The History Of 2000 AD Videogames
Jason Kingsley, Jas Austin and many other developers look back at the digital adventures of Judge Dredd and co
W hen the first issue of 2000 AD hit the newsstands in February 1977, even its galactic editor, Tharg
The Mighty, would have been hard-pressed to admit it would still be thrilling readers four decades later. Yet having eclipsed its then-futuristic name, the weekly comic is still going strong, and about to release Prog 2,132, now available in both paper and downloadable form. As befits this longevity, there have been movies, graphic novels, comic spin-offs, toys and merchandising galore based on 2000 AD characters. And, of course, videogames.
By 1983, 2000 AD was a solid success for
IPC Magazines and its characters were quickly establishing themselves in youth culture. The iron fist of the fascist Judge Dredd, ruling over an overpopulated city called Mega-city One was the flagship strip, but that’s not to demean the other weekly stars of the comic. And with each of those came a strong emotional backdrop and a depth of character rarely seen at the time, in what was (like videogames) mainly considered something just for kids: the blue-skinned Genetic Infantryman Rogue Trooper, betrayed by his own side and conversing with his dead colleagues, their personalities transferred into his equipment via electronic chips. Mutant bounty hunter Strontium Dog (AKA Johnny Alpha), hated and feared in equal measure for a condition which he didn’t ask for. Or Halo Jones, the teenager who escapes Earth only to fight in a guerrilla war in outer space. The list goes on, yet it was with the gun-for-hire, Johnny Alpha, who became the first 2000 AD character to move into the world of videogames.
Strontium Dog And The Death Gauntlet, released in 1984 by Quicksilva, was not just the first 2000 AD licence, but also one of the first character-licensed games on home computers, and the brainchild of Quicksilva’s software manager, Mark Eyles. “I had previously spoken to and met the then-editor Richard Burton,” says Mark, “who it turned out was a Quicksilva fan. My initial contact had been to write to him asking for a picture of Tharg to help add thrill power to our game development.” When the photo arrived, it accompanied a letter from the editor, declaring his love for the ZX81. “So we sent him some games,” continues Mark, “and eventually arranged to meet up. I can’t remember where it was exactly, but I think it may have been at a Microfair. Our first choice was Judge Dredd, but he wasn’t available as he’d already been licensed for a film.”
While the movie adaptation of Mega-city
One’s finest took over ten years to appear, it was just a year later when Strontium Dog made his digital debut. Playing the titular bounty hunter, searching for pals Wulf and Gronk, the aim is to eliminate the Stix Brothers and claim a sizeable bounty in the process. “I worked on the design, and unfortunately it didn’t work out as well as we might have liked,” admits Mark. Yet despite being a slightly tedious horizontally-scrolling run-and-gunner with little resemblance to the comic strip, The Death Gauntlet did not mark the end of Strontium Dog. Later the same year, the ZX Spectrum got its own tale of the mutie bounty hunter, courtesy of a game submitted to Quicksilva from a third-party coder. “The Spectrum game,
Strontium Dog: The Killing, was one of those incredible coincidences,” reveals Mark. “The guys who made it sent it in for us to publish for them, not realising we had licensed Strontium Dog. We were understandably keen to publish it!” In the early Eighties, such unsolicited submissions were common and the game’s author, Paul Hargreaves, was inspired by his favourite story from 2000 AD.
Appearing in Progs 350 to 359, The Killing tells the tale of a deadly contest organised by the Despots Of Zen in which contestants must murder each other until there is one winner, with Johnny Alpha and Wulf using the competition to claim several bounties. The ZX Spectrum’s attempt at recreating the story involves a flick-screen maze as Johnny wanders around, killing his rivals. As with Death
Gauntlet, it barely resembles the comic, but was considered good enough for Quicksilva to stamp its official licence and commission a beautiful Carlos Ezquerra cover.
Despite the popularity of 2000 AD, only moderate success greeted Quicksilva’s “OUR FIRST CHOICE WAS JUDGE DREDD, BUT HE’D ALREADY BEEN LICENSED FOR A FILM” Mark Eyles
brace of Strontium Dog games. The 8-bit publisher, bought out by Argus Press Software a year later, tried its hand at adapting an entirely different comic strip character, Rupert The Bear, before fading from view in the late Eighties. Fortunately, others were prepared to make sure that 2000 AD ’s famous characters continued to appear in pixellated form, starting with Piranha, a newly-formed offshoot of the Macmillan Publishing empire. Unlike Quicksilva, Piranha obtained a number of 2000 AD characters, no doubt thanks to the clout of its parent company. Three games were advertised: Halo Jones, Judge
Death and Rogue Trooper, although only the latter would see commercial release. Set on the war-torn and poisoned planet of Nu Earth, the last Genetic Infantryman must stalk the chem clouds accompanied by his biochipped deceased pals.
