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Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:49 am
by MrCyan
Sleuthing is fun. I did some searching through the roms:

Dingo

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ASHBY COMPUTERS AND GRAPHICS LTD. 12 THE GREEN ASHBY-DE-LA-ZOUCH LEICESTERSHIRE LE6 5JU ENGLAND TEL (0530) 411485
CHRISTOPHER STAMPER. JOHN LATHBURY. TIMOTHY STAMPER. CAROLE WARD.
COPYRIGHT 1983 ASHBY COMPUTERS AND GRAPHICS LTD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
Just for completeness - of course it's also clear onscreen.

Blue Print

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CHRISTOPHER STAMPER. JOHN LATHBURY. TIMOTHY STAMPER.
Check Man

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COPYRIGHT 1982 DUNCAN SHORTLAND PETER HUGHES ZENITONE MICROSEC LTD *
PETER HUGHESDUNCAN SHORTLANDMALCOLM MAILERCOPYRIGHT 1982ZENITONE/ZILEC    MUSIC BY ROBIN CARTWRIGHT
Cash Quiz

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MALCOLM J MAILER
Wizz Quiz
Nothing of note.

Merlin's Money Maze
Nothing again.

Vortex

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AHMBPUERS  LSATT
C:CJHORHIN"C
which is probably nothing, really.

Reaktor
Again, nothing.

Phantoms II

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JOHN LATHBURY
CHRIS STAMPER
NORMAN PARKER
DAVE SWIFT
LEN PARKS
aka Enigma II; and if you play that version in MAME you get colour, too. These names are also at arcade-history.com, which I think is the source for the history.dat file that works with MAME frontends.

Grasspin

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CHRISTOPHER STAMPER,JOHN LA
Saturn

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THIS GAME SYSTEM WAS DESIGNED BY EXODIS LTDFOR ZILEC ELECTRONICS
EXODIS LTD. UNIT 2, 146 HIGH STREET, BURTON ON TRENT STAFFS. ENGLAND
JOHN LATHBURY,CHRISTOPHER STAMPER,TIMOTHY STAMPER
_THIS PROGRAMME WAS WRITTEN EXCLUSIVELY FOR ZILEC ELECTRONICS LTD BY A.W. ELECTRONICS.(C) MCMLXXXIII ZILEC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
And so, might as well check Gyruss

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PROGRAMED BY TOSHIO ARIMA CREATIVE BY YOSHIKI OKAMOTO CHARACTER BY HIDEKI OOYAMA SOUND BY MASAHIRO INOUE WE ARE MAKED TIME PILOT 
Well that's not mincing words. Though just to keep the dream alive, a comment by 'sho' at The Digital Antiquarian links to an article in Home Computing Weekly and notes the picture of a storyboard which indeed has an "uncanny resemblance" to Gyruss.

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2019 6:13 am
by Rorthron
I raised the subject on WoS a few years back and there was a little discussion of it there:

https://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/ ... 6/dingo/p5

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2019 6:23 am
by Juan F. Ramirez
A very interesting read, rev!

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2019 6:27 am
by djnzx48
Apparently they also made something called 'Zog', which I can't find any references to other than one from Leigh Loveday.
Rev_Stuart_Campbell wrote: Fri Nov 15, 2019 12:22 am (Note, btw, at 3m in that video, some short bursts of some music you may have heard in another arcade game. Buggered if I can put my finger on it at this exact moment.)
Sounds like it's from Wipe Out.

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2019 8:51 am
by zxade
MrCyan wrote: Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:49 am Sleuthing is fun. I did some searching through the roms:

Vortex

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AHMBPUERS  LSATT
C:CJHORHIN"C
which is probably nothing, really.
Apparently there are two developer credits, interleaved, in the main CPU at 0x47D8:

JOHN LATHBURY
CHRIS STAMPER

You can probably see that if you rearrange those groupings you found, (a few final chars appear to be missing for John Lathbury...)

C:CJHORHIN"C S LSATT AHMBPUER

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2019 10:05 am
by Ralf
Interesting stuff. I didn't realise they were so much involved in arcade machines.
That explains the arcade quality of early Ultimate games like Psst, Cookie and Jetpac.

And they were always a bit mysterious people, not willing to talk much about their work.

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2019 10:48 am
by 5MinuteRetro
Ralf wrote: Fri Nov 15, 2019 10:05 am And they were always a bit mysterious people, not willing to talk much about their work.
Indeed. And still. Tim Stamper appeared on Twitter for just a few months back in 2015, then mysteriously went quiet. It was an interesting few months, though:


Image

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2019 1:49 pm
by DouglasReynholm
Another clue perhaps - I just fired up MAME and ran the Grasspin ROM and it runs off the blueprnt.cpp driver, which means the hardware will have been almost, if not completely. identical to Blueprint's. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean they had the same authors (though @MrCyan 's stirling work above shows this is true in this case), but is another data point to consider for the other titles, I I haven't looked at any of them though.

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Sat Nov 16, 2019 12:20 pm
by Firefox
5MinuteRetro wrote: Fri Nov 15, 2019 10:48 am Indeed. And still. Tim Stamper appeared on Twitter for just a few months back in 2015, then mysteriously went quiet. It was an interesting few months, though:


Image
It very much looks like Atic Atac 3D at that stage...

I didn't realise they even created their loading screens on graph paper! :shock:

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Sat Nov 16, 2019 1:02 pm
by druellan
Firefox wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 12:20 pm I didn't realise they even created their loading screens on graph paper! :shock:
I think that is a dot matrix color print of the loading screen :geek:

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Sat Nov 16, 2019 1:43 pm
by Firefox
druellan wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 1:02 pm I think that is a dot matrix color print of the loading screen :geek:
No, I don't think so. If you look carefully there's the graph-paper grid lines, the "pixels" look like somebody's got a felt-tip pen and just dibbed the nib into the squares, and the logo's been done on a separate sheet, cut out, and stuck on with yellowing sellotape.

