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The Commodore Zone - Tony Crowther

Tony Crowther - a legendary pioneer Introduction by TCZ webmaster
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During the home computer boom in the early 80’s a number of young computer game programmers appeared on the scene, and each home computer format had their own prominent stars! One of the most well known and certainly popular was the legendary Antony Crowther, who quickly became a known genius in the computer game field, not only with what he could achieve on the Commodore 64, but also the fact that he could create a good game in just a few weeks!! In the early years of Tony Crowther, he worked for a game company called Alligata software. He produced a number of popular titles during his time at Alligata – some that really made a mark were Killer Watt, Blagger (series), and 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. He also created the Blagger series of games (Blagger, Son of Blagger and Blagger Goes To Hollywood). The first two Blagger games were platform based and proved quite popular, Son of Blagger was certainly the better of the two. Blagger Goes to Hollywood was an interesting concept as it was based around popular Hollywood films. The game consisted of a series 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!
Blagger Goes To Hollywood Advert
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 for the Commodore 64. The cover was eye catching and certainly stood out from the usual crowd. 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 Benn Daglish. The music was “toe tapping” to say the least, it is still one of my favourite 64 soundtracks.
Crowther's LOCO	LOCO Cover Art
In the mid 80’s Tony Crowther moved to a new games company called “Gremlin Graphics”. Here, he and Peter Harrap created the Monty Mole character, which turned into a series of games by Gremlin Graphics, released on various home computer formats, in particular the Spectrum and Commodore machines. Tony 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 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 paper also 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.
Crowther's Monty Mole
Tony 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 similar to the original Loco game that he developed at the Alligata company years before. However, although the games essentially used the same game engine, they were based around a different story line and graphics. It’s fair to say they allowed Tony to push the 64 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 the speech was not that clear and inferior to the software speech technique developed by Electronic Speech Systems Inc (ESS) (see Speech Box). 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! 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. The game also included a hidden demo which imitated the “test card” that you used to get on UK television when the television station went off the air. It was simple but clever!
Crowther's Gryphon
Later in the 80’s, Tony and his friend Benn Daglish created “W.E.M.U.S.I.C” which brought together a number of talented computer musicians under one company to specialise in computer music. Tony also decided to start his own computer game company called “Wizard Developments”. Shortly after setting the company up, he produced the game “William Wobbler” an interesting game and concept with a large main graphic character, in some ways quite visually impressive - but unfortunately it did not prove very popular and soon disappeared without trace!
Crowther's William Wobbler
A better effort with tough gameplay was the space shoot-em-up Trap (for Alligata) which had a superb soundtrack. Like other Crowther games, Trap included a hidden demo which was also released on the Compunet service utilising the soundtrack to great “cinematic” effect (a shockwave cameo of this demo, is playing above). In later years Tony 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 which 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 his competitors. He is indeed a legend and has earned his place in not only the Commodore 64 but also computer gaming history. Please find below a number of articles about Tony Crowther that appeared in the magazine Commodore Horizons and Zzap64!. On the Collections page you will find a special collection pack of Tony Crowther games. Also, a shockwave version of the demo Trap is playing above – as you read this! Read, listen and enjoy! If you would like to comment on this article - then please email the TCZ webmaster, or talk about it in the discussion forum. If you notice any grammatical errors or incorrect historical information then please email us.



Aztec Tomb Balloon Rescue Bat Attack Bug Blaster Haunted House Frog 64 Damsel in Distress Killer Watt Blagger	Monty Mole Baby Monty Son of Blagger Loco Potty Pigeon Suicide Express Loko Attack Gryphon	Black Thunder William Wobbler	R1-D1 Trap	Kettle Zig Zag Centurions Gobots	Phobia

Tony Crowther
The Commodore Zone - Tony Crowther
By Chris Jenkins
The games programmer Tony Crowther

So Tony's "cuddly" games, with a large playing area with scrolling backgrounds and fast action combined with original characters, have been a big success. And does he intend to carry on doing that sort of game? "No - I've done enough of those - I'd like to do a really good shoot-'em-up! Suicide Express, the latest Gremlin game, is the same sort of idea as Loco, but it's four times faster and the graphics are better than anything I've done before."

Tony's opinion of UK software isn't very high - "Everything seems to be a copy. Loco is actually based on an arcade game called Super Locomotive, but I only saw that once and I wrote the game a year later, so it's not a direct copy. I look at American software sometimes, and get some ideas there. The music for my games is sometimes transcribed from sheet music, sometimes written by a friend - I got him to do the Jean-Michel Jarre music for Loco, but as it turned out it wasn't what I thought it was. I asked for Equinoxe Part 5, but what I really wanted was Rydeen by the Yellow Magic Orchestra, which is what Ocean have on Decathlon. Suicide Express is another one I've transcribed from sheet music; it's a Sky piece from Sky 2."

