Remembering Deathchase Extras: Interview with Eugene Kiyanov

For the final part of the Remembering Deathchase article extras, Eugene Kiyanov gives his thoughts on his Deathchase remake, the excellent Dark Rider for iOS. Please bear in mind English is not Eugene's first language!

"Hi,

My father was a hardware engineer and when I was 5, he made one [a computer] from raw microchip, it also has a custom box.

It was a cassete tape, when i first time run death chase, it also has lot of beeping while its loaded, and image on screen was generated row per row. 

From a technical viewpoint, the game was great, because it's try to make a real 3d feeling, and using only 8 colors, they do all best.

there is two reason why i start make it:

first: I start remake it in 2008, at this time there is nobody even trying to make some 'endless runners', and i think, it was a great idea make something 'endless' .

second: i have a small child and i also have a zx emulator on my phones, and surely i have deathchase rom for it. one time i saw my child playing it, and i think - i also was young when i first saw deathchase, and now my child also saw that, and he love it, but now that game can be much better ( visually ) than before.

After few weeks of development, i wanted to make great story line, and that where problems starts. I underestimate all work, all voice actors i need, artists, etc. so, after one year, i saw that some guys released 'Dead Runner'  - it has almost same concept, as deathchase, except, it dont have enemies, dont have levels, but you should run over forest.  So i decide - if i will wait more, i never release it, so, we cut off all cutcenes, helicopters, comics scenes, and make 'something simple endless'. "

 

Thanks to Eugene for his time. For more info on Dark Rider, click here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/dark-rider/id331546183?mt=8

Remembering Deathchase Extras: Interview with James McKay

For Retro Gamer issue 114's Remembering Deathchase anniversary article, I interviewed three programmers who were inspired enough by Mervyn Estcourt's classic to create the own homage and small excerpts of
each appeared in a boxout. Here's the second full interview, with James McKay author of Deathchase: Dragon 32 and Tandy 16k.





At the time of writing, Retro Gamer issue 114 is still available from the Imagine website: https://www.imagineshop.co.uk/magazines/retro-gamer-issue-114.html

JD: When did you first see/play deathchase?
JMK: I was a latecomer to the game. I first got it on a magazine covertape, which WoS reveals to be YS issue 90: Beaut Box 5 in 1993! Back in 1983 there was just my older brothers' Atari 2600 to play. I didn't get a computer until early 1985 (a Tandy Color Computer 2, 16K) and then I got a Spectrum 48K+ in late 1985, so I missed Deathchase the first time around.

JD: What do you like about 3d Deathchase and why do you think it is so popular even today?
JMK: It has a very immediate playability. You dodge and shoot, but it's mostly the dodging. The action is just the right side of stressful. So, it's a very delicate balance between stressing your reaction times and allowing you to progress. That covers why I like it and probably why everyone else likes it!

Forest Patrol

JD: Why did you decide to convert it to the dragon?
JMK: The first computer I owned was the Tandy Color Computer 2 (16K), as I mentioned. It's 99% compatible with the Dragon, from the machine code game-writing perspective (just ROM calls and the keyboard are different). So, first of all, I really wanted to make a game that would work on my (long gone) Tandy 16K and (due to the similarities) it makes perfect sense to make the game work on the Dragon too. (My previous game, Glove, required a minimum of 32K so I wanted to try again).

One of the key problems with both of them was that they didn't get full software support, so there are a lot of good games that didn't get released for them. So, I really wanted to see if the CoCo/Dragon could've handled the 8-bit classics, had support been more feasible in those days. (I have a big list of games I'd like to see converted, which I'll probably never get around to).

Thirdly, Richard Wilson (aka The Executioner and author of the WinAPE emulator) had reverse engineered Deathchase and made an Amstrad CPC version. Having the source saved the big task of doing it myself!

JD: Was this tricky to do and what compromises did you have to make?
JMK: I'm quite good at converting assembler source from one CPU to another, so that was fine. An instruction-by-instruction manual conversion. The other hardware differences were more of an issue.

The CoCo & Dragon are clocked at ~0.89 Mhz (or ~890 Khz, if you want to put it that way). A fair bit slower than the Spectrum's Z80, even with the 6809 executing its instructions in fewer cycles. I had to optimise some sections to keep the speed up.

I had the choice of a monocrome screen, which could reuse the Spectrum graphics but would only allow either black & white or green & black as the colour schemes. I decided to go for the 4-colour modes instead, even though it meant that I had to rework the graphics in a lower resolution.

