Article about Dinamic in the Spanish press
Article about Dinamic in the Spanish press
I was reading the press, periodically appears some 8 bits nostalgia related readings: https://elpais.com/icon/2024-04-16/un-r ... rtivo.html (in Spanish, curiously they name the ZX Spectrum as "the Spectrum ZX").
Re: Article about Dinamic in the Spanish press
Was trying to read this via Google Translate, but sadly the "Cookies" bullsh*t makes the translated website unreadable and defaults back to Spanish after you pick one option.
Though even without a translation, I know the caption "Los cuatro hermanos Ruiz en Londres en 1988" under a photo where 4 blokes are standing at the Ludlow Railway station just proves the article's author doesn't know about Crash magazine
Though even without a translation, I know the caption "Los cuatro hermanos Ruiz en Londres en 1988" under a photo where 4 blokes are standing at the Ludlow Railway station just proves the article's author doesn't know about Crash magazine
Re: Article about Dinamic in the Spanish press
Wow, just finished the article (with translation) and it is really interesting info!
I didn't know they are still alive too!
Or Navy Moves.
I didn't know they are still alive too!
Or Navy Moves.
Re: Article about Dinamic in the Spanish press
I was amused by the link at the bottom to a piece on "the genesis of Super Mario" - interesting choice of words!!! 
Re: Article about Dinamic in the Spanish press
Here is the translation for the people having problems.
I didn't know that they are in some way still active in gaming industry. And that they survived with the original company almost through all the 90s.
The Spanish company Dinamic turns 40 with milestones under its belt such as 'PC Fútbol', the video game that became an obsession for teenagers in the nineties and a goal for the footballers themselves.
They built a robot that sang Christmas carols and an arcade machine that ran on a 4.5-volt battery. They dismantled any device they could get their hands on and organized craft fairs in the garage of an abandoned house. Creativity boiled in the DNA of the Ruiz brothers, who, while still teenagers, founded the company Dinamic Software in 1984, the first dedicated to video games in Spain. Their first release was Yenght and it went on sale by mail order at the end of April of that year and the first sale was on May 8, the date they consider founding. Many of its titles are already in the National Library, such as that unprecedented success called PC Fútbol, a mythical game that revolutionized soccer youth at the end of the 20th century. “I never dreamed that what we started then could transcend the way it has,” recalls Gaby Ruiz, the youngest of the Ruizs.
Gaby, Víctor, Pablo and Nacho are the brothers who created the company in their parents' house in Pozuelo de Alarcón, then known as Mansión Dinamic, because it was the neighborhood meeting point. They are the best national example of the so-called bedroom programmers, a phenomenon that was repeated especially in the United Kingdom, young people who tinkered with the first computers and began a path yet to be taken. “We must thank our parents Víctor and Teresa for such a creative environment, with so much freedom, to develop what we could think of,” Pablo Ruiz recalled a few days ago at the facilities of the Google Cybersecurity Center, in Malaga, where they received a tribute promoted by the Digital Content Pole of the Malaga City Council. In their interventions they recalled anecdotes, recounted the initial stages and talked about its complete history. More than 300 programmers, designers and other specialists have passed through the company in its different stages.
The Ruizs' first computer was a ZK81 with monochrome graphics and 1k of RAM. A thousand bits “that today they don't even give you to store a letter,” Pablo stressed. A Spectrum ZX, 48k and color later served as inspiration. With it they created Artist, a graphic design program to create their own video games. To launch Yenght they paid 40,000 pesetas for half a page in ZK magazine. The announcement came out at the end of April and it was not until May 8 when they received their first order. Six at a time, at a thousand pesetas each. The date had founding powers for the company, which the next day received a package at its door full of new requests that the postman brought to them, surprised. So it took them six minutes to copy both sides of the chrome tapes, put stickers on them, the cover and an envelope that required winding and lacquering.