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Sat Nov 16, 2019 3:00 pm
by druellan
Firefox wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 1:43 pm
druellan wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 1:02 pm I think that is a dot matrix color print of the loading screen :geek:
No, I don't think so. If you look carefully there's the graph-paper grid lines, the "pixels" look like somebody's got a felt-tip pen and just dibbed the nib into the squares, and the logo's been done on a separate sheet, cut out, and stuck on with yellowing sellotape.
Yeah, you're right! The dots look like hand made.

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2019 2:46 am
by djnzx48
5MinuteRetro wrote: Fri Nov 15, 2019 10:48 am
Ralf wrote: Fri Nov 15, 2019 10:05 am And they were always a bit mysterious people, not willing to talk much about their work.
Indeed. And still. Tim Stamper appeared on Twitter for just a few months back in 2015, then mysteriously went quiet. It was an interesting few months, though:


Image
Perhaps it would be a good idea to archive this account somehow? Twitter are going to delete all inactive accounts in a little over a week's time.

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2019 9:45 pm
by djnzx48
There's a form here to submit accounts for archiving, but it's intended for the accounts of deceased people. Would it be appropriate to submit Tim Stamper's account?

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2019 7:10 am
by PeterJ
A really interesting read [mention]Rev_Stuart_Campbell[/mention]

Thank you

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2019 1:17 pm
by Joefish
Firefox wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 12:20 pm Image
It very much looks like Atic Atac 3D at that stage...
Interesting the note with that picture says:
“New Game” became #KnightLore
Wonder what happens if I pull the chain?
Still working on #AticAtac at the time
So it looks like Knight Lore started out as trying to do an isometric version of Atic Atac. Remember that Atic Atac attempted a line-drawn 3D look to its rooms - at least, around the walls. This sketch looks more like something from Fairlight, with the steps at the back, but I notice that the room is otherwise empty. And even with that staircase, there's nothing really to go 'behind' (like in Quazatron). Even that block at the front is sloped to match the isometric floor line, so again a sprite wouldn't need to be drawn 'behind' it. The table and chairs at the bottom is the only hint of obstacles to come. I guess the full layered and masked graphics evolved from there, realising they'd still need to order and mask the sprites of any characters that move around in that space, and maybe even allow you to jump onto the tables, if you could jump up the stairs.

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 2:31 pm
by toot_toot
I don’t know why, but it always felt like Knight Lore was supposed to be a 3D Atic Atac but with the speed limitations of the Spectrum, it was turned more into a slower paced exploration game. The Filmation 2 games like Gunfright and Nightshade seemed to capture more of the faster pace of Atic Atac and I’m surprised they didn’t use the engine to make a 3D sequel to Atic Atac - or at least make Nightshade more of a sequel seeing as it has a similar structure of a handful of major baddies that must be defeated over the smaller ones. And to be honest, I didn’t really liked the slower 3D games like Knight Lore, Oentagram or Alien 8!

That’s why I can’t wait for the 3D remake of Atic Atac on the Next!

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2021 10:05 am
by Jennifer
I know I'm really late to the party, but I've been investigating Tim and Chris Stamper's early arcade work for the West Elmira Computers Museum, and my search took me to this forum.

I haven't managed to find anything concrete yet to add to the list of their developed games, but I did manage to find that Chris Stamper did conversion work for arcade conversion kits (for playing popular arcade games on hardware for which they weren't originally designed) for Associated Leisure in 1979 and then for Zilec from 1980 until the formation of Ultimate Play the Game in 1983.

Because of this, the Commodore User article might not be entirely inaccurate in that it's entirely possible that the Stamper Brothers did work on Gyruss, but in converting it from one hardware system to another when it was published by Zilec, rather than creating the game itself.

Due to the fact that the Stamper Brothers made a conversion of The Pit for the Galaxian hardware (thanks to y'all for figuring that one out), it might be worth checking data in Galaxian conversions to see if the Stampers could be found there (Galaxian was created in 1979, so it's possible that the Stamper Brothers did conversion work for this hardware for Associated Leisure as well).

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2021 4:29 pm
by Einar Saukas
Is anyone willing to collect these images (the highest resolution available) please? I will gladly add everything to ZXDB as "original artwork".

This content deserves to be preserved!

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Sun May 16, 2021 1:50 pm
by Rorthron
Einar Saukas wrote: Sun Mar 14, 2021 4:29 pm Is anyone willing to collect these images (the highest resolution available) please? I will gladly add everything to ZXDB as "original artwork".

This content deserves to be preserved!
Was this ever done?

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Tue May 18, 2021 8:49 am
by PeterJ
[mention]Einar Saukas[/mention], [mention]Rorthron[/mention] has sent me the 15 files via email and I have uploaded them via Pavel's form. The drawings are amazing!

[mention]pavero[/mention] could these go on our archive.org storage as they are quite large. Many thanks

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Wed May 19, 2021 3:56 pm
by Einar Saukas
Thank you!

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Thu May 20, 2021 9:24 pm
by pavero
Solved, I hope. :)

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Fri May 28, 2021 3:16 pm
by PeterJ
[mention]Rorthron[/mention],

The artwork is showing in the latest update:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/9 ... night_Lore

Re: What are the "lost" Ultimate arcade games?

Posted: Sun May 30, 2021 2:36 pm
by Rorthron
PeterJ wrote: Fri May 28, 2021 3:16 pm @Rorthron,

The artwork is showing in the latest update:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/9 ... night_Lore
Thanks. (Also under Alien8.)