The Making Of: Eliminator
Discover how an interest in Space Harrier and racing games led to Hewson’s fast-paced blaster
Although Atari launched its 16-bit ST computer in January 1985, it took three years and several price cuts for the system to accumulate the critical mass of owners required to seriously challenge its aging
8-bit competition. By late 1987,
John Phillips had embraced ST development, and had started working on a follow-up to his recently released 8-bit platformer Nebulus. “I’d just finished Nebulus, and someone else was doing the 16-bit versions, so I started on Eliminator,” John says. “Hewson sent me a video of Enduro Racer; I think it was the arcade version. So I was thinking about writing a racing game to start with, and the video gave me some ideas.”
During the early stages of its development, however, John’s racing game project didn’t go by the name Eliminator, and despite press reports from the time, none of its courses incorporated a ‘wall of death’. “Ammotrack was the original demo that I made, but the ‘wall of death’ was mainly Hewson’s PR speak,” John explains. “So Ammotrack was an early test, but it was too much of a racing game and I wanted to make a racing shoot-’em-up. I think I’d only seen Roadblasters in magazines; I hadn’t played it. But Space Harrier was an influence. I don’t think I’d ever played it, either, but I saw pictures of the arcade version. I think at the time I was playing Virus – it was Zarch on the Archimedes. So I was trying to do Space Harrier on a Zarch landscape.”
Soon after switching genres, John got down to designing courses for his disparately inspired racing shoot-’em-up using a recently tried-and-tested process. “I basically used the same system as I did with Nebulus. I designed all the tracks and then ranked them by difficulty. It was a case of just introducing more and more features. So I came up with all the effects for the corridors and the curves and sort of spaced them out. Every few tracks you would get a new feature appear, like you would get the tracks appearing in space. It was just a case of ideas popping into my head. I was even trying to put textures on
For his Nebulus follow-up, John Phillips switched from 8-bit to 16-bit and from platformer to racing shoot-’em-up. John tells Rory Milne how he made Eliminator
“I basically chose to include things that other people were doing” John Phillips
the walls, but considering the game was on the ST it was quite difficult.”
Having created a sequence of racing tracks of ascending difficulty levels, John next addressed the shoot-’em-up side of his emerging project by adding graceful alien formations at fixed points on each course. “It was mainly a case of memorising,” John reflects, “because you had attack patterns, rather than random patterns – they were just a product of maths. So you had to learn the tracks. I can’t remember how they were laid out, but they were in text files. There were just great big text files for each track. I think there was a script language. You would have a command for a certain amount of track and then a command for certain enemies appearing in patterns.”
Of course, having introduced alien foes into his game, John next had to arm his protagonist’s craft with weapons, and he ultimately settled on a suite of upgradeable weapons. “They were influenced by other shoot-’em-ups,” John admits. “Because things like Gradius and Salamander, they had upgrades and upgradeable weapons. And I think R-type was just after Nebulus. So I basically chose to include things that other people were doing.”
Unlike John’s arcade inspirations, however, his game was being designed for a home computer, which made multiple selectable weapons something of a challenge for the designer. “One of the problems on the ST was that you had a joystick with one button. So I had to find another way of doing it, which was holding down the button, and pushing up or down on the joystick. It was either that or using the cursor keys on the keyboard. It would certainly have been easier if we’d had gamepads back then.”
Further features followed, as John populated his racing shoot-’em-up’s tracks with invulnerable alien artefacts and roadblocks that could be blasted out of the way. “Well everything revolved around shooting,” John remembers. “I think even the roadblocks were influenced by shoot-’em-ups. You had the waves of aliens, and then there were other things you had to navigate – because other than the roadsides there were no obstacles.”
Additional course components came soon after, as John first introduced tunnels and then ramps to his game’s tracks, which
the developer describes as a product of necessity. “The ramps were introduced with the ceilings. I rendered the ceilings and then tried to figure out a way to get up on them. I thought it was a great idea, and it wasn’t that disorientating because left and right still worked the same way.”