“That was our dream,” Pablo remembers in conversation with ICON. The next title was Saimazoom. “I made the cover with rotring and plastidecor,” says Luis Rodríguez about a game based on the Saimaza coffee advertisements. Mapsnatch followed – a legacy of his eternal games of Risk during the early hours – and then Babaliba. All in 1984, like Videolimpic, signed by Nacho Ruiz and of which they sold 250,000 units in the United Kingdom. “On the first trip he made to London for work, Víctor brought me the game of the moment: Football Manager. And my life changed forever,” says Gaby Ruiz, who experienced a “wild addiction” with that game and who was later indispensable for the origin of PC Fútbol.
Before getting there, the Dinamic brothers hired artist Luis Azpiri for their covers in 1985 and registered as a company. Since their title did not exist, the Treasury placed them—because of the hardware—in the metal sector, such as blast furnaces. That year they released Rocky and Abu Simbel Profanation, already in a company with a larger budget and investment in R&D. The following year they moved to their offices in Plaza de España and had their first employee: Florentino Pertejo, essential for the creation of the R1 programming engine. In alliance with Ocean, they launched their basketball simulator Basket Master in 1987 linked to the figure of the legendary Fernando Martín, already in the NBA.
“Suddenly a youth idol became interested in something like that. It was incredible,” emphasizes Pablo, who highlights that the game already had an artificial intelligence base. It was the first video game to exceed 100,000 copies sold and the Dinamic team appeared on the cover of El País Semanal under the title Computer Geniuses. Game Over II, Navy Moves and Aspar GP Master were other of his later titles. Already in 1992 they triumphed with Risky Woods, released for Megadrive and which was successful in Japan. “They were pioneers in almost everything. And, furthermore, they knew how to find talent and promote it: they generated the Spanish video game industry,” emphasizes producer and designer Miguel Ramos, director of Kaiju Games and one of the founders of the OXO Video Game Museum located in Malaga.
Robinson, Maldini and the emergence of PC Fútbol
That year was the birth of Dinamic Multimedia—a new branch of the original company—and the launch that changed everything: PC Fútbol, a game that combined a simple soccer simulator with the possibility of directing professional clubs in different roles: from being a coach for tactics, lineups or promoting youth players to assume the role of the technical secretariat to sell or sign players, without forgetting the role of the board for issues such as expanding the stadium or generating income with merchandising. “I knew the level of addiction that these types of games had because I had become obsessed with Football Manager. And he was already a football nut. I insisted a lot on my brothers to get it started,” says Gaby Ruiz, the youngest of the four, a soccer fanatic who had done his internship at Marca. He himself made the first database with all the players of the Spanish teams. “I watched all the games, I spent my life watching football. That database was a brutal challenge,” underlines the youngest Ruiz by phone from his house in Brussels.
He knew many players, but for others he called the clubs directly to speak with their specialists. At Sociedad Deportiva Compostela, then a club recently promoted to the First Division, he was transferred directly to the coach, Fernando Castro. He spent more than an hour detailing the characteristics of each member of his staff. “Today that would be impossible,” Ruiz emphasizes with amusement. “Everything we did was very well done: that's why it worked so well,” adds Carlos Abril, who directed the game's programming and remembers that each user wanted to win the European Cup with the lowest team possible. Whether it was Vélez-Málaga or Zamudio. Patience, good management, some tricks... and the titles came.
On sale in newsstands, PC Fútbol 2.0—which, despite the name, was its first version—had Michael Robinson on the cover when he was already an eminence with his program The Day After and it worked wonderfully. That led them to later make adaptations for countries like Italy (PC Calcio) or England (PC Premier) as well as Argentina or France. Gaby Ruiz could no longer cope and created an editorial team of specialists in international football that was almost impossible to enter: the tests to be passed were so demanding that few passed them. Great experts such as Óscar García (who later worked at AS) or Pablo Aranda and, later, the El País journalist Ladislao J. Moñino did. They also drew on the wisdom of Julio Maldonado, Maldini, who was also the face of the Italian version.
Every year an improved version was released by the users themselves, who sent their suggestions by letter. In 1998, PC Fútbol 7 was the peak with almost 400,000 copies sold. At that time Robinson also broadcast the games. “If he keeps shooting like that, the people in that entire goal will have to wear helmets” or “What a tackle! That guy must eat raw meat” he said in some of his most mythical phrases, also collected in the book Promanager PC Fútbol: drugs in the kiosk, published by Jaume Esteve in 2016.
