The best Speccy game by Hewson: discussion

[PeteProdge]

Okay, I think I've identified a full list of tangible games for the ZX Spectrum by Hewson. This excludes the original games published on their budget label, Rack-It, which I think deserves a separate poll.

Please let me know if I've made any mistakes or need to include something extra. We start the vote next week, Sun 28th July.

3D Lunattack
3D Seiddab Attack
3D Space-Wars
Astroclone
Avalon
Backgammon
City Slicker
Cybernoid
Cybernoid II: The Revenge
Di-Lithium Lift
Dragontorc
Eliminator
Evening Star
Exolon
Fantasia Diamond
Firelord
Gunrunner
Heathrow Air Traffic Control
Heathrow International Air Traffic Control
Impossaball
Knight Driver
Kraal
Marauder
Maze Chase
Maze Mania
Nebulus
Netherworld
Nightflite
Nightflite II
Pyracurse
Quazatron
Quest Adventure
Ranarama
Southern Belle
Spectral Panic
Specvaders
Stormlord
Stormlord II: Deliverance
Super Cup Football
Technician Ted
Technician Ted: The Megamix
Uridium
Uridium Plus
Zynaps

[Morkin]

This is going to be a difficult vote.

[ZXDunny]

Jesus H. Christ on his pushbike. Soooo many classics.

Avalon, Cybernoid, Exolon, Nebulus, Marauder, Tech Ted, Uridium to name just a few I loved as a kid. Oh, and Ranarama was an instant classic.

I am gonna have to think hard about this one. Possibly the most consistently excellent output of any of the software houses of the day.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Hard choice as Hewson has a bunch of great games. Apart from the obvious classics, Southern Belle, Impossabal, Knigth Driver or Gunrunner are also excellent games.

[PeteProdge]

They were an unusual breed of full price software house - surviving into the late eighties without using any arcade/movie/TV/sports license.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Another good thing about Hewson is that (I presume) everybody likes that company because the average quality is high. Ocean or Imagine has classics games but also mediocre games.

Vortex or Durell are also similar companies (IMHO).

[Joefish]

Very tough choice. Some incredibly good classics in there.
And some technically brilliant programming in games like Nebulus, Zynaps, Uridium, Stormlord, matching great gameplay.
Plenty of longevity in Exolon and Quazatron, really long-lasting tough challenges in Cybernoid I & II.
And my first ever Speccy game was 3-D Space Wars.

[WIWC]

Another easy vote for me.

[Audionautas]

I knew that this day would arrive anytime. As a Hewson fan this poll will be almost impossible for me. When a small company like Hewson have managed to have 13 games included on the WOS Top 100 list that means something about their high quality standards back in the day and it shows people's love and memories about playing their games all over these years.

Well, I have one week ahead to choose my one and only favourite. Will it be Uridium, Nebulus, Exolon, Cybernoid, Marauder, Avalon, Dragontorc, Firelord, Ranarama, Quazatron, Netherworld, Stormlord, Zynaps...? and the list goes on and on.

[Pobulous]

The two I played the most would be Zynaps and Marauder.

Zynaps is the better game in my opinion. Both have problems with dodgy collision detection, but in Zynaps it is part of avoiding attribute clash, whereas Marauder doesn't have that excuse.

[Fahnn]

Yeah, Hewson were an absolutely top quality outfit. Some all-time classics in this list and barely a duffer amongst them. I also liked that they were Consultants, it made them sound very grown-up and scientific to a nerdular boy as I was at the time (and still am)

I'm going to re-play some of the others just to make sure, but I think I'll be going for Quazatron. As I may have mentioned elsewhere, I thought at the time that Paradroid on the C64 was about as good a game as could be done on an 8-bit computer but Quazatron somehow managed to add new things to the concept. Being able to choose which parts to cannabilise from a bot was an absolutely inspired addition to the gameplay and the move into isometric 3D played perfectly to the Spectrum's strengths. OK, the scrolling was rudimentary but the game was so strong that you didn't even notice it after a while. Also I was excellent at it

[hitm4n]

Wow, what a great list. Immense games, i'd say the best bunch of games so far in these new polls.
All these were heavily played...

Astroclone, Avalon, Cybernoid, Exolon, Firelord, Nebulus, Quazatron, Uridium, Zynaps.