Then there's the crazy fixed palettes... As a result "Day Patrol" and "Night Patrol" became "Forest Patrol" and "Arctic Patrol". The "Arctic Patrol" sky is magenta instead of cyan. As there's no hardware method of remapping colours, I'd have need more RAM to recolour the sky, but there just wasn't any space left in the 16K. There's also a bit of masking around the rider's helmet that I don't do for space reasons.

Finally, the original game just hammers the hardware without any timer, so I had to guess the timing of the game and the pitch of the sound effects.

"Arctic Patrol"

JD: If not answered above, how does your version differ from the original?
JMK: To summarise:-
1. Runs in a 4-colour, 128x192 mode, so different graphics.
2. "Day Patrol" and "Night Patrol" became "Forest Patrol" and "Arctic Patrol" due to the odd, fixed palettes.
3. The sky is magenta in "Arctic Patrol" because of a combination of the fixed palette and a lack of RAM.
4. A bit of masking is missing from the rider's helmet.

Apart from that (and using the wibbly analogue joysticks) any Deathchase player should be able to get the same feel as the original.


My thanks again to James for his time. For more info on his remake follow this link: http://www.indigobanquet.adsl24.co.uk/coco/deathchase/deathchase.htm

Remembering Deathchase Extras: Interview with Richard "The Executioner" Wilson

For issue 114's Remembering Deathchase anniversary article, I interviewed three programmers who were inspired enough by Mervyn Estcourt's classic to create the own homage and small excerpts of each appeared in a boxout. Here's the first full interview, with Richard Wilson, author of the WinAPE utility and Deathchase: Amstrad CPC.

JD: Hi Richard. Why did you choose Deathchase to remake?
RW: I had read a lot about Deathchase being one of the most famous games on the Spectrum and knew it was missing from the CPC. At the time I was looking for a relatively easy project and thought the conversion would be fairly straightforward.

JD: What do you like about the game (if you do!), either technically or as a game?
RW: I've always been a fan of racing and driving games and wanted to do one of my own. Deathchase ran fast on the Spectrum, so I thought I'd like to find out how the 3D engine worked. The engine itself is quite a simple idea and well implemented. Not strictly proper 3D, but when the trees are coming towards you at the pace they do, it doesn't really matter.

JD: What was the process of breaking down the code like, and how long did it take?
RW: Breaking down the code requires a good disassembler (I used WinAPE) which can keep track of data areas, a lot of patience and a good knowledge of Z80. The process took me a couple of days.

JD: If you can explain (in as much layman terms as possible!) how the process worked?
RW: The game (and every game for that matter) is divided into 3 parts: Code, Data and Variables. In a modern game, those parts may be well defined and in different areas, but in an old Z80 game, generally they are mixed together, so the first task is to determine what's actually code and what's data and variables.

Once you've got the code separated from the data and variables, you can then go about finding out what each code routine does. You look for hints like setting registers to point at areas of the memory or input-output range which are used for the display or sound devices, then work out what each routine does, either just by just looking at the code or stepping through it with an emulator. You can also look more closely at the data areas you've found to determine if they make up some form of graphics or sound data. It's generally easiest to start with small routines and work out what they are doing, then see where they get called from.

A good example of this is the print_b routine in the deathchase.asm source code. You know the Spectrum character set is in ROM at #3C00, so it's easy enough to work out that the routine takes a string and draws it on the screen. Deathchase uses this routine extensively to display almost all messages, so when it gets called you can work out what part of the game it's from. It's used to show the score, the level, the GAME OVER message and so on.

It's a long process to work out what ALL the routines do, but then comes the last step: re-writing the bits that won't work as specified on the CPC. For example, the print_b routine for the CPC calls draw_char which is quite a bit more complicated than the Spectrum equivalent, but does the same thing.

JD: What do you think of Deathchase's status as one of the most iconic games on the Spectrum?
RW: I think it's well deserved. It's technically quite impressive to get any form of 3D engine running so fast, and it's the speed which makes it so playable.

JD: And what do you think it does to deserve that mantle?
RW: Getting that sort of performance out of a 3.8MHz Z80 is always impressive and always requires some serious coding tricks. I modified the engine itself very little to run on the CPC, and it needed some slow down loops in there to bring it back down to a playable speed. The game itself is quite simple by today's standards, but it's the simple ideas that work the best so long as you have the playability and re-playability.

