Published on 09/18/2006

During the early 80's home computer boom, a number of young computer game programmers appeared on the scene, each home computer format had their own prominent stars. One of the most well known and certainly popular, was the boy genius Antony ‘Tony’ Crowther (aka Ratt), who quickly became a legend on the Commodore 64 game scene - not only with what he could achieve visually on the Commodore 64, but also because of his ability to create a good game in just a few weeks of coding!

Introduction

Tony Crowther specialised in graphics that gave his games a polished and professional look, making them visually striking and impressive, allowing them to stand out from the crowd. These trademark graphics led some people to purchase a game because of the graphics rather than for the gameplay. This is similar to the Rob Hubbard music phenomenon. In the early years of Tony Crowther's Commodore 64 gaming career, he worked for the software company, Alligata software. Where he produced a catalogue of games, some that proved popular and really made a mark were Killer Watt, the Blagger (series), and of course, Loco. Killer Watt involved moving through caverns blowing up light bulbs (that’s where the “watt” comes in!). It was an original, fun and addictive game that even to this day still remains one of Crowther’s most enjoyable games.	Killer Watt by Alligata Software
He also created a series of games, based around a central character, which consisted of Blagger, Son of Blagger and Blagger Goes To Hollywood (although Tony only did the music for this title, as the actual programming was done by Marcus Altman). The first two Blagger games proved quite popular. Blagger was similar in concept to Manic Miner, containing the sometimes frustrating but addictive gameplay. Son of Blagger was also platform based, with a neat 3D style look, but not sacrificing the gameplay of the original. Although the difficulty level was increased, it was certainly the better of the two.
Blagger by Alligata Software	Son Of Blagger by Alligata Software
The final game in the series was Blagger Goes to Hollywood, an interesting concept as it was based around popular 80's Hollywood films and television series. The game consisted of a number of rooms which you could enter, and a nice touch was that each film character had their own familiar music from the films! So everytime you entered a characters room the appropriate music would play! So if you entered a room which contained Batman, E.T. or the Incredible Hulk then the music from the tv series or film would play! Unfortunately the game didn't quite live up to the hype and could of been better, but it was certainly enjoyable for a short period of time.
Blagger Goes To Hollywood by Alligata Software	Blagger Goes To Hollywood Advert

Do the Locomotion

Loco was a landmark game in many respects. I can remember buying this game in a local department store, where they had a small selection of games for the C64, shortly after I purchased my Commodore 64 computer.

The cover was eye catching and certainly stood out from the bland covers on the rest of the rack. On the back of the game package there was a colour screenshot with the text 'outstanding graphics and toe tapping soundtrack'.

Most claims like these which appeared on other games at the time, usually turned out to be wildly exaggerated! In the case of Loco however it could not have been more accurate.

The graphics were bold and colourful which made other games at the time look a little primitive. The music, a rendition of Equinoxe by Jean Michel Jarre was produced by Tony Crowther’s friend Ben Daglish (aka Ben). The music was “toe tapping” to say the least, and it is still one of my favourite 64 soundtracks.

The music for the game was not what Tony had originally intended, as he wanted Rydeen (as confirmed in the Commodore Horizons magazine article), the music that Ocean used on the Daley Thompson's Decathlon loading sequence. I think that Equinoxe was far more suitable and Benn Daglish did a great job with his rendition of this popular Jarre tune.

LOCO Front Cover

LOCO by Alligata Software

This is an underrated game, because unlike some of Crowther's later efforts, it fuses some great graphics and sound with above average gameplay. Although at times frustrating to play, it can be quite addictive.

There are five levels to the game with six railway tracks. You can advance a level by collecting five flags by passing five train stations, but you will have to avoid various hazzards like kamikaze handcarts, airships and planes dropping bombs and running out of fuel! There are various fuel dumps that appear on the tracks at certain points throughout a level.

A novel feature is a slow and fast speed option for the train which you can set before you start to play.

Gremlin

In the mid 80’s Tony Crowther moved to a new software company called “Gremlin Graphics”. Here, he and Peter Harrap created the Monty Mole character, which featured in a series of games, released on various home computer formats, in particular the Spectrum and Commodore machines. Crowther developed the Commodore 64 version of the Monty Mole game. The idea for the character has an interesting history as it was derived from the controversial miners strike that was going on at the time in the United Kingdom. Pete Harrap's Dad was a miner and Tony Crowther's Grandad was the President of the Coal Board! A local newspaper ran a story about the game and even a national TV station became interested! The game itself was a simple, but hard, platform style game.	Monty Mole by Gremlin Graphics
Percy The Potty Pigeon by Gremlin Graphics	His next game Percy the Potty Pigeon was based around a pigeon that you controlled with the aim of feeding his family of chicks by picking up worms. The graphics were detailed and well drawn, visually quite impressive. The music was poor, but the sound effects were adequate. You could attack enemies like cars that were driving on the roads by dropping deadly exploding eggs on them, an amusing method of eradicating obstacles in your way! At certain times, you will need to replenish your flying energy by resting, otherwise its pigeon pie for you. The game is quite original and great fun to play – it can become a bit repetitive after a while, but nonetheless one of Crowther's better games.
He later went on to produce the Suicide Express (for Gremlin Graphics) and Black Thunder (for Quicksilva) games. He was criticised at the time, as both these games were based on the original Loco game that he developed at the Alligata software company years before. Also, the background graphics in Suicide Express and Black Thunder were very similar. However, although the games essentially used the same game engine, they were based around a different story line and utilised different sprite/character graphics. It’s fair to say they allowed Crowther to push the C64 further in terms of graphics and sound. It’s also worth noting that these games employed software speech synthesis for speaking “Game Over” etc. It was a nice touch but unfortunately the speech was not that clear and inferior to the software speech technique developed by Electronic Speech Systems Inc (ESS) (see Speech Box article). However, it would have cost a lot of money at the time to use ESS so it makes sense that Tony opted to go for a much more cost effective method of producing the speech!
Suicide Express by Gremlin Graphics	Black Thunder by Gremlin Graphics