By far my fave of them all, Quazatron. Jumping down a couple of levels, grabbing a disruptor and heavy battery to support it, then popping back to the upper levels to clear the droids out in an instant (almost), was awesome.

Or picking off the rarer parts to make KLEPTO a toughnut then delving back to the deeper levels again to complete the world. Loved this game, still own a handmade droid chart showing the lowest droid with the highest parts, need a tasty remake if this...

[stupidget]

out of that list the games I played the most were Zynaps, Marauder and Tech Ted. I still don't get the love for Uridium though. I played it back in the day and tried it again recently and just find it far too annoying.

[toot_toot]

Sort of similar to the post I made in the Rack it thread. Hewson seemed to be great at getting talented developers, starting with Steve Turner then bringing on Andrew Braybrook (on the C64 at least), Stephen Crow, John Philips, Rafael Cecco, who you could say were almost “rock star” developers. You couldn’t wait for the next game to be release by then, the fact it wasn’t an arcade conversion it didn’t matter.

But then these guys eventually all moved on from Hewson, a few formed Graftgold and took their games toF Firebird (which was a big deal at the time) and others simply moved on to 16-bit formats. Unfortunately it was these developers that were the brand, not Hewson. The developers had become bigger than Hewson.

I think that’s why the quality really dropped off in the late 80s, games like eliminator or nether world just weren’t very good. There were still the off classics like Stormlord and Nebulus, but Hewson - on the Spectrum at least- really suffered when their big name developers moved on.

In saying that, there was a real golden period for Hewson between 1985 and 1987. If a Spectrum game had the Hewson name on it, you were pretty much certain it would be of high quality. I also remember Andrew Hewson’s column in Sinclair User (and the cartoon caricature of him!)

[Audionautas]

The two I played the most would be Zynaps and Marauder.

Zynaps is the better game in my opinion. Both have problems with dodgy collision detection, but in Zynaps it is part of avoiding attribute clash, whereas Marauder doesn't have that excuse.

Yes, I agree the collision detection is not pixel perfect in either both games, but It's not really a big problem that affects playability. On Marauder is a more evident issue, especially when you try to dodge those guided missiles that sometimes you explode before you actually get hit. Anyway Marauder on the Speccy (programmed by freelance team formed by Keith Burkhill and Rory Green) is way better and fair than the original C64 version done by Arcanum Software Developments (a really young and unexperienced team doing their first commercial game), that it's really unfair due to some wrong design decisions.

[SteveSmith]

I didn't realise until I read the excellent Hewson book, that Hewson became 21st Century Entertainment, who published all those pinball games on the Amiga. (The developers of said games went on to write Battlefield).

[ZXDunny]

The two I played the most would be Zynaps and Marauder.

Zynaps is the better game in my opinion. Both have problems with dodgy collision detection, but in Zynaps it is part of avoiding attribute clash, whereas Marauder doesn't have that excuse.

Yes, I agree the collision detection is not pixel perfect in either both games, but It's not really a big problem that affects playability. On Marauder is a more evident issue, especially when you try to dodge those guided missiles that sometimes you explode before you actually get hit. Anyway Marauder on the Speccy (programmed by freelance team formed by Keith Burkhill and Rory Green) is way better and fair than the original C64 version done by Arcanum Software Developments (a really young and unexperienced team doing their first commercial game), that it's really unfair due to some wrong design decisions.

I would have to disagree. Collision detection was dodgy in Marauder but you could at least anticipate it. The music was bloody fantastic, the graphics were great. It was a touch too easy IMO - once you figured out which colour to shoot you could get a shield power up pretty much all the way through the game - which mitigated the collision detection too.

The C64 version was decent also (included the extra first level which the Speccy omitted) but suffered from being too easy due to the power ups.

Both offered a good hour or so of shooting action however, which can't be all bad. Oh, and the C64 version contained a snippet of the theme from Assault on Precinct 13 which blew my mind as a kid

[Audionautas]

Sort of similar to the post I made in the Rack it thread. Hewson seemed to be great at getting talented developers, starting with Steve Turner then bringing on Andrew Braybrook (on the C64 at least), Stephen Crow, John Philips, Rafael Cecco, who you could say were almost “rock star” developers. You couldn’t wait for the next game to be release by then, the fact it wasn’t an arcade conversion it didn’t matter.

