Defining Games
ZX Chess 1981
Artic made a name for itself by publishing a good number of chess games. ZX Chess by David Horne is arguably the greatest, primarily because it manages to use just 672 bytes of RAM. It’s not a spot-on digital conversion of the ancient two-player strategy board game by any means (there’s no castling, queening or en passant capture and it wasn’t quite a chess expert). But when you consider that no other chess game managed to do so much with so little for 33 years (Bootchess broke the record in 2015 with a game taking up 487 bytes), it really was some achievement.
Adventure B: Inca Curse 1982
Many adventure games were created by Artic Computing from Adventure A: Planet of Death in 1981 through to Curse of the 7 Faces and Dead At The Controls four years later. But we pull out Inca Curse for a reason: it was the first game ever created by Charles Cecil, who not only went on to produce Ship Of Doom, but founded Revolution Software which made classics such as Beneath A Steel Sky and Broken Sword. Inca Curse was a text-based title that pitched players as an explorer in the South American jungle, and, as you’d expect from a text adventure, it relied heavily on a gamer’s imagination.
Bear Bovver 1983
Developed by Jon Ritman, the premise of Bear Bovver was similar to Burgertime but that didn’t make it any less imaginative. Put in control of Ted, the proud owner of a Sinclair electric truck, players had to leave a parked vehicle, navigate a building site’s scaffolding and drop batteries one platform at a time into the vehicle. Once done, he could drive away, eventually reaching the next screen. Hindering Ted, however, were bears and a lizard, although dropping a battery on their heads bought players some time. It was certainly fun, helped along by smooth animation, frantic action and a level of difficulty that could make you scream.
Paws 1985
Artic originally intended to tie this game in with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats but, after failing to secure the licence, it was released as Paws instead. This caused some embarrassment for Sinclair User magazine which reviewed the unfinished game as Cats in its June 1985 issue, only to clear up the mistake three months later. It also switched from thinking it was too easy to believing it to be challenging. The premise involved moving a mother cat around a maze to collect her lost kittens while avoiding bully dogs and while it wasn’t purrfect (sorry!), it was colourful, well animated and it kept you on your toes.
World Cup Carnival 1986
If this was a real game of football, then it would be a true own-goal. It all started when two US Gold staff members got into a muddle over who was supposed to be developing a football game in time for the World Cup. Realising no one was creating it, the Birmingham-based publisher approached Ocean in the hope of modifying Match Day but a break down in communication scuppered such plans. Instead, it dusted off Artic’s two-year-old World Cup Football, doing nothing to rectify the jerky scrolling, poor graphics and terrible rendition of the beautiful game. Everyone cried rip-off and it missed the World Cup anyway.