iranha contracted Dark Star developer Design Design to create the shattered Nu Earth, and its programmer, Ian Wareing, opted for an isometric flick-screen style. Anticipation was high among press at the time, although cautious given the earlier games. “Macmillan Software has acquired the rights to Rogue Trooper,” announced
Crash magazine in the summer of 1986. “Details on the release date are not yet available, but any improvement upon Strontium Dog, which had all the hallmarks of a severe Thrillsucker attack, is likely to be welcomed by comic fans.” And indeed the game was an improvement, especially visually, as for the first time a 2000 AD character had been recreated recognisably. Trudging around the landscape, Rogue Trooper’s chips offer chirpy comments, adding to the atmosphere (if nothing actually useful in practice) and melancholy sense of humanity at war with itself. Notably more action-orientated than the majority of isometric games, the tapes are placed randomly every time the player starts again, giving the game an extra degree of variety, and was released in 1986 on the Spectrum and Amstrad, with a C64 version following a year later. Rogue Trooper proved to be a decent seller for London-based Piranha, but it wasn’t enough to ensure the other two games that it advertised saw the light of day as both The
Ballad Of Halo Jones and Judge Death found themselves caught up in the demise of the Macmillan sub-label.
Previews had appeared everywhere, and in the case of Halo Jones, the game was even finished, at least the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad versions. “The Halo Jones game came about because I was a big fan of the comic strip and approached Piranha with an idea for the game,” says Mike
Lewis, whose previous game, the comic strip/adventure game superhero mash-up
Redhawk, informed much of the look and design of Halo Jones. “It was an exploring and fighting game where Halo moves through corridors trying to get to the shopping mall. Along the way she encounters distant drummers and aliens, and could pick up weapons such as grenades.” With early previews comparing the aesthetic to a mixture of Gargoyle’s Tir Na Nog and Way Of The Exploding Fist, great things were expected of The
Ballad Of Halo Jones. Alas it sadly wasn’t to be, as Mike explains. “I delivered the master tapes for the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad versions on the day that Piranha was wound up by Macmillan Publishing and, although I was paid the rest of the advance, I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to publish it due to licensing complications. And
I’d even met Alan Moore at a comics convention while writing the game, starting the conversation by apologising for writing a game based on his creation. He was very nice, but confessed that there wasn’t a map of Halo Jones’ world, which I’d been hoping to find.”
Over on the Commodore 64, Judge Death was taking shape, with the player assuming the role of Judge Dredd’s psychic colleague, Psi Judge Anderson, in an ambitious first-person shoot‘em-up. Despite impressive preview shots, the mechanics of the game were proving awkward for its development team, and while a semi-playable update called Horror City was revealed years later, the end of Piranha saw any hope of a videogame Judge Death stomping the streets of Mega-city One dashed. But what of Judge Death’s main nemesis, the urban pacifier supreme, Judge Dredd? Heavily previewed in the winter of 1986 and 1987, Melbourne House’s adaptation of the lawgiver had the press and public enthused at the prospect of seeing the sprawl of Mega-city One finally represented on screen. As development stalled, Judge Dredd was finally released in the Spring of 1987, to the disappointment of many, especially on the Commodore 64 where it accrued an embarrassing 13% in Zzap!64 magazine. As unaspiring as Judge Death had been ambitious, developer Beam Software created a dull platform game with a selection of limited comic book stylings (such as speech bubbles) that failed to do Joe Dredd any justice.
F ortunately for 2000 AD fans, another publisher, Martech Games, had already decided that it wanted to try its hand at licensing characters from the galaxy’s greatest comic. “I had three boys and one of them was mad about 2000 AD, [he] collected them and knew all the artists,” recalls David Martin, Martech’s owner. Having had success with personality-based games such as Eddie Kidd’s Jump Challenge and Sam Fox Strip
Poker, David rolled the dice on the popularity of another particularly British institution. “We went for a meeting with IPC, and Jas Austin gave us the lead with which characters to go for,” says David. Jas worked for Martech’s in-house development team, Creative Reality, and was a fervent fan of the
comic. “Jas said we must go for Slaine and Nemesis The Warlock – I think he basically told me his two favourites!” laughs David. “But we said that sounded great, and the strips had some fantastic artwork, although we created some of our own.”