But then these guys eventually all moved on from Hewson, a few formed Graftgold and took their games toF Firebird (which was a big deal at the time) and others simply moved on to 16-bit formats. Unfortunately it was these developers that were the brand, not Hewson. The developers had become bigger than Hewson.

I think that’s why the quality really dropped off in the late 80s, games like eliminator or nether world just weren’t very good. There were still the off classics like Stormlord and Nebulus, but Hewson - on the Spectrum at least- really suffered when their big name developers moved on.

In saying that, there was a real golden period for Hewson between 1985 and 1987. If a Spectrum game had the Hewson name on it, you were pretty much certain it would be of high quality. I also remember Andrew Hewson’s column in Sinclair User (and the cartoon caricature of him!)

Hewson was more a publisher than a developer. Only two original games were released by their in-house development team: Pyracurse and Zynaps.

Hewson formed their first in-house team around late 1984 or early 1985. This first team wasn't games oriented at all, in fact they were mostly application programmers. Their really first release was an application called ZAPP, a Z80 assembly programming package written by Keith Prosser for the Amstrad CPC and released in 1985. At that time Hewson worked with Graftgold and other independent programmers publishing their games, but as they were working directly on the C64 or the Spectrum, they could not always make ports to other systems. So Hewson in-house team started working on Amstrad CPC ports. Keith Prosser did the Dragontorc CPC port in 1985. Mark Goodall, the other Hewson programmer was working at the time on Pyracurse (known as Sphinx during development) for the Spectrum, Prosser also worked on Pyracurse that had a really long development process. In early 1986 was hired a third programmer, John Cumming, a C64 expert. John's first work was porting Firelord to the C64 (still in development on the Speccy by Steve Crow), meanwhile Keith Prosser was doing the same with the CPC version. In April 1986 a fourth coder was hired, Dominic Robinson, a young Z80 expert. Dominic's first task at Hewson was to give helping hand on Pyracurse (although he's uncredited in the game) to speed up things a bit, writing code and doing graphics and level design. Pyracurse was released on late June 1986 on th Spectrum only. It wasn't a huge commercial success and ran way over budget and the company was financially in trouble, according to Andrew Hewson. In that situation it seems that four in-house programmers was way too much for such a small publisher like Hewson and Andrew Hewson had to fire two of them, so John Cumming and Dominic Robinson, the two real game programmers remained.

Dominic's second task was converting the magnificent C64 Uridium to the Spectrum. Nine months later a Spectrum masterpiece was born. After completing Uridium his next step was Zynaps. Dominic Robinson coded the Spectrum version and John Cumming coded the C64 version. This time the CPC version was done by a freelance programmer (Michael Croucher who had done Uridium for the CPC previously). After releasing Zynaps in July 1987, Dominic programmed Anarchy for Hewson's budget label Rack-It. In October 1987 due to rumours surrounding Hewson's financial problems John Cumming and Dominic Robinson left Hewson to join Graftgold with publisher Telecomsoft (Firebird/Silverbird/Rainbird).

After “deserting” all their in-house development team, Hewson published some ads in magazines looking for new programmers in order to form a new team. This is not 100% confirmed but in the end it seems that programmers Chris Wood (of Super Hang-On's fame) and John Wildsmith were hired. Wood's first job was porting Nebulus to the CPC in early 1988, and then he worked on porting Netherworld to the Spectrum/CPC and PC-MS Dos. He also contributed to Battle Valley on the Rack-It label working along with John Wildsmith on the Spectrum and CPC ports. Then, Wildsmith worked on porting John Phillip's Eliminator to the Spectrum and CPC that was released around March 1989 and that's it. Hewson didn't have more in-house development teams.

In a way, Hewson had a really modern way of working with teams an individuals spread all over the UK and beyond: Netherworld was developed in Finland, Ocean Conqueror in Hungary, Kraal and Klimax in Portugal, Anarchy in Australia. Anyway in-house and external developers had a collaborative way of working coordinated from Hewson HQ in Abingdon through the software producer, Gordon Hewson (Andrew's younger brother), in the early years and from 1986 onwards Paul Chamberlain. For example Raffaele Cecco did work freelance from home in West London, but John Phillips (another freelance) did the Cybernoid loading screen from home in Cornwall and Dave Rogers composed the music at home in Liverpool. Zynaps was programmed in-house, at Hewson's HQ in Abingdon, but Steve Crow did graphics from his home in Kent, John Phillips did the loading screen and Steve Turner from Graftgold composed the music. I'm sure a lot of software houses worked the same way.

