CRASH INVESTIGATES
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When it comes to the best games included on magazine covertapes, one title absolutely smashed it – through a brick wall and beyond. But why was a game as good as Batty given away? Martyn Carroll goes looking for answers.
The Background
The October 1987 issue of Your Sinclair came with a tape stuck to the front of the mag that contained Batty, an Arkanoid clone from Elite Systems. It wasn’t a freebie — the mag’s coverprice was bumped from £1 to £1.50 to accommodate it – but getting a brilliant new game for the cost of three packs of Garbage Pail Kids and a Wham bar wasn’t to be sniffed at. No doubt a few CRASH devotees switched allegiance that particular month to take advantage
(we won’t lie, it still hurts). So what compelled Elite to offer Your Sinclair a game that could have easily sold at full price?
The Investigation
It’s key to acknowledge that Batty didn’t just appear on a covertape. At the same time Elite also included the game on its 6-Pak Vol 2 compilation, alongside five older titles. As Batty was the sole new game, CRASH focused on it and awarded it 85% in issue 44. All three reviewers recommended
it, and comparisons were naturally drawn to Ocean’s Arkanoid (which CRASH had awarded 59%). “Batty is everything Arkanoid should have been,” commented Mike Dunn. “The graphics make it better than Arkanoid,” added Nick Roberts. “It’s dangerously Arkanoid-esque,” warned Ben Stone.
It seems that Ben hit the nail right on the head.
Elite knew the value of licenses, having licensed many properties itself (and even having to protect its own interests when Alligata Software released the Commando rip-off Who Dares
Wins), so it proceeded with caution. I once asked Elite boss Steve Wilcox about it and he couldn’t recall the details, but he did remember seeking legal advice, specifically because Batty was a clone of Arkanoid, yet Arkanoid itself was a clone of Breakout. Was the bat-n-ball concept fair game?
Elite chose to play it safe by offering the game to YS and including it on the compilation, so it wouldn’t compete directly with Arkanoid. This was probably a wise move, as it transpires that Ocean had already been tipped off about this ‘Arkanoid beater’. Ocean graphic artist Mark
R Jones remembers a day in early 1987 when an early version of the game landed on software director Gary Bracey’s desk. “When the game turned up at Ocean it was called Wipe Out,” he says. “Gary loaded it up and his face dropped when he saw it was a Breakout clone. Arkanoid was still being worked on in-house at this point, the ads were out but the game was not finished. Gary seemed worried, as it looked better than our version! There was an uncomfortable silence and he took the tape straight upstairs to show [Ocean bosses] David Ward and Jon Woods.”
Oh to have been a fly on that wall. “They were livid,” says Mark. “They’d paid for the Arkanoid licence and here was another version. We didn’t hear of it again until it surfaced on YS after a name change and under the Elite label.”
In 1989 Elite put Batty out on its budget Encore label. In his review for YS, Marcus Berkmann confirmed that the game was “Originally deemed unreleasable because it so resembled Arkanoid”. Investigation over.
Just one more thing!
…as Columbo liked to say. The authorship of Batty has been a point of interest ever since The Games Machine claimed it was “written by an ex-Ultimate programmer”. This tallies with
Mark’s memories: “The weird thing is that when it arrived at Ocean, Gary said ‘I’ve got a copy of the new Ultimate game’. My ears pricked up because you never saw an Ultimate game before release.”
So who wrote it? Batty
is credited to Mark Crane, a programmer with no other credits and no links to
Ultimate. Over to Paul Byford, who worked with ex-Ultimate staff at Rare. “Mark Betteridge had written Cyberun for Ultimate and he went freelance over the winter of 86/87 and wrote Wipe Out, which became
Batty,” he tells me. So Mark Crane was an alias for Mark Betteridge, the man who would rejoin Ultimate to write Bubbler
and later become the boss at Rare. The final bit of proof:
Wipe Out features the onscreen credit ‘KB.RAM’ – an anagram of MARK.B.
If there’s a long-standing mystery you’d like us to unravel, write in and we’ll don the old deerstalker for you.
Procrastinating as usual. This month’s selection was made at the eleventh hour, which isn’t strictly true. The images were chosen in plenty of time but the musings left until the very last minute.
It took taskmaster Wilkins to stir me out of my reverie and knuckle down to hammer away at my poor beleaguered keyboard once again.
With more than an ample collection of images at my disposal, I endeavoured to try a different approach in finding those appropriate for perusal and simply put the usual suspects to one side, then went for those that leapt from my screen with no prevarication or dithering over decisions.
1: Your Special Friend : Dubmaster : 2010
This particular piece appeals on two levels. I’m never one to shy from a beautiful and superbly rendered young lady, but it is her expression that is the key, combined with the bold lines in the headphones.
Music plays a large part in my daily life, be it while working, or out and about on my regular walks. The look of blissful serenity in the one closed eye is a sensation I understand only too well.
The curves in her profile, her cheek and brow, the perfect circle of the headphone, all suggest ease and peace. The slight curve of her lips into the smallest of smiles tells of a woman at one with whatever she is hearing and the world around her. The languid, swirling blue shapes which can be interpreted as clouds or perhaps even water only add to the calming effect of the whole image.
2: Vavoom : Diver : 2003
Two distorted and distended people with cavernous eyes and mouths, which could be something unearthly or a simple abstraction of the human form to shock or confuse. The one thing that nags at me about this image is that for reasons I cannot explain it somehow reminds me of American Gothic by Grant Wood. I realise that the only similarity is that there are two figures side by side, but that’s what keeps niggling at me. Are the figures screaming, are they in pain? Who knows, but whatever the intention it is undeniably striking. The thick black lines sit heavily on the bizarre and psychedelic backdrop, while something just offscreen is glowing brightly. An all round fascinating and enigmatic addition to the gallery.
3: False Life : Pheel : 2001
I think this image appealed to the old comics fanboy in me. Here we have some bio-mechanically enhanced being tearing open the very fabric of reality, but we can also see inside the fractured skull yet another realm, a further dimension in this cosmic creation.
Worlds within worlds.
The cold implacable stare suggests someone or something removed from all emotion, that would destroy without compassion, no qualms or remorse.
The tubes protruding from the head and the wired joints in the fingers only add to the feeling that there is nothing but cold unfeeling motion in this starborn creature. Pheel has a penchant for otherworldly creations and this is a particularly striking example.
Others will follow in the months to come.
4: Imaginary Dragons : Darklight : 2019
This particular image, while almost certainly given as much forethought as all the others selected here, has the feeling of immediacy found in a sketch. It isn’t just the artist’s hand and stylus that lends this suggestion, it is the feeling of abandon, the swirling lines in the colours, the flowing, graceful curves in the feathers of what looks to me more like a giant phoenix than a dragon, but that is academic. The city and the factory belching out noxious clouds of effluvia, the circle through which we see this anachronistic metropolis, so stark in contrast to the majesty of the great flying beast. It is this wild contrasting of ideas and concepts, shapes and colours that is suggestive of an artist’s sketchpad. Ideas thrown pell-mell onto the page while still fresh and vibrant. Crazy and creative, I love it.