The best Speccy game by Rack-It: discussion

[PeteProdge]

Hewson's budget 'imprint', which published original material, as well as re-releasing games from their full-price range and Faster Than Light.

For these polls though, we're only interested in the original releases, so, I think I've got this right...

Anarchy
Battle Valley
Draughts Genius
Into Africa
Klimax
Ocean Conqueror

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Anarchy and Draughts Genius are the games I've played most. My vote will go to one of them. Both are entertaining games.

[Dark]

I though Draughts Genius was great, at the time was really impressed with the graphics and thought the music was done really well – can’t off the top of my head remember what piece of music it was that they used though.

Don't recall playing any other game from Rack-It though.

[Audionautas]

This poll is easy. Anarchy, hands down. I also love Draughts Genius and Ocean Conqueror

Although Anarchy is a C64 original (by Australian coder Michael Sentinella), Dominic Robinson did a great job porting it to the Speccy. Shame Hewson didn't release more original games on their budget label instead of re-releasing back catalogue titles.

[toot_toot]

Rack-It has some great, original C64 games but they didn’t have much output on the Spectrum. I wonder if it’s because Hewson likely attracted a lot of shoot em up style games because of their C64 output (especially uridium) and they put the games they deemed as “not quite good enough” on the rack-it label. By the time Rack-It came out, Hewson’s Spectrum output had seriously gone off the boil, apart from Rafael Cecco’s games. Probably because Graftgold had left to Firebird by then.

[Nick]

From what I remember, Into Africa was a Lords Of Midnight style game which looked as if it could be quite decent but unfortunately there are no instructions on how to play it.

[Audionautas]

Rack-It has some great, original C64 games but they didn’t have much output on the Spectrum. I wonder if it’s because Hewson likely attracted a lot of shoot em up style games because of their C64 output (especially uridium) and they put the games they deemed as “not quite good enough” on the rack-it label. By the time Rack-It came out, Hewson’s Spectrum output had seriously gone off the boil, apart from Rafael Cecco’s games. Probably because Graftgold had left to Firebird by then.

I agree with what you say about Raffaele Cecco. He was a bestseller for Hewson, so probably without his games Hewson would have left the 8-bit market much earlier. Anyway, when Graftgold left, we still enjoyed some excellent games: Nebulus, Cybernoid 1 and 2, Marauder, Netherworld or Stormlord.

On the other hand, I never understood why the Rack-It Spectrum catalogue was so short. We only have three Spectrum originals: Draught Genius, Into Africa and Klimax. Anarchy and Battle Valley were C64 originals and Ocean Conqueror was released in several platforms all of them very similar, so I'm not sure what was the original version. On the contrary the Rack-It C64 catalogue was huge in comparision with lots of new titles.

Hewson complemented the Rack-It Spectrum catalogue with old hits: Technician Ted, Uridium, Pyracurse and Gunrunner and re-releasing FTL old hits Light Force, Hydrofool and Shockway Rider, even Thalamus' Sanxion was released there. They even created a second budget label, Rebound, to release Gargoyle Games' back catalogue. I can't understand this decision, honestly because according to Andrew Hewson the Rack-It label was not a big seller.

Back in September 1987, when the Rack-It label was premiered to the press, a lot of games titles appeared in magazines but some of them were never released (delevopment titles maybe?). One of them was "Rex Harde". In fact this game was mispelled in the UK press,as it's name was Rex Hard, a Spanish game programmed by Javier Fáfula that was published by a small company called Mister Chip in Spain around November 1987. According to Fáfula he travelled to England and offered Rex Hard to several UK companies, but finally Hewson bought it and never released.

In this interview, Javier Fáfula himself tells the story (https://videojuegosretro-upm.blogspot.c ... afula.html). Interesting and controversial.

(Googlish translation)

"9-The first game you developed was Rex Hard, published by Mister Chip in 1987. What can you tell us about the origin and development of this game? Who made the graphic section? Were you the author of all versions?

I started doing it, I think in 1984, and I should have finished it in 1985. I did it in what I had, a Spectrum, and I also made the graphics. My idea was to try to sell it in the UK, but for lack of money, it was necessary to sell it here. I showed it to Paco Menéndez, a lovely person, and he spoke with his father to distribute it here. With that I decided to move it in the UK ... after sending videotapes to companies and waiting for a response. I think I remember that after a few months I had only three answers: Hewson, I think it was called, one of cheap games (Codemasters?) And Ocean.

Obviously, I wanted it to be Ocean, which was one of the star companies of the moment, but when the producer who saw it, convinced the director to buy it, after a wash of the game's face, providing me with an advance to buy a team of decent development ... Upon learning that the rights for Spain were already sold, they sent me to see the "catacombs" of the company; in a corridor where they put some boards as a table, they were developing a curious little game ... it would be Arkanoid.

When he returned to the top, the director, obviously, not having the exclusive did not like it and he was no longer interested. Contacts passed to me, but the goal went to waste. In extremis, the aforementioned Hewson bought it for a very low price, but having stretched so much, I had no money to return to Spain, and I had been feeding me only with "digestive" cookies for almost a week, so there was no other option. Soon he released a game called Pyracurse, produced by him, so he probably bought it so that nothing like his existed, although it has always P?s? me off the enormous resemblance.