By 1986, Creative Reality had already produced another licensed game, Tarzan, and a shoot-‘em-up,
WAR, for Martech, both coded by Jas, with graphics by Dave Dew. With the team’s other coder, Neil Dodwell, working on an ill-fated multi-event game called Circus Games, Jas and Dave busied on Nemesis The Warlock. “It was a dream game to work on,” says the coder, “and one of my favourites, so we jumped at it. We didn’t even put a game design together for Martech
– we had an initial meeting, and I told them we were going to do a side-on platform game, while picking a few things out from the comic.” Beginning in Prog 167 of 2000 AD, Nemesis first appeared in a Comic Rock story entitled The Terror
Tube, the freedom fighter escaping his enemy, religious zealot Torquemada. The subsequent series, combining sci-fi with swords and sorcery fantasy quickly gained fans, helped by its unsubtle nods to the Spanish Inquisition and Ku Klux Klan. “We picked a few things such as the acid spit and Nemesis’ sword. We were just plucking these ideas from the comic and hoping they would all stick together. But the thing that always gets mentioned is the piling up of bodies.” For its readers, one of the most appealing aspects of 2000 AD had been its reluctance to pull punches when it came to violence and gore, and Martech’s Nemesis The Warlock echoed this thanks to the gruesome method of which players could proceed from level to level: piling up the bodies of vanquished enemies in order to reach higher platforms. “It was a brilliant idea,” recalls David Martin, “and they weren’t sure if I’d go for it. But I loved it, and when the bodies would occasionally sprout aliens too. It was a really neat little arcade game.”
As befitted the era, Martech was not required to run much past IPC – it trusted the publisher
“JAS SAID WE MUST GO FOR SLAINE AND NEMESIS – I THINK HE TOLD ME HIS TWO FAVOURITES!” david Martin
to create a videogame that did justice to the comic strip. “We never met anyone from 2000 AD, not even Tharg,” smiles Jas, “and personally I was quite pleased with the result. It wasn’t a Crash Smash, but I still get lots of comments about it today.” With Nemesis completed, Jas and Dave began work on its follow up, planning something much more elaborate for the mad Celtic Barbarian Slaine. “We really wanted to do something different and I remember at the time I was playing a lot of text adventures,” recalls Jas. “So I created this system that was supposed to represent the fevered mind of a berzerker like Slaine.” Dubbed Reflex, the technology was proudly announced in Slaine’s adverts as the next big thing in videogames. “Yeah, it was a bit rubbish, though,” laughs Jas. “We were hoping to make a big thing out of it, but it was just too frustrating.” Within the crowded screens of Slaine, scene-setting text appears at the top-right, above images of the barbarian and his colleague Ukko. To the left, and occupying half the screen, commands drift in and out randomly, leaving the player a split-second to select the required instruction. “The problem was, you couldn’t do the simple things easily,” explains Jas. “Say you wanted to go west – you had to wait for it to come up, and if you missed it you had to wait again.” Gameplay aside, Slaine looks the part, with Dave Dew’s artistic talents on display throughout, from the detailed portraits of its characters to the ghostly skeletal hand used to select commands. “Dave’s graphics were always top-notch, but sometimes you need someone to say, ‘No, that’s not working,’” Jas notes. “Martech would have just looked at the game when we showed them a work in progress, seen that it looked good and trusted we knew what we were doing. It had some unusual ideas, and I’m still kinda proud of it, as it’s still talked about today, although maybe for the wrong reasons!” W
ith Slaine selling poorly, further plans for 2000 AD games, and indeed the Reflex system, were shelved by Martech. With Piranha no more, it was left to Melbourne House, now owned by Virgin Mastertronic to attempt an improvement of its previous 2000 AD game, Judge
Dredd. Simon Pick, then working for developer The Sales Curve, takes up the story. “We’d just finished Silkworm for Virgin, which was a great game that sold really well and made them keen to work with us again. I had just finished working on the Commodore 64 version of Shinobi and had the vague idea that we’d just make a game similar to Shinobi but make it Judge Dredd-styled. That seemed to be a good idea until someone pointed out that Judge Dredd never appeared to jump like that, at which point we should probably have given up the idea of making it a platform game. But for some reason we pressed on.” Judge Dredd mark two therefore appeared intrinsically similar to its predecessor. “We had some great mock-ups put together by one of the artists but couldn’t get them working in the game,” says Simon. The result, with an inexperienced team helped by Simon as project manager, was a visually bland game as Dredd once more patrolled Mega City One, downing perps when not wandering the empty streets. “We were up against a tight deadline,” notes Simon, “and we dropped features on a weekly basis as time got shorter. It’s the game that I am most unhappy with from my career, but on the plus side most of the coders went on to become industry veterans, doing great work.” With the Amstrad and Spectrum versions stuck in an Iso-cube, the Commodore 64 and 16-bit games met with more indifference. Would everyone’s favourite fascist cop ever get a decent game?