Some professional players even visited the Dinamic Multimedia facilities to meet those geniuses. And many asked, laughing, that the ratings of their characteristics (speed, aggressiveness, resistance...) be raised. Piqué, Michel, Laudrup or Iniesta, many professionals spent their nineties hooked on the PC Fútbol saga. “Luis Enrique or Quique Sánchez Flores were also big fans,” recalls Gaby Ruiz, who fondly remembers the press conference she gave with Javier Clemente for the 1996 version of the Euro Cup and who signed full-time for Canal the following year. + to promote the Fútbol Mundial channel with Maldini in what was, he emphasizes, “an absolutely wonderful experience.” His enormous knowledge of international football allowed him to make the leap to professional football in 2013. First as a scout for the Italian Sassuolo signed by Pablo Fernández Longoria – current president of Olimpique de Marseille – and then at Elche CF under the guidance of Víctor Orta. He has continued with him at Middlesbrough, Leeds United and, now, at Sevilla FC.
The Ruizs had already accumulated 250,000 hours of work with PC Fútbol when they made the last one under their responsibility, number 7, because at the beginning of 1999 they sold the game to Gómez-Centurión and disassociated themselves from the project, which would end up failing shortly after. There have been several attempts since then to resume it and the PC Fútbol 8 is even expected from the company One More Game, which has announced the launch for April 30. “I hope they do well,” stresses Pablo Ruiz, who remembers that that agreement for a sale that he does not regret included a clause that did not allow the Ruizs to use the Dinamic name. That is why they founded FX Interactive together with more partners, such as Carlos Abril, and took a large part of their team. They published titles such as Traitor's Gate, Navy Moves or the Imperivm saga. The company would end up disappearing in 2017, but Pablo Ruiz decided to buy back his brand and is now once again responsible for Dinamic, with which he is already preparing new projects such as the new installment of the Imperivm HD saga. Meanwhile, his brother Víctor runs Lakento, a company focused on virtual reality games, where Nacho Ruiz also works with projects such as Dinosaur Island or St. Andrews.
The four of them are also excitedly preparing the events for the 40th anniversary of Dinamic, which will begin to be officially celebrated from May 8 but for which they have already carried out some activities such as the talk at the Google cybersecurity center in Malaga and a previous one in Parla. In the capital of Malaga they will have a retrospective exhibition in the coming months at OXO, the Video Game Museum, in whose permanent collection they already show some of the historical objects of the Madrid company such as the original illustration of the game Game Over, by Luis Royo . Pure history of the national video game.
I didn't know that they are in some way still active in gaming industry. And that they survived with the original company almost through all the 90s.
The Spanish company Dinamic turns 40 with milestones under its belt such as 'PC Fútbol', the video game that became an obsession for teenagers in the nineties and a goal for the footballers themselves.
They built a robot that sang Christmas carols and an arcade machine that ran on a 4.5-volt battery. They dismantled any device they could get their hands on and organized craft fairs in the garage of an abandoned house. Creativity boiled in the DNA of the Ruiz brothers, who, while still teenagers, founded the company Dinamic Software in 1984, the first dedicated to video games in Spain. Their first release was Yenght and it went on sale by mail order at the end of April of that year and the first sale was on May 8, the date they consider founding. Many of its titles are already in the National Library, such as that unprecedented success called PC Fútbol, a mythical game that revolutionized soccer youth at the end of the 20th century. “I never dreamed that what we started then could transcend the way it has,” recalls Gaby Ruiz, the youngest of the Ruizs.