Tony's games should now be heading in a new direction. Having reused the ideas from his Alligata games, and come up with even better versions for Gremlin, he's now keen to get into new areas. For a start he has to think about his role as a director of Gremlin Graphics: "I'm the only one that draws a wage, because all the others have other companies backing them. I get a sum for each cassette sold, and a percentage of the company's profits. When Suicide Express starts selling well there should be a fair bit coming in!"

Tony's next project is connected with the Red Arrows RAF display team. "They've asked us to write a program - they asked Commodore too, and they wrote back with some ideas, but I just laughed at it! Trouble is, they just want the stunts - I've got to figure out a way to make it into a game. It's got to be really well thought out, because it could just end up looking like a commercial for the Red Arrows."

Tony's "0" Level Art and "A" Level--Technical Drawing qualifications no doubt`' help in the design of the games, which look`: in some cases more like cartoons than computer games. "There's only Aardvark's Frak, on the BBC, that gives you a real feeling of cartoon quality - that's due to the way they draw black outlines around the characters. With my details, it's usually too small to do that. I'm doing some work on the BBC now, but really I don't rate any machines except the Commodore 64; it's so easy to write on, I can just sit back and do it. I'll give you that it's slow, and the Basic's poor, but who uses Basic? Aside from that there's nothing against it. I could write any Spectrum game I've seen, on the Commodore."

So while he's seen MSX, and is working on the BBC, Tony's main effort should continue to be on the 64 - which is good news for all Commodore games players.

After the Red Arrows project, Tony's plans might include a game based on the Ray Harryhausen film Clash of the Titans, in which mythological figures battle to the death. The complications of writing an adventure don't have much appeal any more - "It does get slightly tedious, having people ringing you up asking `How do I get past this' -,I'm getting the same thing with . Monty Mole. Another thing I've done is to design the cover artwork for Suicide Express, and we've had an artist paint it. I've seen the Plus/4, and though it's got no sprites I like the keyboard; you could write a sprite routine for it, but I think I'd like to write more for the C16. A lot of people will buy it, and 16K is enough to write a good game on - a lot of Atari cartridges like Donkey Kong and Pole Position are in 16K, and the early Ultimate games for the Spectrum. There's plenty you can do with 16K - like a good shoot-'em-up!" Tony comments, returning to a favourite-theme.

Tony's also working on a book on pro-gramming hints for the 64. "It's got some Basic in it, but it's largely going to be on machine code - things like screen scrolling, animated characters, machine code monitors, playing sounds using interrupts, that sort of thing - it might put me out of business! We're looking at several pub-lishers." But why write a book now? "Fame! I'm enjoying it, getting reviewed in the magazines and getting my name in print. It's not the money that I'm after - I haven't got a Mercedes, I can't even drive! But I've got a good contract with Gremlin, and a scrap-book full of reviews of my games. Everyone in Sheffield knows me, though I don't get invited to open super-markets yet. Gremlin's going into the American market through UK Gold, Jeff Brown's follow-up to US Gold, and we're all working together to come up with new ideas."

"I took a little notepad with me on holiday in Spain, and it's full of ideas." It should be interesting to see what springs forth from Tony's little notepad next!

Tony Crowther
The Commodore Zone - Tony Crowther
By Chris Anderson
CROWTHER: Super being a superstar!

It's barely a year since the yellow-topped, lightning-fingered Tony Crowther burst upon the games-playing scene with a series of stunning programs for Alligata: Killer Watt, Blagger, Loco and Son of Blagger. He's continued to make waves since then, changing companies twice and rewriting his earlier hits as well as producing new graphical wonders. But what kind of person really is this 19-year-old whizz kid? Zzap! 64 reveals for the first time the full Tony Crowther story in this interview with editor Chris Anderson.

I think probably most people in the industry now see you as one of THE big names - do you actually feel like a star?

Yes. Two reasons. One, you get fan mail. I really like that. I usually reply to it which is good fun - you get replies back again and you keep in touch that way. And then, people come to see you. The other day someone just came round from York just to meet me.

How much mail do you get in fact?

Oh, about one a month (laughs), usually from Sweden and places like that. You get the odd one from Great Britain. Then you get these obscene phone calls. What they do is, they ring up to speak to Tony and then they say 'I've just bought this. It's brilliant! Bye!' Bang. That's all they say.

The thing that seems to mark out your games is their amazing graphical quality. Where's that come from?

Oh, I'd always been top of my art class. I passed my 0 level with a grade A. Went for the A level but kept flunking it because I could never turn up for the exam. So I never really passed the A level. I wanted to go to art college - in fact I was going to, but I thought: oh, I'll have a look at software for a bit. So I stayed on that for a year with Alligata - and then I thought: ay-up, this is quite fun this. So I ended up staying on it and I never went to art college.

But most people think that if you're good at art, you're bad at science and vice versa. So how come you can program?

