selling,” a distributor named Loretta Cohen told Sinclair Users in April 1985. [again] Try a match without watching the match first. ”
As word spread about the game’s unexpectedly poor quality, Legends was forced to respond to growing complaints from those who had purchased it. By August 1985, the company announced a new proposal. If a dissatisfied customer sends you an unwanted copy, wonderful space Back at Legends, your £4.95 check will get you a half-price tape of the latest Space Shooter. complex.
When Legends was running a damage-limitation campaign, Sinclair user journalist Bill Skalding was invited to visit the studio’s headquarters, only to discover that the developer was hidden behind an unmarked door rather than in a lavish mansion. I was surprised to discover that I was living in a former Architectural Association office. Chingford.
At the top of the Squeaky Staircase in the middle of a thunderstorm, Skalding met the studio’s co-founder, John Peel. John Peel is a chain-smoker, a “devoted weirdo” with big glasses and a bushy beard. Mr Peel immediately expressed displeasure at earlier suggestions that Sinclair users were renting country mansions, which he said were “completely false”.
Mr Peel also said his company had lost more than £200,000 over the issue. great space race, And it was heavily implied that the programmer who created it was fired. Taking Scolding to the top floor of his office, Peele introduced him to his team of programmers. The team was oddly called the Perverts and Pillocks Club. So Mr. Peel held up a box of ZX Microdrives (a notoriously unreliable storage medium developed by Sinclair Research) and said, “That’s how professional they were. They used Microdrives.” .”said.
One of his current employees also mentioned programmers like: great space race In the past tense. “From what I saw, the programmers weren’t up to it,” said Colin Foster, a member of his aforementioned Perverts and Pillocks Club.
Admirably, Skalding had the mental fortitude to address the other elephant in the room. Has John Peel ever been confused with his namesake, the famous BBC Radio DJ? This gave rise to the idea that he and his DJ would meet for some kind of novelty article? The magazine pulled out an anecdote from Peele when he came up with the idea.
“I met this guy,” said the not-so-famous Peele, “and I didn’t get along with him, so we got drunk instead. By the time the photographer arrived, we were all in It was frozen. Worst photo ever taken.”
While Skalding and Peele were talking, Pillock Club was busy programming a new game – complex city, Another 3D space shooter with big ideas. “In a sense, complex city It should have been released first,” Peel said, announcing some impressive statistics. “Each map has his 12-character name, and there are 37 characters available for him, so we can generate 6,500,000,000,000,000,000 maps.”
If you have trouble counting all those zeros, that number equals 6.5 trillion.
Perhaps because of its poor reputation, Legend never got a chance to be released. complex city. The game was completed and Sinclair User gave it an excellent score of his 5 out of 5, praising the 3D wireframe graphics and trillions of mazes. “Legend has obviously been paying more attention.” complex city “The attention to detail paid off more than most recent products,” critic Chris Bourne wrote in October 1985.
It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact date Legend went out of business, but it appears the company took its last breath in late 1985, a year later. wonderful spacerelease. The studio’s overhyped sci-fi adventure coincided with a moment of distress for the early British games industry. The sheer number of games released in a given month caused multiple software houses to go bankrupt towards the middle of the decade.
According to another Sinclair user report published at the time, a distributor received 400 games for evaluation in the run-up to Christmas 1984 and was only able to choose 50 to sell to retailers. Masu. It was “an appalling waste of time and effort on the part of the software house,” the report concluded.
The gaming industry has grown exponentially over the past 40 years. great space race, and the numbers it made a fuss about – the budget was £250,000! In development for a year! – seems almost comically unpleasant now. But one of the similarities between 1984 and 2024 is the complete oversaturation seen in the gaming market. It’s believed that a staggering 14,532 games were released on Steam last year alone.
As a result, it may be no surprise that some developers would try to beat that competition by promising the moon.zombie survival shooter The day before All sorts of unusual claims were made about the game during its development, but the resulting game received such terrible reviews that it was quickly withdrawn just weeks after its release.
A lot has changed since 1984, but the hype cycle is one thing that has remained surprisingly similar.
