IMAGES STUDIO PROFILE
Karl Jeffery began Images Software in the mid-eighties, and his company became a reliable development team for many publishers as the transition from 8-bit and 16-bit computers to Sega and Nintendo consoles hit the industry, specialising in coin-op conver
Teenager Karl Jeffery started programming in the early Eighties. “I taught myself coding on the ZX81 and wrote some 1K games, then I developed a string of games for the Spectrum, but as soon as I finished one and shared it with my friends I went straight on to the next. It wasn’t until a friend suggested sending off some demo tapes that things moved from a hobby to a business.”
Artic published Karl’s Mutant Monty for the ZX Spectrum in 1984, Mad Caverns and Rocket Man Mike were published as listings in Your Computer magazine the following year. “After the Spectrum games I went to uni for a year to study computer science but found it boring and I missed games, so I dropped out when I was 19,” says Karl, who then took his first steps to turning his hobby into a profession. “For the first few years I was working as ‘Karl Jeffery T/A Images’ as it was just me working alone as a ZX Spectrum programmer, and I later incorporated the company as Images Software Limited.”
Karl set up an office in a flat above his dad’s kitchen shop in Fareham, Hampshire. “It was more a hippy commune than a dev studio,” he admits. “We had people sleeping on the floor and socialising together.” Images quickly began picking up work via another local development team based in Southsea, Hampshire, called Catalyst Coders, run by David Wainwright.
“Catalyst had taken on several coin-op conversion contracts from Activision UK, but they were struggling to complete the projects,” recalls Karl. To be able to complete the subcontracted work himself, Karl needed to attract more development talent, so he posted adverts in the local Job Centre, as
Rob Hylands remembers. “I saw an advert for a programmer, and I got an interview. I took some of the stuff that I had been doing
at home on the Spectrum. Unfortunately, Karl was looking for someone to help out on an Atari ST game, but he was impressed enough to loan me an ST and send me away to see what I could do.”
Rob learned as much as he could about 68000 programming and returned with a demo of multiple balls bouncing around against each other. Rob got the job and immediately started working with Karl on the Atari ST conversion of the Irem coin-op R-type for Activision’s publishing label, Electric Dreams. Rob later helped Catalyst programmer Bob Pape with the sound and music routines on the exceptional ZX Spectrum version. Images was soon called upon to perform a similar job for Activision via Catalyst on another coin-op conversion, the smash-’em-up arcade game Rampage, from Bally Midway. Karl once again contributed code to the Atari ST conversion.
Agraphic artist who also joined Images via a Job Centre advert was Andy Pang. “The Amiga bundle I had came with Electronic Arts’ Deluxe Paint, and finally you could draw with a mouse rather than use a keyboard,” remembers Andy. “I was hooked. My days were then spent pushing pixels until my brother Tom gave me a number he found at the Job Centre for a company making computer games. I was at college, but Tom knew it’s what I wanted to do, so he called the number and passed me the phone. I landed an interview, so I brought my art along with a game I had made using the Shoot-’em-up
Construction Kit on the Commodore 64.” Andy joined fellow artist Jason Lihou, and programmers Rob Brooks, Henry Clark, Rob Hylands and Karl at Images a week later, working part-time.
Catalyst Coders had signed a contract with BT to write home-computer conversions of the Taito arcade coin-op Flying Shark, but after a few months of little progress, the Spectrum and Amstrad conversions were cancelled by the publisher and reassigned to Graftgold. Firebird was on the brink of cancelling the 16-bit conversions completely, so David Wainwright asked if Karl could attend an emergency meeting in London at Firebird’s New Oxford
Catalyst had taken on several coin-op conversion contracts from Activision UK, but they were struggling to complete the projects Karl Jeffery
Street office. Karl went along and was faced with an angry publisher who Karl was able to reassure, promising to deliver Atari ST and Amiga conversions. “I was presented as the saviour of the project, but really I was really just winging it!” admits Karl several decades later. The Atari ST conversion was written by Henry Clark and Karl, followed by the Amiga version from the two Robs, Rob Hylands and Rob Brooks. Due to the incredibly tight schedule, the Amiga game was based upon the Atari ST code, with a few small changes. “I coded the scroll and sprites engine on the Atari,” says Karl. “That version featured the very first full-screen hardware vertical scroll on the ST using a trick I found in the video hardware.”
Images was given the arcade board from Taito to work from, but no documentation was forthcoming. “We played the game hundreds of times and videoed it using a camcorder,” says Karl. “In hindsight we should have extracted code or graphics directly from the ROMS, but we just had to get on with the coding.”
“Flying Shark was at the finishing stages when I joined,” remembers Andy. “Working late one night after college, they needed a Firebird logo for the loading screen, Jason wasn’t around, so I was asked. No credit, but what a rush!” Flying Shark on 16-bit was released just before Christmas 1988, but Images was already onto its next project. Converting the Wonder Boy In Monster Land coin-op for Activision meant a return to Z80 coding for Rob Hylands on the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC conversions. It was also Andy Pang’s first major contribution as a graphic artist. “Working mainly from home, I recreated the graphics using the Commodore 64 and then helped Jason to finish the graphics for the Amiga and ST using The Advanced Art Studio on the Atari,” Andy says. “The Spectrum format was fairly simple, using the Atari ST assets and downgrading them to two colours per 8x8 character.”
“Pretty soon the business took too much time for me to continue coding,” remembers Karl. “So, from then on I focussed on project management.”