My thanks once more to Richard for his time. More soon!

Remembering Deathchase: Extras

Still out in the shops is Retro Gamer issue 114 which contains my article celebrating the classic ZX Spectrum game Deathchase.

The aim of the article was originally intended to be developer and publisher input of the time accompanied by whatever extra material I could find on the game. Of course, ideally, a full exclusive interview with the Deathchase's author would have been the main attraction, but that wasn't to be...

Ultimately, however, an excellent interview with Micromega's Neil Hooper became the focus of the piece, bolstered by some enthusiastic comments from reviewers of the time. As a result, I had quite a lot of material left over which I am now posting here.

First up we have Robin Cooke-Hurle, Neil's colleague at Micromega. Thanks again to Robin for his time.

JD: Hi Robin. Tell me, did you ever meet Mervyn Estcourt?
RC-H: Yes I did meet Mervyn, and actually negotiated the commercial arrangements with him. What he did was so outside anything I could do that I was slightly in awe of him. He was not very easy to deal with, because he seemed to think that if we were happy with a deal then that must be a sign that he was being taken to the cleaners. However I think we did reach agreements which were fair to both sides, and I’m told had a big impact on his life, and we never tried to hold him in with exclusive options on the next game or anything.

JD: What did you think of Deathchase when you first saw it?
RC-H: Mervyn did three games for us, Luna Crabs, Deathchase and Full Throttle, in as far as I remember that order (Neil will know). The real ground breaker was Luna Crabs, which as far as I recall was the first Spectrum game ever to feature 3D graphics. I was staggered by what he did (it is hard to remember today how naïve the games market was) and could not imagine how it could be done inside 16K – and still can’t!! When I saw Deathchase and then Full Throttle I was therefore more or less ready for them, and saw them as an evolution. I was though thrilled that we had another Mervyn Estcourt game.

JD: How did the game sell?
RC-H: As far as I remember very well, though not as well as Full Throttle, which was phenomenal and topped the charts for some weeks.

JD: What do you think made it so special?
RC-H: Aside from the overall storyboarding of the games, which I guess Mervyn also did, the thing which impressed me enormously was how beautifully smooth it was.

JD: What do you think of the game today?
RC-H: I haven’t seen it for probably 25 years, but I still feel a slight sense of awe at Mervyn’s skill.

JD: It was well reviewed, especially by Crash, although Sinclair User were a bit unfair about the casual violence in the game. Did this bother you?
RC-H: Not at all – in fact I don’t think I’ve ever thought of it. It was obviously stylised, and was far more about skill and reaction times than anything else.

JD: Finally, Deathchase is regarded as one of the finest Spectrum games ever - and under 16K! How proud of this are you?
RC-H: I’m simply grateful that we had the opportunity to publish those games, which combined with others by Derek Brewster, Tony Poulter and others funded our development in to a commercial software house (Taxsoft) which ended up as the biggest supplier in the UK of taxation software, and was sold to Sage in early 1999. However Mervyn should be and I hope is proud of it, as should Neil be for shepherding the marketing so well, and also for managing what was at times a tricky relationship.

Next up we have Steve Wilcox of Elite fame.

JD: Do you remember first seeing Deathchase (perhaps in your shop) and if so your first impressions?
SW: My earliest memory, which may be false, is of it being ‘Game of the Month’ / ‘A Crash Smash’ in an early issue of the Newsfield magazine. That was generally a sign of a fine games, in those days.

JD: What do you think makes the game so great and enduring?
SW: It’s those early reviews, the not insignificant sales (both as a full-price and as a budget title) and the loyal and lingering fan base that maintains its appeal.

JD: What do/did you think of the game from a technical and/or software house angle?
SW: Graphically it was not that stunning (even in its day) but it clearly entertained. It’s what Ocean’s later release “Street Hawk” could and should have been inspired by.

JD: Who did you deal with to get it on your £2.99 classics label?
SW: I wish I could remember. We have a copy of the game on a ‘£2.99 Classics’ cassette in the office. When I get a moment I’ll take a look at what the inlay card says, that will remind me. We’ll also have the contract, deep in the vault.

JD: Why would you like to re-release it now?
SW: It’s amongst the ‘Top 100 Most Requested’ games by owners of our ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection apps.