Maybe, but first, a year later, appeared a little-known Amiga and Atari ST interpretation of the hero of Nu Earth, Rogue Trooper. Formed in 1987, Teque Software developed a handful of 8-bit games in the late Eighties, creating its own publishing label, Krisalis. Coded by Peter Harrap, known mainly as the man behind the Monty Mole games, Rogue Trooper is, again, set on Nu Earth as the Genetic Infantryman, captured by those dastardly Norts, must first escape his prison before jetting across the poisoned landscape to the Souther base. Once there he must battle once more (he is wanted for treason, after all) before presenting its command with evidence of the traitor general who betrayed the genetic warriors at the Quartz Zone massacre. Notable for its combination of side-on and Space Harrierstyle views, Rogue Trooper failed to build on the moderate success of the previous game, and was the only 2000 AD licence from Krisalis.
Four years passed before the release of the maligned Judge Dredd movie starring Sylvester Stallone, prompting the latest 2000 Ad-related game. Published by Acclaim, and developed by Probe Software, Judge Dredd The Movie debuted on the Mega Drive, SNES, Game Gear, PC and Game Boy. Following the plot of the movie as closely as a standard platform game can, it’s a decent side-scrolling game with some nice elements, such as being able to arrest enemies having wounded them. Despite lacking originality, it fared better than Gremlin Interactive’s Playstation lightgun effort of two years later, which is based directly on the comics rather than the movie. As PSM magazine denounced in May 1998, “Where Judge Dredd really fails is its total lack of being fun,” With the comic itself soldiering on, the gaming side of 2000 AD went quiet, with just 1998’s Judge Dredd Pinball released. Then, in the prophetic year of 2000, Rebellion Developments, founded by Chris and Jason Kingsley, purchased the comic and brand. Renowned for its movie mash up adaptation
Aliens Vs Predator, Rebellion’s founders were keen fans of IPC’S finest. “I bought issue one from the newsagent by the chip shop on my way back from
“WE WERE UP AGAINST A TIGHT DEADLINE AND WE DROPPED FEATURES ON A WEEKLY BASIS” simon pick
school,” remembers Jason Kingsley, “although I lost the space spinner that weekend on the top of my gran’s garage!” As primarily a videogames developer, the idea was clearly to adapt some of the comic’s most famous characters to the small screen. “We had a load of different ideas, and the reason for approaching 2000 AD in the first place was because I wanted to license Johnny Alpha for a computer game, but was rejected and wanted to know why,” Jason remembers. “Then, after a long series of twists and turns, we ended up acquiring the whole thing and have never regretted it for a moment, although some would say it was a pretty crazy thing for a games company to do!” Rebellion’s first game was not based on Strontium Dog, however, but rather the comic book’s premier hero and his most dangerous foe, Judges Dredd and Death in Judge Dredd Vs Judge Death. “All of it was based on comic tropes and themes, but with the twists necessary to make it a compelling experience,” continues Jason. Pitching the two diverse lawgivers against each other resulted in an uneven first-person shooter that satisfactorily adapted the look and feel of Mega-city One. I t was three years before Rebellion released its next 2000 AD game, and it proved to be one of the best. But why choose to adapt Rogue
Trooper? “Guns feature in many big computer games, and aiming at something is probably one of the most accessible things a player can do,” explains Jason. “Future war gave us loads of possibilities for enemies to fight against, and the setting of Nu Earth is visually different and interesting. Plus the chem clouds meant we could legitimately have coloured fog in the distance.”
Rogue Trooper became a solid hit, not just for its evocative location but also the pioneering cover mechanics that the game employed. “It was a big success,” notes Jason, “and the first cover-based shooter. Our innovation was not always acknowledged at the time, but I have it on good authority that the mechanics were carefully studied and built upon for many games that came afterwards.”
Sadly, beyond a redux of Rogue Trooper in
2017, and a 2011 mobile game, there have been no further 2000 AD games from the Rebellion stable, although its CEO and founder is cagey about what future shocks await us. “2000 AD generally has interested, multidimensional characters that have strong personalities and backgrounds,” concludes Jason. “And this means you have a good solid base of ideas to build gameplay on top of. 2000 AD is probably more influential than many people realise.” With the comic still going strong and a
Rogue Trooper movie apparently in the works, we could soon see more 2000 AD videogames. Splundig vur Thrigg!