Over at Mirrorsoft in South London, the Robert Maxwell-owned publisher was branching out into film licences. Through Dick Lehrberg Associates in Los Angeles, Mirrorsoft signed several upcoming movies, including Back To The Future Part II and Part III, which were ironically being filmed back to back in the States.
Former Activision project manager Stuart Hibbert was a recent recruit at Mirrorsoft, and he was immediately given the job of managing Back To The Future Part II after Images was signed. Referring to production photos supplied on 35mm slides and a draft of the script, Stuart and Karl quickly sketched out some ideas.
What they came up with was a game split into five distinct sections. The first and last sections were based on the hover-board chase sequences from the film. One section was a simple horizontal scrolling beat-’em-up, one was an overhead logic puzzle, with the remaining
I was presented as the saviour of the project, but really I was really just winging it! Karl Jeffery
level an animated sliding picture puzzle. Between them they offered enough variety whilst retaining thematic and visual links to the movie and its plot. Not only did it produce six computer versions of the game, but it also gave Images the chance to write for consoles as well, producing a Sega Master System version.
Images got to adapt another Hollywood blockbuster for home consumption that year, when it produced a game based upon The Hunt For Red October for Grandslam Entertainment. Following a similar design pattern, it split the game into five sections, and repeated one section twice, a sidewaysscrolling underwater shoot-’em-up mixed in with much shorter stages. “By then, I’d set up another dev team in Wakefield, Yorkshire called Audio Visual Magic Limited (AVM) and they did some of the work on The Hunt For Red October, although that was still mainly developed by Images in Fareham,” says Karl.
1990 proved to be an incredibly hectic year. Another challenging coin-op conversion for Activision was Beast Busters, from SNK. This sideways-scrolling on-rails shooter was a nonstop blaster from start to finish, with Images producing very commendable 16-bit versions. Irem’s sideways-scrolling beat-’em-up coin-op
Ninja Spirit was also converted to the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga for Activision.
The debut of the Atari Lynx handheld in 1989 gave Images the chance to convert the launch title Chip’s Challenge to all the major home-computer formats for US Gold. It was a game that worked as well on the ZX Spectrum as it did on the Atari ST or Commodore Amiga, thanks in part to its tile-based design. Images also worked on a Nintendo Entertainment System conversion.
Coded by James Smart, and with graphics by Steve Bedser, the NES version was never completed or released. “I really wish Chip’s Challenge had gone ahead on the
NES, as that would have got us solidly into Nintendo consoles much earlier,” says Karl. The conversion was written for Bulletproof Software, but the cost of manufacturing the required cartridge proved too much to justify the upfront financial outlay that Nintendo required from the publisher, so the NES version was dropped.
The next couple of years were chocka-block with more coin-op conversions. A Commodore 64 conversion of Sega’s Mega Drive scrolling beat-’em-up Last Battle for Elite, various versions of Sega’s Shinobi sequel Shadow Dancer for US Gold, the flight combat coin-op G-LOC R360 again for US Gold, and Taito’s Space Gun for Ocean, another on-rails shooter for all formats.
Mindscape International called on Images to convert the Amiga RPG and hack-’em-up title Moonstone: A Hard Day’s Knight to the IBM PC, a platform which was slowly but surely starting to become more prominent, as was the Sega Master System, especially in Europe.
A simple collection of early coin-op games called Arcade Smash Hits was produced for that console, published by Virgin Games.
Images relationship with Epyx and with Activision led to development of the Alien Vs Predator first-person action game for the Atari Lynx. Using the ability to connect different Lynx handhelds together via Comlynx, players could play against each other as a marine, a Predator or an Alien. Images also produced a conversion of the Tengen coin-op Road Riot 4WD for the Atari handheld, but neither game was finished or released.
“I can’t recall why the Lynx games never went ahead,” admits Karl. It was likely that the Lynx was no longer as important to Atari come the mid-nineties. It had the new Jaguar console to focus on, and the idea of a game based upon Alien Vs Predator therefore moved
onto the newer hardware and a new developer, with the Lynx projects pushed aside.
Images did get into Nintendo development in the end, thanks to conversions of Accolade’s Bubsy II to the Nintendo Game Boy, but its Sega Game Gear port was another handheld casualty, failing to get a release.
By the mid-nineties, Karl felt it was time to reinvent his development company and prepare it for the new challenges that lay ahead. “When the Playstation was announced, it coincided with the shift from 2D games to 3D, which was a big change. I had also felt for some time that the name Images Software was too generic. In the early days there were lots of companies using common words like digital, data, image, soft, games and so on. If we were to grow, we needed to stand out. After a few beers we kicked around some name ideas and finally decided on Climax because it was a bit cheeky, hard to forget but also a synonym for reaching the pinnacle or the top.”
Rob Hylands left for pastures new before the change to Climax, but his recollections of working for Karl at Images remain strong and positive. “My standout memories revolve around the people. They were an interesting bunch. We often had conversations after work about where computers and computer games were heading. I also remember the hard work, the late hours and the sheer ingenuity of the people writing games originally designed to run on more powerful arcade machines.”
Andy Pang remained until the turn of the new century, and then he also moved on, but like Rob, his memories are good ones. “I love the game industry and my experience at Images Software was a special time for me. It’s full of interesting people, ever-evolving technology, standards, variety and challenges.”
Images transformed into Climax in 1995, and the shift to bigger, more expensive development on the next generation of consoles helped Karl and his refreshed company reach new heights of success. The story of Images Software might have ended, but the story of Climax had only just begun.