Jim Bagley, coder of legendary Spectrum games such as Midnight Resistance and Cabal, also gave me his thoughts on Deathchase:-

"Yeah, of course I remember 3D Deathchase, who wouldn't it was a fantastic game, I'd love to do a remake, that's how much I like it. I remember first seeing Deathchase, way back, at my friend's house, it couldn't have been that long after it came out, it was fantastic, driving through the trees in real 3D (real as in back then real 3D haha). What makes it so great is the 3D feeling with the trees getting bigger as get closer to them, and the skill involved in navigating the trees at high speeds, whilst also shooting the baddie bikes!

From a technical angle, I absolutely adored the game, big massive tree sprites coming at you and enough to make it look like a forest full of trees, and it ran at a decent enough rate too, and sound! I still play it on the odd occasion, now and again, so rate it quite highly out of all the Speccy games."

Finally, here is the Retro Gamer forum boxout which sadly didn't make it into the final article:-

From the Forum

adippm82: For a 16K game it was incredible, just such a simple, seat of the pants game, great to put on for a few minutes, and that's what I did for a few years, and still occasionally do now.

Spector: It was reviewed in the first issue of Crash and the quality of the 3D effect and use of colour meant Deathchase wouldn't have looked out of place in the magazine had it been the last.

Markopoloman: Although I am not the Speccy's biggest fan, I thought Deathchase was very nicely done. It gave a good feeling of speed and had that very important 'just one more go' feel.

SirClive: The pure simplicity of the controls and game dynamic, coupled with great graphics and fast moving action make it an absolutely astonishing game for a 16k computer.

Matt_B: I'd say that it's massively overrated; the gameplay is very shallow and the graphics a cheap trick that was obvious to my 13-year-old self at the time

Sputryk: WATCH OUT FOR THE TRE....



Later this week I shall post the full interviews of the three people I interviewed for the Remakes section of the article, Richard Wilson (CPC), James McKay (Tandy/Dragon 32) and Eugene Kiyanov (iOS).

Warcraft Article Extra: Original Design Document

This month's issue of Retro Gamer (111) includes an article that I've been working on for some time: The Making of Warcraft.

This was one of my favourite games back in the 90's - an RTS that combined a rip-roaring fantasy setting with exciting, fast-paced strategy gaming.

One of my interviewees, Warcraft designer Stu Rose, kindly sent me the original design document for this famous game and I have uploaded it here.  Most of Stu's interview unfortunately could not appear in the article, so I shall shortly post it here.  Meantime feel free to check out the document, it includes several elements that didn't make it into the final game including characters and spells.

Issue 111 of Retro Gamer is out now and features loads more cool articles such as The history of Lode Runner, an Imagitec company profile and the making of Carrier Command.

Link to original Warcraft Design Document

From the Archives: Cascade Games - Extra Interview 2

I interviewed Andrew Canham (aka PJ) for a boxout for this month's Retro Gamer feature on Cascade Games.  Unfortunately only a fraction of his hilarious responses on Cassette 50 were able to go in the boxout - so here's the full interview.  You can check out all of Andrew's remakes at his website http://www.peejays-remakes.co.uk

 Issue 109 of Retro Gamer is available in good newsagents now.  For the full lowdown on Cassette 50, check out my Story of Cassette 50 in issue 2 of Pixel Nation, available from www.pixel-nation.co.uk

Hi PJ! Can you tell me your real name?
My name is really Andrew Canham, but I picked up the nickname "PJ" whilst in the RAF many, many years ago, and it has stuck with me ever since. I would tell you why, but this is a family magazine!

What do you remember of the original Cassette 50? 
At the time, I owned a Speccy, and had taught myself to program (albeit only in BASIC at that stage), and had learned many tips and tricks from reading code other people had written in the timeless classic, Sinclair Programs. I believe it was an advert in there that caught my eye - 50 games for less that a tenner? Less than 20p a game! It had to be a bargain, right? Er, no, not by a long chalk!

Did you actually buy it? And wear the watch?
 I did buy it (one of the many dark chapters of my life) and, to add insult to injury, when it first came out, there was no cheap plastic calculator watch offered with it either! So not only did I shell out my hard earned pocket money (I used to get money for helping my father on his milk round) on no less than 50 piles of turd, but I missed the opportunity to own a timepiece that would make a 99p Casio off the market stall seem like a Rolex!