Another of John’s ideas was to give the craft in his game shields that would diminish after taking fire from enemies but could be replenished by consistently avoiding attacks, although the designer subsequently also added a lives system. “I think the shields were there from the start, but I can’t remember the sequence of events. The lives were added later at Hewson’s request, because it decided that all games should have lives.”
John’s game subsequently underwent changes of a more cosmetic nature when the designer decided to recruit an expert in ST sprite creation. “There were several games on the ST that Pete Lyon had done graphics for, and my graphics were crap,” John concedes. “I needed a professional. Originally I used my own graphics. I can’t remember exactly what they looked like, but the game looked more like Eliminator than Ammotrack. I think I sent Pete some basic designs, and he did the sprites and the magnifications, and so on. But he had free reign with them. I did all the tracks and the backgrounds. I think it was just a case of managing to get textures on the tracks and realising what sorts of textures I could do within the resolution, and then Pete just popped in the sprites.”
In the months before the expected release of John’s
game, publisher Hewson issued a slew of press releases heralding its arrival, although at this stage the plan was to call it Roadstar XRI. “That was Hewson’s PR again,” John cringes.
“It owned the name Roadstar XRI, but I didn’t like it. I think Eliminator was either my name or it was from someone at Hewson. I think Hewson was in the process of doing the title screen at the time, and I think that the artist who was doing it complained about the name Roadstar XRI.”
However it gained its name, Eliminator was to be Hewson’s first original 16-bit title, and during its development John had also taken over the production of the 16-bit versions of his 8-bit hit Nebulus, although the developer found promoting the games more stressful than creating them. “It was probably more pressure when I got to a PCW show and Hewson announced Eliminator and Nebulus were being released in the same month. There was a Hewson stand and we were demoing the games. I talked to journalists at the show, but it was mainly phone calls. I think Nebulus got about 15 front covers and Eliminator got one.”
Promotion aside, the feedback
John received about Eliminator from the press and public attending 1988’s PCW show was almost entirely positive bar for one reservation, which the developer subsequently addressed. “The music was described as muffled. But I was doing various demos for people, and there was one magazine called ST News.
They published one of my music demos; it had four or eight channels, proper music on the ST. But I can’t remember if I managed to use that in Eliminator or if I went another way.”
Regardless of the specifics, the music in the version of Eliminator that ultimately got released was perfectly clear, but John was never the less disappointed with the response to his game. “Sales of Eliminator were a lot less than Nebulus, they were probably about a quarter. I thought the reviews were okay. They were all extremely positive for Nebulus but Eliminator scored a bit less. It was probably because people weren’t expecting a shoot-’em-up, and it was this weird game with all these weird effects and stuff. I think also that the 8-bit versions didn’t help at all; Eliminator on 8-bit was piss poor. It really wasn’t an 8-bit game.”
lookingback at the decision to convert his ST original to other formats, John is philosophical, and he recalls helping out where he could. “Hewson was the publisher, and it wanted to publish things. There was a guy who worked in Hewson’s office, he did the Spectrum version, and I think he did the Amstrad version. I remember going to the office quite a few times helping him. Then the C64 version was done by a couple of guys who kept sending demos into
Hewson. For the Amiga version, we ended up sending the ST version to someone; I think they were a part of Rainbow Arts. They had a process that let you plug in an ST disk and it would write out an Amiga disk.”
On the question of why Eliminator didn’t receive a sequel, John cites a lack of sales, Hewson’s precarious financial position at the time and his fertile imagination. “I just wanted to move onto another idea after Eliminator; that was all. And I don’t think Hewson were selling anything; it was very close to the end of the company. It would also have required Eliminator to have sold an awful lot more in the first place, which it didn’t.”
When given the last word on Eliminator, three decades later,
John offers a typically modest and thoughtful summation. “I’m fairly proud of Eliminator, I don’t think I’d make changes, really. I think it was quite good; but it was just rushed. That period of my life was rushed. It was partly stopping to do the 16-bit versions of Nebulus, but I think I just had all these ideas and I was trying to make demos of all of them.”
“Eliminator on 8-bit was piss poor. It really wasn’t an 8-bit game” John Phillips