Wizard Developments

Around this time he also developed the game Gryphon (for Quicksilva) which again showed off the graphics capability of the 64 and what his programming talent could do – utilising large character graphics and smooth animation. You control a Gryphon which can fly around the screen. Your objective is to collect gold bars which you can use to create a path to progress to the next stage - there are three stages, the Mystical Woods, Surreal Cities and the deadly Darklands. Unfortunately marauding ID monsters stand in your way (which look suspiciously like ghosts!), but you can use bolts of magic to avoid them. The game also included a hidden demo that imitated the 'test card' that you would see when a television station in the United Kingdom went off the air. It was simple but clever!	Gryphon by Quicksilva
Tony Crowther was interested in more than games programming and it was only a matter of time before he moved onto something more adventurous. Crowther had a strong interest in computer generated sound, especially on the Commodore 64. Crowther composed music for a number of his own games, like Killer Watt and Suicide Express. His best friend Ben Daglish was an accomplished computer musician and was also responsible for the Jarre sound track on one of Crowther's early games Loco. Crowther asked Ben if he would be interested in forming a company with him to bring together a number of talented computer musicians to specialise in producing computer music. Ben agreed and the company W.E.M.U.S.I.C. (which stood for We Make Use Of Sound In Computers) was born.
William Wobbler by Wizard Developments	Crowther also decided to start his own computer game company called Wizard Developments. This gave him the creative freedom he always craved. Shortly after setting the company up, he developed the game William Wobbler, an interesting game and concept with a large main graphic character, quite visually impressive. Unfortunately it did not prove that popular and was certainly not the best start for Crowther's new venture - Wizard Developments did not last that long and after a short while its fate was sealed. I have often wondered what would of happened if Crowther was financially capable of starting his own company like Wizard earlier on in his C64 career. I suspect it would of been very successful.
Eventually, Crowther moved on and produced another game for the Alligata software company, called Trap. A space shoot-em-up with tough gameplay and a superb soundtrack by Ben Daglish. Like other Crowther games, Trap included a hidden demo, that was also released separately to promote the Compunet service, and encourage more C64 users to buy a modem and subscribe to Compunet. The demo contains a running text commentary and has superb background music by Ben Daglish which is really 'cinematic' in places. Its well integrated into the demo and the music bursts to life at key moments throughout. A flash video of this demo is available below.	Trap by Alligata
Trap Demo (Flash video - press play button to start)
In later years Crowther went on to produce games on other machines including the Amiga and its console the CD32. One of his finest achievements on the Amiga was the Captive game on the CD32 that also happened to be one of the first games released on this format. There can be no doubt that Tony Crowther was a Commodore 64 genius and at the time produced games that were technically more advanced than most of his competitors. He is indeed a legend and has earned his place in not only the Commodore 64 but also computer gaming history.

Game Release Timeline


Aztec Tomb	Monty Mole	Black Thunder
Balloon Rescue	Baby Monty	William Wobbler
Bat Attack	Son of Blagger
Bug Blaster	Loco
Haunted House	Percy the Potty Pigeon
Frog 64	Suicide Express
Damsel In Distress	Loko Attack
Killer Watt	Gryphon
Blagger

R1-D1	Kettle	Phobia
Trap	Zig Zag
	Centurions
	Gobots

A number of articles about Tony Crowther that appeared in Commodore 64 magazines are available in the
Legends of the C64 - Tony Crowther category:

The Potty Programmer by Chris Jenkins, which appeared in Commodore Horizons
Super being a Superstar by Chris Anderson, which appeared in Zzap!64.
These articles contain some photos of Tony Crowther.

If you would like to comment on this article then please use the comment/rating feature available.

This article differs from the original article published on the old Commodore Zone website. It has been rewritten in parts and also corrects a factual error regarding the game Blagger Goes To Hollywood, where the original text implied that Tony Crowther programmed the game, when in fact it was by another Alligata game programmer Marcus Altman. However, Tony Crowther did compose the music for the game and this is now clearly stated in the revised text.