Any games that stick out? 
Ouch, I tried to eradicate them all from my memory. Every last one. It took years of therapy, some astronomical psychiatrists bills, and enough Courvoisier to float an armada, but I got there in the end. Please don't ask me to relive that horror by going through them again with an emulator. I couldn't take the pain at my age!

Why Cassette 50 for a remake?
 I'm afraid you have to blame the Retro Remakes website for that one, especially OddBob (who makes a great scapegoat for anything, so feel free to lob the rotten tomatoes in his direction!) Just for a bit of fun, we (as a remaking community) were deliberately writing crap games for the hell of it. Well, this was my forte - I had previously done a joke remake of a tacky Basic game released by hitm4n from the same group, and, as the winner of the wooden spoon for the worst remake in the first annual remaking competition back in 2003 (it was deliberately bad, by the way) for Ground Attack Enhanced, I was determined that no-one was going to out-crap-game me! So I set myself a challenge to write at least one game each evening (which ended up being 2 or more an evening once I was in the swing of it) until Blitz50 was born. So, I guess, it has all just been one big joke (rather like Cascade's idea of 50 "Great" Games!)

Why not specifically remake the games on it? 
Have you seen the price of Courvoisier? Really, I'm having palpitations here, beads of cold sweat are forming on the mere thought of playing through them again to recall how truly awful they were. The mental scarring is irreparable from the first time round!

How did you go about making the games as rubbish as possible? Was this difficult?
You cannot imagine just how tricky it was. Firstly, to come up with 50 (actually, 51 - there is a hidden game that can be accessed by holding down 5 and 0 on the numerical pad on the menu screen) unique ideas (though 2 of the games are remakes of the first 2 games I wrote on the Speccy), and secondly, using Blitz Basic at the time (hence Blitz50) which wasn't really designed for churning out total tat. Unfortunately, there was a bug that had crept in to Blitz by then with the collision handling routines, making them wildly inaccurate, which also meant much of the collision detection had to be approximated and coded rather than using the inbuilt routines. Really, it was Blitz' swansong before I switched to the excellent GL Basic.

Did you ever think some of them were...too good?
Given that paying the gas bill is more fun than playing the original games, all of them! Many of the games were coding exercises, to be honest. For example, games like A-Maze-Ing, and the hidden game, Micromaze, were used to optimise my random maze generation code that I had previously used in the early remakes Maziacs and Fred. Microdot's BASIC Bouncerama was a simple exercise to investigate the feasibility of later remaking Pixy the Microdot, whilst Start Wreck was a chance to play with inertia and stupid levels of parallax scrolling. Juggler isn't too bad as a game, but my biggest disappointment in sheer lack of crapness has got to be Open Plan Pacman. I mean, there is actually a modicum of fun built in to that! Whoever would have thought that our eponymous hero, eating al fresco, would create a game you might want to play for more than 30 seconds?

Are you aware of the crap games competitions that have spawned from Cass 50? If so what do you think of them?
Ah, how can I not be aware of the comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition? I always have a good giggle at some of the game names, where clearly more effort has gone into dreaming up the title than in the coding itself! I love the idea of crap coding, for one simple reason (and I feel sure I am not alone in this sentiment). I am the sort of person who loves the challenge of coding a game engine - getting the feel right - but hates the polishing required to make it look presentable afterwards. Crap coding dispenses with the need to do any of the stuff I loathe, after all, as the old saying goes, you can't polish a turd!

Any opinions on the rest of Cascade's games? 
Cascade did release a few really good titles - Ace springs to mind, along with 19 and Frightmare (which was clearly a "Santa brought me Cassette50 for Christmas" simulator!) But clearly with such turkeys as The Life of Harry in their back catalogue too, they never lost their touch in churning out garbage.

Considering Cass 50's role at Cascade (it basically funded the development of games such as ACE) how do you perceive it?
There could never be an acceptable excuse for Cassette50. Never. Anyone that would inflict this on people is obviously the sort of person that would kick a pet for fun. It's the equivalent of selling people hemorrhoids. Did you ever see the film Time Bandits? Where pure evil was portrayed as a coal like substance. No, pure evil should have been shown as the Cascade marketing division. If there is a heaven and hell, I just take comfort from the idea that Beelzebub has guest rooms waiting for them.

I've written an article on Cassette 50 for a magazine called Pixel Nation.
Someone owned up to making it? You mean it is not the illegitimate lovechild of a Commodore PET and a village idiot? I may have to have a shuftie at this, to see who I need to make a voodoo doll out of...

