Back in the 1980s and early 1990s The Shaw Brothers had over 40 games published on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K 8-bit computer. The average review rate for these games was 71%. The amount of programmable memory was around 32K.
Games - development:
Graham designed the gameplay, sprites and presentation. David designed all the backdrop graphics. He did this on a games designer we developed. Adrian wrote the title page music. We only had the use of a 48k spectrum. Eventually we purchased a +3 and a +D which enabled David to do the graphics while Graham wrote the games.
The Early Years - from 1984 to 1988:
The first game that we had published was a boxing game in 1984 (called "Boxing") for the 48k Spectrum written in BASIC that was published as a program printout in the Sinclair User magazine. The boxer could move left, right, raise his guard up and down and punch from two positions.
We copied the gameplay from a calculator that had a boxing game included. The calculator was the Casio BG-15 which was produced in 1982. It was bought in France in February 1983, it pre-dated the Game 'n' Watch games. We put David's name for the programmer - he was, at 12 years, the youngest and we hoped that would sway the reviewers. We received £10.
This early "success" spurred us on. Over the next 4 years we would write around 20 games. We wrote off to numerous companies. In september 1984 Atlantis Software replied that they would like to see some of our games for evaluation. It would be 4 more years before they (or anyone) would publish one of our games.
In October 1986 we sent a game, "Pizza Bar", to Michael Cole at Atlantis Software for evaluation. Although they rejected the game because it was not commercial enough we were encouraged by the response. "Pizza Bar" was eventually published on the cover cassette of the Sinclair User in 1993.
In early March 1987 we entered into an agreement with Essential Consultants Ltd to publish "Strangers From Outer Space". Unfortunately the company disappeared of the face of the planet, leaving the game in limbo. (We re-released this game via the Fish zine, renaming it "The Invasion of the Intergalactic Mutant Halibut (from Mars)" in 1995).
In 1987 we sent a game, "Impact", to Atlantis. They wanted to publish the game. Unfortunately, at the time, there was a bug in the game which I could not resolve. So Atlantis decided against its release. But they still wanted us to write a game for them.
Later we solved the problem and renamed the game "Starburst" which we published ourselves. In 1991 we redesigned the graphics and presentation and renamed it "Space 7", which was published on the cover cassette of the Your Sinclair magazine in 1992.
In 1988 we eventually had our first official Spectrum release, "Cerius", by Atlantis Software. The title came from a line in The Smiths' song 'Girlfriend In A Coma' ..."I know - it's serious", and because it sounds similar to the star "Sirius". The coverage and reviews of the game were pretty good. We were just pleased that one of our games had been published. The next game we wrote and had published was "Gunslinger", this was retitled by Atlantis as "Gunfighter".
After that we redesigned a game initially called "Excalibur". We originally wrote "Excalibur" in 1987 - before "Cerius". We updated the graphics and presentation and renamed it "Heartbroken". This was published by Atlantis in 1988.
