COLLECTING GAMES FROM QUICK SILVA
Our latest collector’s guide focuses On Quicksilva’s software range. from the super common and ultra rare, to the unusual variants and the downright Obscure. richard burton plunges into the world Of collecting
In 1979 Nick Lambert founded the pioneering software house Quicksilva, the company name inspired by a track on the 1969 album Happy Trails by psychedelic rock band Quicksilver Messenger Service. While not as mysterious as Ultimate or rock’n’roll as Imagine Software, Quicksilva always had something of a cult following among gamers and collectors.
Quicksilva’s first product was actually a piece of hardware, a 3K RAM card for the ZX80, and its first software release was QS Defender (later renamed Defenda) which required the aforementioned RAM card to run it. The shooter was head and shoulders above anything else available at that time. Nick continued, now aided and abetted by John Hollis, writing new ZX81 games with many enhanced by the company’s own hardware products. The introduction of a sound board, character board and a motherboard to connect them together made ZX81 gaming unusually well defined and noisy.
Nick also wanted a more professional-looking end product. Rather than making do with a photocopied or Letraset-created inlay, Nick asked a friend, artist Steinar Lund, to create an airbrushed painting for QS Defender and soon more painted inlays followed – including superb artwork by Rich Shenfield and David Rowe.
Photo paper was used for the early batches of inlays but this was later changed to fully printed colour versions. Four ZX81 releases used these photo paper inlays – QS Defender, QS Asteroids, QS Invaders and QS Scramble – and the start of variation collecting hell began. Differences
in inlay, catalogue numbers, cassette and label colour changes and even keyboard overlays has since given completionists nightmares.
Quicksilva became successful, but that made it a target ripe for takeover. Argus Press Software, the software division of, well, Argus Press – which was part of the huge conglomerate British Electric Traction – moved in, and by summer 1984 Quicksilva had been absorbed.
So, what are the Quicksilva rarities and curios? Unsurprisingly, some of Quicksilva’s earliest output are also the hardest to find. QS Life was the company’s second release for the ZX80/81 and Printerface, a utility that allowed the use a Sinclair printer on an Acorn Atom, both sold in small numbers before being discontinued. Both are incredibly rare and would cost a Quicksilva aficionado £50 each.
Those early photo paper inlay versions of the ZX81 quartet of arcade clones should set you back £12 to £15 a game. The introduction of the black border inlays brought uniformity to the ZX81 line and while most are available for under £5, Pioneer Trail, Blackstar and Ocean Trader will fetch a little more.
For a ZX Spectrum rarity, look no further than The L-game – all thanks to a copyright oversight. The L-game is a simple puzzle created by Edward De Bono. However, Quicksilva assumed its new game was all its programmer’s own work, only to later find the L-game concept was copyrighted. Edward De Bono got in touch, it was immediately withdrawn and a £50+ future collectible was born.
Suffering a similar fate was Quicksilva’s speech utility, Speakeasy, which had to renamed Easyspeak after a company already using the name got in contact. Thankfully, both variations are easily obtainable for a few quid. Another name change occurred when Blood
‘N’ Guts was rebranded Fantastic Voyage after a licensing deal with 20th Century Fox was struck, creating another rarity – expect to pay around £20. One further Spectrum collecting variation was Zombie Zombie with its two distinct covers featuring a falling zombie. Known as the ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ zombie inlays, both can be picked up for £15 each.
The Commodore 64 releases raise the Quicksilva rarity bar with the infrequent appearances of their UK disk versions. Gryphon, Mean City, Black Thunder, Castle Of Jasoom, Doodle! and Dungeons Of Ba are tough to find and will set you back £40-50 each. Summer Games is the exception, at around £20.
A handful of the C64 tape releases are surprisingly hard to locate such as Magic Micro Mission, Seesaw and Traffic and could cost you £10 each. However, the rarest of all is not a tape or disk but the flexidisc mailaway version of The Thompson Twins Adventure. While the gimmicky flexidisc Spectrum version was free with Computer & Video Games magazine, its C64 counterpart was only available by clipping out and mailing in a coupon. While a mint specimen of the Spectrum flexidisc should cost £20, the C64 version could cost you double that figure.
Elsewhere, the entire MSX range of Quicksilva games are all elusive and will cost £10-12 each. The VIC-20 also has a few tough to find titles, mainly the Pixel Production releases, which should fetch similar prices.
While games after the Argus Press takeover were of variable quality, there were still
“the holy grail would be the Original ant attack art” Henry Lambrick
collectibles among the chaff. The C64 releases of Romulus, Star Soldier and Mean City are all difficult finds, while the Spectrum games Tantalus, Sabotage and Death Wake are equally rare and prices vary between £10 to £20 each.
The Quicksilva name survived until 1989 touching the 16-bit era with Atari ST and Amiga releases of Pac-land. You’ll likely pay £20 for a copy.
For the hardcore Quicksilva collector there is a whole swath of repackaged games released across different territories. In the USA, several games were released for the Sinclair Timex 1000, 1500 and 2068 in oversized boxes. Many of the C64 UK titles received exclusive disk releases too with prices likely to be higher due to limited sales.
Spanish rereleases are also plentiful, many sporting different inlay artwork. Investronica, Spectrum Magazine, Micro Byte, and Monser rereleased several Quicksilva games for Spanish gamers. Monser’s version of Ant Attack, known as Anttown 3D, bizarrely features a giant ape on the cover. Unusual and collectible they may be, but you don’t need to worry about price: most can be picked up for just a few pounds or euros.
While certain games are hard to track down, a few are impossible. Three titles listed on Quicksilva’s promos were highlighted for release and even given catalogue numbers but never quite made it to production. The non-appearing trio were Games 84 (Spectrum), Outpost (Atari) and Mined Out (Camputers Lynx). So is it ever possible to have a complete collection?
Special thanks to Mark Eyles.