PS shame French Maid Pro never made it :-(
Never give up hope - it is still a WIP, but with 20 games written already, Revenge of Blitz50 may see the light of day yet. To be honest, this was largely a website cleanup exercise - since I had written a number of crap individual titles (like Ground Attack Enhanced, but also Galaxy Warrior, Voyager, Snobby, and Alien Kill, I was going to use RoB50 to merge them all into one title of pure pants. But just for you, I have also attached a screengrab of French Maid Pro running :-)

Thanks Andrew :-)

From The Archives: Cascade Games - Extra Interview

Tony Warriner worked at Cascade for just under a year between 1988 and 89. After leaving, he went on to form Revolution Software with Charles Cecil and Noirin Carmody. I interviewed him for this month's Cascade From the Archives (Retro Gamer issue 109) but unfortunately couldn't find room in the final edit for his contributions. So here's the interview in full.

Hi Tony. How and when did you first start at Cascade? I started work there in, I believe, 1988. As far as I remember, there was an ad for programming jobs, so I thought I'd give it a go. I turned up for an interview with a handful of cassette tape versions of games I'd already coded, and they rang me to offer the job before I had even arrived home.

Which games did you work on and how did you come to work on them?
I only worked on 19 Boot Camp, specifically a couple of the Spectrum mini-games in that package.

What was your view of the industry at the time?
I think fairly positive. I was pretty young, and hadn't really figured it all out, but games seemed like a pretty good thing to be doing. There was a strong belief that you only had to produce something pure and good and fame and riches would flow - not dissimilar to the dot.com and app store gold rushes that we witnessed more recently.

And Cascade itself (including its offices, personnel)?
It seemed ok. There was a strange mix of very formal, almost Etonian top down management, alongside the creative all-in-it-together buzz of the development team. To be honest, we didn't see the company owner(s) very often. When they did turn up it was like a royal tour.

Were you involved with Cassette 50 and what was your opinion of it?
I wasn't involved with that, but I understood that it made a lot of money and set the company up.

How do you look back on your time there?
Very positive, as the dev team were very close. It was fun and vibrant, even though, towards the end, the corporate side seemed to be disintegrating. I still talk to the people I'm in contact with.

Do you know what happened to 19: Boot Camp part 2?
I really don't. As I understood it, 19 was the first game in a four product deal with Activision though.

When did you leave Cascade and why?
I left after nine months or so. There was a general feeling amongst the devs that we were being held back, creatively, and that we should regroup and create our own games. However, it wasn't a very well organised retreat, so the team pretty much ended up disbanded and doing separate things, which is a shame. Perhaps we needed a business-savvy leader, after all.

Do you know what happened to Cascade in the end?
I think they kind of pulled it back together again, and tried to do 'proper' software. Maybe they did this for a year or two before it disappeared completely.

Do you have any favourite games from Cascade?
19 Boot Camp of course! It actually wasn't bad - a lot of careful crafting went into it. The team were steadfast in their desire to do it properly.

If you have any other stories or memories that you think would interest readers please let me know.
Most of my memories of the time are based on the dev team culture we had there. Anything good, or difficult, was "tweeky" - a term I still use to this day. I recall that egg mayonaise sandwiches were mandatory and the beer of choice was Youngs No 3. Speaking of which, on return to Hull, I invested much time tracking down a pub that sold Youngs beer. Eventually I succeeded and walked, as in a dream, to the bar. I looked up, and it was the same barman as the pub we frequented in Harrogate.

My thanks to Tony for his time  - keep up the good work mate!

From the Archives: Cascade Games - extra images part 2

As with many of my articles, I submit a host of images to the magazine, a fraction of which actually appear in the feature itself.  Usually this amounts to some extra screenshots or box art, but occasionally I get a lot of extra material that may not be so familiar.

Guy Wilhelmy and Nigel Stevens, former co-owners of Cascade, both sent me some clippings, adverts and articles that didn't make it in the feature, so here's the second lot.

For the full story on Cascade Games check out Issue 109 of Retro Gamer - out now!
For the full story on Cascade's Cassette 50, check out issue 2 of Pixel Nation, available at www.pixel-nation.co.uk

A rare promo sheet of Nigel and Guy from the early days of Cascade.

