Game, Set and Match – “Over 20 exciting events”
Out of all the UK number one games I’ve covered from 1983 to 1987, Game, Set and Match is the third to have been a compilation rather than...
Super Chart Island
A British history of popular video games told one sales chart #1 at a time
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Joe Blade – “Prime the explosives”
The increasing success of Code Masters in 1987 prompted rounds of coverage of the Darling brothers as young business whizz-kids. They were far from the first such story….
Grand Prix Simulator – “Cunningly devised circuits”
In its January 1984 issue, Computer & Video Games magazine printed code listings for nine different games, ready for readers to type into their computers and run. Each...
Renegade – “There is always time to die”
Yoshihisa Kishimoto was born in Tokyo in 1961. There isn’t a lot of information available online in English on his early life, but he talked several times about...
Run for Gold – “Load runners from tape”
In 1980, the British government set up the Microelectronics Education Programme, MEP, with an initial budget of £12 million for four years. It was aimed at schools, and...
Milk Race – “Chelmsford – Milton Keynes”
In 1932, Britain’s national coalition government, headed by Labour Party co-founder Ramsey McDonald, decided to take action to stabilise the dairy industry. The following year, it set up...
World Class Leader Board – “Gauntlet Country Club”
“When I joined the company, I kind of had an idea of what I thought quality was and where the bar was to meet in terms of delivering...
The Last Ninja – “A vase is waiting”
Mark Cale had a vision, a plan to “do something a bit different, something that would really capture the imagination”. Like the creators of The Hobbit and Valhalla...
Barbarian – “Thanks big boy”
“Because the way in which the player loses is always by dying, it was felt to be unsuitable for persons under 15 who might find it frightening to...
BMX Simulator – “Pedals ready”
Brothers have been a recurring theme in the story of the popular games of the 1980s. As games slowly moved from being a thing mostly made by individual...