Gaby, Víctor, Pablo and Nacho are the brothers who created the company in their parents' house in Pozuelo de Alarcón, then known as Mansión Dinamic, because it was the neighborhood meeting point. They are the best national example of the so-called bedroom programmers, a phenomenon that was repeated especially in the United Kingdom, young people who tinkered with the first computers and began a path yet to be taken. “We must thank our parents Víctor and Teresa for such a creative environment, with so much freedom, to develop what we could think of,” Pablo Ruiz recalled a few days ago at the facilities of the Google Cybersecurity Center, in Malaga, where they received a tribute promoted by the Digital Content Pole of the Malaga City Council. In their interventions they recalled anecdotes, recounted the initial stages and talked about its complete history. More than 300 programmers, designers and other specialists have passed through the company in its different stages.
The Ruizs' first computer was a ZK81 with monochrome graphics and 1k of RAM. A thousand bits “that today they don't even give you to store a letter,” Pablo stressed. A Spectrum ZX, 48k and color later served as inspiration. With it they created Artist, a graphic design program to create their own video games. To launch Yenght they paid 40,000 pesetas for half a page in ZK magazine. The announcement came out at the end of April and it was not until May 8 when they received their first order. Six at a time, at a thousand pesetas each. The date had founding powers for the company, which the next day received a package at its door full of new requests that the postman brought to them, surprised. So it took them six minutes to copy both sides of the chrome tapes, put stickers on them, the cover and an envelope that required winding and lacquering.
“That was our dream,” Pablo remembers in conversation with ICON. The next title was Saimazoom. “I made the cover with rotring and plastidecor,” says Luis Rodríguez about a game based on the Saimaza coffee advertisements. Mapsnatch followed – a legacy of his eternal games of Risk during the early hours – and then Babaliba. All in 1984, like Videolimpic, signed by Nacho Ruiz and of which they sold 250,000 units in the United Kingdom. “On the first trip he made to London for work, Víctor brought me the game of the moment: Football Manager. And my life changed forever,” says Gaby Ruiz, who experienced a “wild addiction” with that game and who was later indispensable for the origin of PC Fútbol.
Before getting there, the Dinamic brothers hired artist Luis Azpiri for their covers in 1985 and registered as a company. Since their title did not exist, the Treasury placed them—because of the hardware—in the metal sector, such as blast furnaces. That year they released Rocky and Abu Simbel Profanation, already in a company with a larger budget and investment in R&D. The following year they moved to their offices in Plaza de España and had their first employee: Florentino Pertejo, essential for the creation of the R1 programming engine. In alliance with Ocean, they launched their basketball simulator Basket Master in 1987 linked to the figure of the legendary Fernando Martín, already in the NBA.
“Suddenly a youth idol became interested in something like that. It was incredible,” emphasizes Pablo, who highlights that the game already had an artificial intelligence base. It was the first video game to exceed 100,000 copies sold and the Dinamic team appeared on the cover of El País Semanal under the title Computer Geniuses. Game Over II, Navy Moves and Aspar GP Master were other of his later titles. Already in 1992 they triumphed with Risky Woods, released for Megadrive and which was successful in Japan. “They were pioneers in almost everything. And, furthermore, they knew how to find talent and promote it: they generated the Spanish video game industry,” emphasizes producer and designer Miguel Ramos, director of Kaiju Games and one of the founders of the OXO Video Game Museum located in Malaga.
Robinson, Maldini and the emergence of PC Fútbol
That year was the birth of Dinamic Multimedia—a new branch of the original company—and the launch that changed everything: PC Fútbol, a game that combined a simple soccer simulator with the possibility of directing professional clubs in different roles: from being a coach for tactics, lineups or promoting youth players to assume the role of the technical secretariat to sell or sign players, without forgetting the role of the board for issues such as expanding the stadium or generating income with merchandising. “I knew the level of addiction that these types of games had because I had become obsessed with Football Manager. And he was already a football nut. I insisted a lot on my brothers to get it started,” says Gaby Ruiz, the youngest of the four, a soccer fanatic who had done his internship at Marca. He himself made the first database with all the players of the Spanish teams. “I watched all the games, I spent my life watching football. That database was a brutal challenge,” underlines the youngest Ruiz by phone from his house in Brussels.