As you comment Hewson quality started to decline a little in 1988. True. Cybernoid 1 and 2 were great, but indoubtedly when Graftgold left there was a huge hole on Hewson's forthcoming releases. If Magnetron had been released by Hewson most possibly it wouldn't have been rated so poorly on Crash (57%), and it would have been a great addition to their 1987-88 catalogue. Anyway, by 1988 only great licences on the full price range like Robocop, Afterburner or R-Type were bestsellers on the 8 bit market. Hewson, with their humble releases simply it wasn't a contender.

Also in 1988 Hewson entered the 16 bit market, so their 8 bit catalogue wasn't so strong as in previous years. Yes, we had Cybernoid 1 and 2, but Marauder wasn't a hit and the same goes for Netherworld, although they were really good games in my opinion, but not classics like Cybernoid, Exolon, Nebulus, Uridium, etc. In 1988 the 8 bit market was flooded by budget titles and arcade and film licenses, so Hewson had to struggle to survive on the 8 and 16 bit markets with original products.

Unlike Ocean and other software companies from that time, that had solid in-house teams, Hewson preferred working in a different way, mainly with independent developers or small teams like Graftgold. Although Hewson had some early successes like Mike Male's simulators or Kim Topley's graphic adventures, IMHO Hewson games began to improve and set really high standards when Graftgold started to publish with them. I think what attracted great programmers to Hewson and turned them into a talent magnet was that they felt they had a lot of freedom to develop their ideas. The developers were the stars (like "rock stars", yeah), contributing to promote and sell the product through development diaries, contests, raffles, etc. It was a time when programmers were authors (they were primarily programmers, but also game designers and often graphic artists and musicians). That freedom wasn't easy to find in other software houses devoted to arcade conversions and/or big film licenses where there were a lot of anonymous coders that had to adapt an arcade machine or a film with very little room for their own ideas. That's the reason why great names such as Steve Tuner, Andrew Braybrook, Dominic Robinson, Stephen Crow, Raffaele Cecco, Nick Jones, John Phillips, Jeff Minter or Chris Hinsley among others ended up producing games for Hewson on differents platforms. Sadly the bedroom coder era came to an end and bigger teams were the future.

[Audionautas]

Yes, I agree the collision detection is not pixel perfect in either both games, but It's not really a big problem that affects playability. On Marauder is a more evident issue, especially when you try to dodge those guided missiles that sometimes you explode before you actually get hit. Anyway Marauder on the Speccy (programmed by freelance team formed by Keith Burkhill and Rory Green) is way better and fair than the original C64 version done by Arcanum Software Developments (a really young and unexperienced team doing their first commercial game), that it's really unfair due to some wrong design decisions.

I would have to disagree. Collision detection was dodgy in Marauder but you could at least anticipate it. The music was bloody fantastic, the graphics were great. It was a touch too easy IMO - once you figured out which colour to shoot you could get a shield power up pretty much all the way through the game - which mitigated the collision detection too.

The C64 version was decent also (included the extra first level which the Speccy omitted) but suffered from being too easy due to the power ups.

Both offered a good hour or so of shooting action however, which can't be all bad. Oh, and the C64 version contained a snippet of the theme from Assault on Precinct 13 which blew my mind as a kid

My thoughts about Marauder on the C64

PROS.

* Technically remarkable for being a first game coded by teenagers.
* Great Steve Crow graphics.
* Awesome music.

CONS.

* Learning curve. The action runs at a frantic pace from the beginning preventing gradual progress unless you are a tester, of course. Keith Burkhill's Speccy version is much more refined in this department, yeah, it's difficult, but affordable and especially not frustrating.

* More populated stages with enemies on the C64 than on the Speccy and CPC. So, it's more difficult.

* Four lives and only three smart bombs at the begining to complete our mission on C64. Five lives and five smart bombs on the Speccy.

* C64 landscape playing area. Our buggy is not centered on the screen, it has a bit advanced position towards the upper margin on the screen, so the player has less time of reaction to the enemies that appear ahead as the screen scrolls.