I am bad at science. 1 never passed my Physics- I took it four times, the 0 level, and failed every time.

So how come you can program?

(laughs) I think because I've taught myself. If someone had tried to teach me I'd have had no chance.

All right, let's take it through. When did your computer bug start?

Two to three years ago when I was about 16. My Dad has got one of these rich friends who keeps flying away and marrying mil-lions of people and then divorcing them again. He had a computer and he lent it to me - it was a Pet 4032. So I borrowed that for a bit, and I couldn't make head or tail of it. I had it for three months - I couldn't work a thing on it, nothing. I used to type in list-ings, but they never used to work.

They never do.

So I thought right, I'm going to learn it, find out what's getting me mad. So I picked up a little bit and wrote a program on it. You know Mastermind - I wrote that on the Pet. A really good version. It worked. You know the plastic model version you can get with the pegs. It looked identical to that.

So Mastermind was the first Crowther game?

Well, it never got anywhere. I sent it off as a listing to Computer and Video Games and waited ages and ages for a reply. I showed my mates and they loved it - and it never even got anywhere, they never even replied back. So whether they used it I don't know, but I never got anything for it. It was just getting me mad, so I bought a Vic - out of frustration. It was a new machine - it had colour! So I started playing around with that obviously. I also started picking up machine code, not very well but ... I wrote a type of Galaxian game, and I was quite pleased with that. But it didn't get anywhere. Then I wrote a car game on it - I'd just got a mach-ine code monitor for it, I was obsessed by it - so I showed it to Superior Systems who had just started. Mike looked at it and he said: Look, tell you what, Tony, I'll give you a Commodore 64 on loan. I can't pay you, but you can have it as advance royalties. The 64 had just come out, it was at £299. I thought: free computer, I won't complain.

Two weeks later I came up with a program, Lunar Rescue. It was the first commercial Program I ever did.

Do you think you're a particularly competitive person?

I love competing with people. But I also love people to tell the truth, what they really feel about my programs. When I write a prog-ram it's how I like it, but that isn't the way it should be when you think about it because N's not just me that's having the program. So what I do is I usually show it to people. If they're not impressed with it I scrap it and start again.

You're working on a new program at the moment. Tell me about it - as much as you can at this stage.

Well, it's a system - how can you explain it without giving too much away?-well hope-fully it's going to be a new side to computer games, that 99 per cent of them will appear like this is. If other people feel about it what I feel, they'll follow it. It's going to make a package worth the money ... um . . . it's difficult to explain. I'd love to show you, but it's best not to ... I'd say it's going to be a new format to games. You know you've got scrolling screens as a format, and flick screens - those two types - welI it's a new type.

You're spending quite a bit of time on it by your own standards. Over a month.

It is a long time, but I'm hoping, with it being my first program for my new company, Wizard, I want it to be a success. In fact my working companion doesn't like it. But my brother has never liked any of my games, but he's never stopped playing this one.

You've had quite an interesting history over the last year or so. Some people feel you have a reputation for not being at all settled, for chopping and changing a lot. What actually happened? Why did you leave Alligata?

I know a lot of people who've got standard jobs, like working in insurance. If they're not happy with the people they're working with they leave. Some people stick at it, some people decide to leave. I've become one of those people.

So were there particular reasons for leaving Alligata?

I think it's just the fact I wasn't happy working. I didn't get out of the company what I wanted to, I could have got a lot more. I was told in fact that I should do what Minter's doing -work on my own, get my own company. But obviously - I'd just left school, I didn't like that idea at all. What I did was leave Alligata and attempt to work along those lines. But as soon as I left I got tied up with Gremlin Graphics.

Were you actually lured away from Alligata by Gremlin Graphics?

No I had already left.

So you stayed with Gremlin Graphics for three or four months, was it?

Yeah, around that.

And what happened there?

Well again I didn't like the people I was working with -well, not so much I didn't like them ... it was just that ... I'd never seen a company in my life, and suddenly 'l was in one. All right the company was doing well, but I wasn't satisfied with that. It's not the money I was after, it's a satisfying job. I noticed that the company was not set up correctly, it seemed as though no one knew exactly how to run the company ... I don't want to go into that ... I lost interest in that and didn't find I was getting what I wanted out of it.

Did you feel they weren't giving you enough share in royalties?

No it's nothing to do with the money -1 was quite happy with what I was on. There were just certain advantages I wasn't getting.

To do with control over how the programs were marketed?

I had no say whatsoever, the way I saw it. Obviously I said what I wanted, and they just said, it's all right, we'll do it. I was left on the outside writing my programs. So I decided to leave. I met up with Roger Taylor and we decided to split Wizard in half - we would own half each. Now we have the situation if I want to do something I'll do it. If Zzap!64 wants an interview I'll do it.

So you feel more settled now?

I don't think I'll be leaving Wizard, don't worry about that.

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