An alternate shot of programmer Rick Vanner

Eeeek!  It's Tony Warriner in full zombie mode!

Some more of Guy Wilhelmy's business cards and a couple of paying-in slips, giving you an idea of the sums of money Guy and Nigel were moving around

Ah, the Cascade promise!  Ooh, and look, there's that watch again!

An unseen page from Databank's Catalogue.  As with all Databank material, everything was produced by Guy himself.

Another early Databank advert.  Note the part top left - yes, Petssette, the inspiration for Cascade's Cassette 50!

A press release for Databank

Guy's penchant for hyperbole was well-tuned even at this early stage

From the Archives: Cascade Games - extra images part 1

As with many of my articles, I submit a host of images to the magazine, a fraction of which actually appear in the feature itself.  Usually this amounts to some extra screenshots or box art, but occasionally I get a lot of extra material that may not be so familiar.

Guy Wilhelmy and Nigel Stevens, former co-owners of Cascade, both sent me some clippings, adverts and articles that didn't make it in the feature, so here's the first lot...

One of Cascade's mailshots, sent to anyone who had bought a game from Cascade via mail order (such as Cassette 50)

Top Right: Guy Wilhelmy's first business card, with the flashier later ones below.  Not sure what the other items are!

The inlay for Cassette 4, Cascade's ill-judged follow up to Cassette 50

Guy Wilhelmy's first company upon leaving University was the somewhat dry-sounding Databank Software Services.  Some of those game names will seem familiar to anyone who bought Cassette 50...

Here's an interesting one.  Guy wrote a program-writing package called Flexidata.  Unfortunately it was released at the same time as its well-publicised rival, The Last One, and flopped.

A cutting from the York Evening Press where Nigel Stevens shows off his new invention that pointed the way to a rather popular recent games console...

Cascade dabbled in hardware and peripherals, as shown by this press release for a joystick interface

 I'll put some more images up shortly.

Realms of the Haunting Article Extra: Interview with Sascha Kimmel

Realms of the Haunting was a 1996 game from Gremlin Interactive.  A mix of survival horror, FPS and point and click, it was an innovative effort at widening the shooter genre and a highly influential title.

You play the hero, Adam Randall

I interviewed Gremlin producer Paul Green for the article in this month's Retro Gamer magazine; it appears as one quarter of a feature dedicated to four spooky games called Tales from the Retro Crypt. In the course of researching the game, I found this excellent tribute website run by a guy named Sascha Kimmel.  I interviewed him with the aim to getting his valued opinions on Realms of the Haunting into the article but sadly there wasn't room, so here's the interview in its entireity.  Check out Sascha's unofficial ROTH page by clicking here.

ROTH's title screen was very reminiscent of the film The Thing

Hi Sascha.  Can you start by telling me how you got into games and Realms of the Haunting.
I got my first computer - which was a C64-II - in 1988 with a datasette! It wasn't only a gaming machine for me so I started programming in BASIC and created some small programs which due to the lack of the internet were used by a huge amount of users - myself! I actually used the C64 until 1996 when I purchased my first PC which was a Gateway PC with a Pentium 166 processor and a 3.8 GB hard drive - and I was asked what I needed the 3.6 gigabytes for! The first two games I played on the PC were Tomb Raider and Realms Of The Haunting - two very different kinds of games although they also have some things in common as well.

Nothing spookier than spooky eyes!

What do you admire so much about ROTH that inspired you to create the website?
I have never seen a game like ROTH since it has been released way back in 1996. The dense atmosphere and the thrilling storyline in combination with the adventure and shooter elements are unmatched. Numerous similar games have been released since 1996, but I so far couldn't find any new game like it. Nowadays you either find shooters in this genre or point-and-click adventures (which I do like by the way), but a combination of both tied together with the epic story is nowhere to be found.
 
I created the website as an homage to the game and also as a way to help and support other fans of the game and keep it alive - and a very small hope of a sequel.




Why do you think the game has such enduring appeal?
Despite the graphics (which look even worse on today's large screens) I regard the atmosphere as the most important part of the game - something I have only experienced with the relatively new (from a retro point of view that is) point-and-click adventure game "Scratches". Although there are some splatter and gore elements in ROTH it doesn't focus on portraying gruesome scenes. Unless you have played the game very often you don't know what to expect next so you're in a constant mode of fear - a fear of the unknown. In contrast to other games of that time that have used FMVs the game itself isn't just a way of clicking somewhere to see the next video (like the Phantasmagoria franchise in my opinion) - the adventure and shooter parts are really interwoven which I find really fascinating.