* On the Spectrum and CPC versions you can move forward without the need to destroy all static enemies that are on the screen. However, on C64, given the greater concentration of all kinds of enemies (fixed and mobile), it is imperative to try to destroy all we can, if we do not want to take the unpleasant surprise of dying from a projectile that emerged from a turret that was about to disappear by the lower margin of the screen, or massacred at close range by a shower of bullets coming from multiple directions.

* Another negative point is that the firing rate of our vehicle in Commodore is lower than that of the other two micros, to which we must add that some enemies need at least two impacts to be destroyed (for example, guided missile launchers), which also does not happen in the other versions. The situation reaches its peak with the beacons that must provide us with 'power-ups' (or 'power-downs'), which also shoot us!!!, something that does not happen either on Spectrum or CPC, and that certainly hinders the task of hitting the colors that benefit us.

* However, the big problem of the C64 version is in the range of the shot of our vehicle, which is excellent diagonally and vertically, however in the horizontal directions it is much more limited, which forces us to approach the enemies more than reasonable to destroy them. On the other hand, the firing radius of our rivals covers the entire screen and in all directions before impacting us, which complicates survival enormously, reaching the point that in order to overcome some points of each stage it is necessary the almost continuous use of shields and smart bombs. On Spectrum and Amstrad, the range of our adversaries' projectiles is somewhat shorter than ours. Another significant detail is that on the Speccy and the CPC, the projectiles of our enemies disappear when we exterminate them, while on the C64 bullets continue with their lethal trajectory, constituting a realistic detail, but unsatisfactory since the point of view of game design.

That's what I think about the C64 version, that also had average ratings on magazines back in the day. However the Spectrum version was generally praised.

On the other hand, yes, Barry Leitch's music on the C64 blended the song "Afterhours" by The Sisters of Mercy with Assault on Precinct 13's main theme, but I would say it's more similar in the arrengements to the Mark Shreeve rendition titled "Assassin" than the John Carpenter original version. Shame Dave Rogers didn't include that part, but I've loved what he did with "Afterhours", tense and menacing in-game tune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkIT2vL0u0Y

[PeteProdge]

I didn't realise until I read the excellent Hewson book, that Hewson became 21st Century Entertainment, who published all those pinball games on the Amiga. (The developers of said games went on to write Battlefield).

I had one of the pinball games as a pack-in title when I moved from the Speccy to the Amiga 1200. It was only a few years ago that I learnt 21st Century Entertainment was a post-bankruptcy reincarnation of Hewson. It was a really good game, although not really in the spirit of their 8-bit fare.

[OldGamer]

Should be a hard choice but for me it's very simple. I love a lot of those games but the one that I bought the day I sold my BBC(long story) and bought my ZX Spectrum was 3D Space War. I loved that game and played it for many hours, so it has my vote.

[Joefish]

My thing with 3D Space-Wars is I never realised you could use anything other than the cursor keys to control it!
It was my first game, and I'd have played it a lot more if I'd known how.
And I had the original game with instructions and everything...

[PeteProdge]

Really please that Andrew Hewson, and his son, have retweeted the @ReheatedPixels link to this thread!...

https://twitter.com/ReheatedPixels/stat ... 8926536704

[blucey]

Henson were my fave software house at the time but Quazatron these days is the only game I regularly go back to. Makes my top 3 all time Speccy list.

To this day I still don't understand how Magnetron managed to be so awful.

Personally I do think Cecco's games are a bit overrated because of how nice they look. None of them are particularly well designed from a gameplay point of view. Explain is just too samey and slow, Cybernoid has awful difficulty spikes. My faves from him are Solomon's Key (which of course he didn't design) and Equinox which I imagine doesn't hold up too great these days.

[Matt_B]

Henson were my fave software house at the time but Quazatron these days is the only game I regularly go back to. Makes my top 3 all time Speccy list.

To this day I still don't understand how Magnetron managed to be so awful.

I wouldn't say that Magnetron is awful. It's just that the minigame in it is weak compared to the Quazatron/Paradroid one, and that's a huge part of what makes both of those games great.

I could also nitpick about the smaller single-screen areas and the lack of ability to pick and mix equipment, but I could probably have lived with those better had it still got the good minigame.