Conversion Kings: Psycho Pigs UXB
This odd release started life in the arcade under the name Butasan - a game which involved pigs blowing one another up with bombs. How could this not be a hit? Retro Gamer speaks to programmer Ste Cork on his conversion of the game to the ZX Spectrum
Ste Cork reveals how he helped to convert this arcade oddity to the Spectrum
Having created the cult classic Rescue for the ZX Spectrum and the well-respected Colony, both for Icon Design, Ste Cork had built a reputation for producing great games. When the time came for him to move to pastures new, this time working for Software Creations, a new challenge was put before him. Now, an arcade conversion can be an exciting prospect – but that can depend on the game. It’s fair to say that Ste Cork was a little underwhelmed with the conversion job that landed at his feet at his new workplace. “When I arrived I immediately got given Psycho Pigs UXB to work on – though this was because no one else wanted to do it and I was the new guy, I drew the short straw,” he explains. So not a great start to this conversion journey, and it seems that Software Creations wasn’t that keen to take it on in the first place – so why was the studio converting the game at all? “Apparently they had to take this game and convert it to the home computers as it was a prerequisite for Software Creations to get the Bionic Commando licence,” Ste explains. So with a game to convert that neither the software company nor any of its programmers were really that interested in, it was down to Ste to be a professional and get on with the job in hand.
With what seemed like a project that was more a necessity than fun, how did Ste go about motivating himself to make a good job of it? Playing the game must have been a good start, did seeing it in the flesh first-hand inspire him and make the task enjoyable? “God no,” he replies. “I’d never seen it before, and after encountering the arcade machine I still wasn’t a fan. I remember thinking ‘only in Japan...’ when I saw it.” Despite not falling in love with the game, Ste’s a professional, and if you’ve a job to do, you have to get on with it – fan or not.
So how did he get on with starting the conversion? An arcade cabinet setup with the game would be a start at least. ”We had a JAMMA board of the game, running with what you could describe as ‘questionable’ English. Think ‘All Your Base Are Belong To Us’ and you get the idea,” Ste explains. “That’s it really, in terms of help. Unfortunately, we only had one Jammacompatible cabinet, and I had to constantly keep swapping out the board with the other project being worked on, which got tedious.” All of these factors combined didn’t really have the foundations of making the conversion operation as smooth as it could be, but Ste had to get on with it.
Assessing the original arcade game gave Ste the chance to think about how this could work on the Spectrum. With the obvious and most likely issue to be colour given the Spectrum’s limitations in that area, it was down to Ste to think his way around this problem. “Considering it [the arcade original] had large colourful characters moving around the screen and over the top of each other, it was obvious it was going to lose a lot of colour in its conversion to the Spectrum. Attribute clash on that scale would be unforgivable, and you couldn’t make the characters walk around each other. So the first thing that had to go was the colour. Once you’ve lost all that, all that’s left is moving some sprites around, which is a no-brainer.” Luckily for Ste, the colour clash issue seemed to be the only major bugbear for the conversion in terms of keeping it graphically as close to the original as possible. He was able to retain the majority of the original features of the arcade game, too, including the in-game music. “Once you took out the colours, there wasn’t much left to be a problem so I don’t recall taking anything else out,” Ste remembers. “We did at least get to use the Spectrum 128’s AY chip, so there was sound and music being played, or at least as good as the AY chip could do.”
That’s not to say there were no other problems, as another issue for the
Spectrum version would be a strong emphasis on green backgrounds. The original Psycho Pigs UXB’S backgrounds were coloured in green hues, as it was set on a grass playing field, which led to a problem in terms of how it was displayed on a television. CRT sets – which were a staple of the Eighties – and the Spectrum did not really get on with each other, as Ste highlights. “Green is one of the colours that ‘crawl’ on a Spectrum game when viewed on a TV, so we knew it was going to look like crap right from the start. Not very inspiring, considering this was going to be a very prominent colour within the game.”
In a project that seemed full of negatives, was there anything about this conversion that would lift the spirits? Was there
anything Ste was a fan of? “The only things I enjoyed at all were keeping some of the Japanese-english phrasing to retain at least a little charm,” he recalls. “Also, I managed to sneak in some bits. I think the main one was that in the demo mode with the pigs running around, there’s one point where they all run vertically up the screen, but one of them stays behind for a short time, drops down on one knee facing out of the screen at you, then middle-fingers the player before running off to join the rest of them. That still amuses me, but I think it only managed to stay in because with the graphics quality of the pigs it’s not easy to make out. Once seen though, it can never be unseen.” So that’s something to look out for the next time you play it, and finally something to smile about for Mr Cork.
With the conversion now in the bag after what was the end of a less than enjoyable job, surely completing his task would leave Ste happy in some way. How did he feel about the finished article? Proud? Happy? Erm… well, we’ll let Ste field this one. “Sorry, but I hated it. I wasn’t proud at all. The original game was no fun in my opinion, and whatever charm it might have had got completely lost by being turned into a mostly mono game on plain backgrounds often with hideous colour crawl. I was glad to be done with it, honestly. Not my finest hour, but you did what you were paid to do and it was always possible someone liked it.”