He knew many players, but for others he called the clubs directly to speak with their specialists. At Sociedad Deportiva Compostela, then a club recently promoted to the First Division, he was transferred directly to the coach, Fernando Castro. He spent more than an hour detailing the characteristics of each member of his staff. “Today that would be impossible,” Ruiz emphasizes with amusement. “Everything we did was very well done: that's why it worked so well,” adds Carlos Abril, who directed the game's programming and remembers that each user wanted to win the European Cup with the lowest team possible. Whether it was Vélez-Málaga or Zamudio. Patience, good management, some tricks... and the titles came.
On sale in newsstands, PC Fútbol 2.0—which, despite the name, was its first version—had Michael Robinson on the cover when he was already an eminence with his program The Day After and it worked wonderfully. That led them to later make adaptations for countries like Italy (PC Calcio) or England (PC Premier) as well as Argentina or France. Gaby Ruiz could no longer cope and created an editorial team of specialists in international football that was almost impossible to enter: the tests to be passed were so demanding that few passed them. Great experts such as Óscar García (who later worked at AS) or Pablo Aranda and, later, the El País journalist Ladislao J. Moñino did. They also drew on the wisdom of Julio Maldonado, Maldini, who was also the face of the Italian version.
Every year an improved version was released by the users themselves, who sent their suggestions by letter. In 1998, PC Fútbol 7 was the peak with almost 400,000 copies sold. At that time Robinson also broadcast the games. “If he keeps shooting like that, the people in that entire goal will have to wear helmets” or “What a tackle! That guy must eat raw meat” he said in some of his most mythical phrases, also collected in the book Promanager PC Fútbol: drugs in the kiosk, published by Jaume Esteve in 2016.
Some professional players even visited the Dinamic Multimedia facilities to meet those geniuses. And many asked, laughing, that the ratings of their characteristics (speed, aggressiveness, resistance...) be raised. Piqué, Michel, Laudrup or Iniesta, many professionals spent their nineties hooked on the PC Fútbol saga. “Luis Enrique or Quique Sánchez Flores were also big fans,” recalls Gaby Ruiz, who fondly remembers the press conference she gave with Javier Clemente for the 1996 version of the Euro Cup and who signed full-time for Canal the following year. + to promote the Fútbol Mundial channel with Maldini in what was, he emphasizes, “an absolutely wonderful experience.” His enormous knowledge of international football allowed him to make the leap to professional football in 2013. First as a scout for the Italian Sassuolo signed by Pablo Fernández Longoria – current president of Olimpique de Marseille – and then at Elche CF under the guidance of Víctor Orta. He has continued with him at Middlesbrough, Leeds United and, now, at Sevilla FC.
The Ruizs had already accumulated 250,000 hours of work with PC Fútbol when they made the last one under their responsibility, number 7, because at the beginning of 1999 they sold the game to Gómez-Centurión and disassociated themselves from the project, which would end up failing shortly after. There have been several attempts since then to resume it and the PC Fútbol 8 is even expected from the company One More Game, which has announced the launch for April 30. “I hope they do well,” stresses Pablo Ruiz, who remembers that that agreement for a sale that he does not regret included a clause that did not allow the Ruizs to use the Dinamic name. That is why they founded FX Interactive together with more partners, such as Carlos Abril, and took a large part of their team. They published titles such as Traitor's Gate, Navy Moves or the Imperivm saga. The company would end up disappearing in 2017, but Pablo Ruiz decided to buy back his brand and is now once again responsible for Dinamic, with which he is already preparing new projects such as the new installment of the Imperivm HD saga. Meanwhile, his brother Víctor runs Lakento, a company focused on virtual reality games, where Nacho Ruiz also works with projects such as Dinosaur Island or St. Andrews.
The four of them are also excitedly preparing the events for the 40th anniversary of Dinamic, which will begin to be officially celebrated from May 8 but for which they have already carried out some activities such as the talk at the Google cybersecurity center in Malaga and a previous one in Parla. In the capital of Malaga they will have a retrospective exhibition in the coming months at OXO, the Video Game Museum, in whose permanent collection they already show some of the historical objects of the Madrid company such as the original illustration of the game Game Over, by Luis Royo . Pure history of the national video game.