Click here for covers

Released: 1983

Publisher: Artic Computing Limited

Platform: Sinclair Spectrum 48k

Programming, Art & SFX: Jon Ritman

Music: Guy Stevens

History: Having recently seen Ultimate’s Jet Pack & Pssst I decided to go for some cute graphics, Sinclair was touting the idea of an electric car at the time and I had also seen Burger Time on a Mattel platform. I used the basic gameplay of Burger Time with the story warped around the electric car. I spent a lot of trouble with animating and avoiding the dreaded spectrum colour clash and at the time it was one of the smoothest games ever. I also started to develop games on a more sophisticated platform – I joined two spectrums and 3 microdrives and started assembling on one spectrum and running the game on the other, this meant my games could be bigger although in practice I used the extra space to store animation frames. This was one of the first games to play music throughout the game (it drove you mad though – thanks Guy). It also marked my becoming a full time games programmer, finally leaving my job at Radio Rentals. I got at least one very nice review and it sold around 7000. Bare Bovver was the first of my games to get any proper advertising, we tried to be clever, putting full page advertising without text in the magazines for a couple of months – I can remember going in to a games shop and hearing two people at the counter wondering what the game was. The whole deal fell apart when the publishers failed to get the game on the shelves for several months. It was my last game for Artic Computing.

Next