And of course it's also a classic "haunted house" storyline.

What do you think marks out Realms of the Haunting from other games of its time?
At that time many adventure games started using FMVs to tell the story and were rather interactive movies than pure adventure games. ROTH combined both elements perfectly so the videos gave you more info you needed to achieve progress in the game. The shooter elements were also integrated into the game and didn't feel as if they were just added to attract that potential audience as well.

Do you think it has any weakpoints?
The main problem I see is that the game doesn't have any cheats. There are some parts of the game that can drive you mad because they make the game hard to solve - these are mostly shooter elements. I believe that the reason that ROTH hasn't become as popular despite its high ratings at that time is in fact the combination of adventure game and shooter elements because I think that these are mostly two distinct audiences it tried to attract at that time - despite people like me who really enjoyed the combination of both.

Do you generally like this type of atmospheric game?
Yes, but I haven't found any other game that combines the adventure and shooter genres as ROTH has done so I mostly stick with point-and-click adventures nowadays.
 

One of the cool weapons, The Staff

If so, which others?
In general most of the games I play are point-and-click adventure games but also the TOMB RAIDER series. Sometimes I also enjoy some shooters but I generally prefer point-and-click adventures with a mysterious story like the Black Mirror series, Overclocked, Reprobates, Scratches, Moment Of Silence, the Secret Files series and similar games. I also enjoy games like Penumbra, Dark Fall, The Art Of Murder, Still Life and Delaware St. John. I really enjoyed the atmosphere of the Delaware St. John series despite the outdated graphics and controls. As I said before the atmosphere is the most important part of the game for me because with a great atmosphere you're not playing a game - you're in the game.

How do you see Realms of the Haunting's position in gaming history?
I think it's been undervalued because it hasn't found as many buyers as it deserved although it got really high ratings. I regard ROTH as a game that's incomparable to any other game because of the mix of genres, the combination of adventure and shooter elements.

Thanks very much to Sascha for sparing the time.  Please check out his excellent Realms of the Haunting website.

From The Archives: Digital Integration Article Extras Part 2

This month's Retro Gamer features my From The Archives piece on legendary publisher and developer Digital Integration.  Dave Marshall had a box-full of material that I photographed when I interviewed him at his house, 90% of which didn't make it into the final article.  So here is the second batch.  I hope to find the time to also publish the full interviews of the DI employees I spoke to for the article.

Issue 108 of Retro Gamer is still available in shops or from the Imagine shop, click here

A press release for the Action 16 game Falcon.  Action 16 was a sub label DI used for 3rd party games, in this case a game from their great rivals, Spectrum Holobyte.

From Dave's scrapbook:  a chart from Computer Answers showing Fighter Pilot holding off such luminaries as "Atic Attack" and Manic Miner

And this one from The Daily Mirror with only the legendary Jet Set Willy keeping Fighter Pilot off the top spot

After their initial success, Dave and Rod contacted their local paper with pleasing results

A prestigious Designer of the Month piece which wrongly attributes Death Chase to Dave in addition to Fighter Pilot

Another Daily Mirror chart in league with Computer and Video Games.

Like many 80's software houses, competitions were the order of the day.  The prize in the Tomahawk competition was predictably a ride in a helicopter;  Noel Edmonds' helicopter to be precise.

DI's publicist insisted they publish their own newsletter.  This is the second, containing an interview with Suzuki biker Paul "Angry Ant" Lewis to tie in with TT Racer.

Distributor Micro Dealer's chart was closely monitored by the whole industry.  Fighter Pilot sits proudly at number one.

As this flier shows, the original title for TT Racer was the somewhat less snappier TT Grand Prix.

Tomahawk was astoundingly popular on Amstrad's business machine the PCW8256.  "It was two colours, green and dark green" joked Dave when he discovered this pic.  The success of the game led DI to realise that the PC could be a viable platform for their flight sims.

A brace of pics containing a Tornado and the team that made the game come alive.  From left to right:  Kevin Bezant, Dave Marshall, Matt Smith, Nick Mascall, Tony Hosier and Robin Heydon

Rod Swift at a very early ZX Microfair.  DI are showing off the ZX81 version of Night Gunner along with its expansion pack.  The artwork above Rod was designed by his brother, Tim.