K-tel / Front Runner

620 Western Avenue, London, W3

I was a ZX Spectrum kid, and I don't want this blog to over-focus on Sir Clive Sinclair's rubber-keyed wonder. I should make a gesture to potential readers out there who chose a different path; but what? Back in the eighties my knowledge of other home computers was limited to: 

• a friend with a ZX81, whose parents refused to upgrade. 
• my aunt who brought a Dragon 32.
• a weird Superman comic in which he teamed up with some kids who owned a computer*.
• a couple of kids in my class with Commodore 64s.

"There are [Commodore] 64s in more than half a million homes," as ZAPP64 issue 1 (May 1985 page 12) pointed out. It makes sense to choose the publisher of a renowned Commodore 64 game (sorry Dragon 32 fans) and looking through that first issue of ZZAP64 I noticed the doodles of a little bug in the margins . Those doodles are a relic of the days when magazine pages were laid out on boards and subversive employees could add comments directly to the page; see CRASH issue 19 (August 1985 page 101) where a raid by rival ZZAP minions resulted in the letters Z Z A P R U L E S O K Y A H being added to the bottom of a word search grid. The little bug is called Rockford, and he was the star of Boulder Dash.

Boulder Dash was an American game published by First Star Software. Under the circumstances I did what I always do and checked the World of Spectrum entry. Boulder Dash was released in the UK by Front Runner. Well, the Spectrum version was. The UK Commodore 64 version was released by Statesoft. This is a long-winded way of saying this is a Spectrum focused entry. Sorry about that, I'll try and do GraftGold or Alligata Software, or indeed Statesoft, soon.

Front Runner was a label owned by the UK arm of international conglomerate K-tel which first dipped a cautious toe into the software pool in 1983. HOME COMPUTING WEEKLY issue 10 (May 10-16 1983 page 7) reported "K-tel, best known for heavily-advertised record albums, is planning to market computer software," with a follow-up report a couple of weeks later (May 24-30 1983 page 6 ) noting K-tel would distribute 15 titles by software house dk'tronics. Later in 1983 the company decided to release software under the K-tel brand and in line with the company's "but wait there's more," value-added manta, these would be two games for the price of one; for the Commodore Vic 20 SupaVaders/Bomber Run and Alien Demon/Plague; and for the Spectrum Castle Colditz/The Battle of the Toothpaste Tubes and It's Only Rock 'n' Roll/Tomb of Dracula; see this advert from COMPUTER AND VIDEO GAMES issue 27 (January 1984 page 66). The Spectrum games attracted unenthusiastic reviews. "It's about as skilful and thrilling as being sick on the floor," was the comment on Tomb of Dracula in CRASH issue 3 (April 1984 page 30). I played It's Only Rock 'n' Roll and I quickly learned to press N to avoid sitting through an unbearable 45 second sequence showing "highlights of your performance", my earliest encounter with an unskippable game cutscene.

K-tel software rebranded as Front Runner in Autumn 1984 and released several games in time for Christmas; Storm Warrior and Interview for the Commodore 64; and Space Professor and Boiler House for the Spectrum, plus the Spectrum version of Boulder Dash but not, as we've established, the C64 version. Did K-tel want a fresh start for their software label? Was there a plan to continue the double-pack games as K-tel and single game releases as Front Runner? We'll never know because Front Runner abruptly ceased publishing in early 1985 despite having a bona fide hit with Boulder Dash. US arm K-tel International filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1984 and it seems reasonable to draw a line between this and the report in PERSONAL COMPUTER NEWS issue 95 (January 19 1985 page 4) "[K-tel] has withdrawn financial backing from its software subsidiary Front Runner." This was followed by a report in SINCLAIR USER issue 36 (March 1985 page 9) which notes "Front Runner is at present taking a close look at the market. Asked if that meant Front Runner would be pulling out of the market altogether the spokesman replied, "Not necessarily so", but did not specifically deny the suggestion."

August 2021

K-tel, the record distributor and software house, and Front Runner both operated out of 620 Western Avenue. A squat brick building beside a frightening six lane stretch of the A40. It may look like a car park in the photo above but the traffic forms an impenetrable wall as it thunders past. To take the picture I had to stand on a concrete island dividing Western Avenue from the two lane Duke's Road, a glorified slip road, so there's traffic whizzing along behind me as well. Presumably there's an underpass to cross the A40 but I didn't see it when I stuck my head out of the Park Royal underground station. I turned left, walked down the side of Western Avenue, snapped the photo, and headed off; job done. It amuses me to imagine someone like Diana Ross (or Rockford) being dragged out to this unfashionable and unglamorous bit of London to sign a distribution contract.

*The Computers that Saved Metropolis Superman's brain is fogged by kryptonite and he needs the power of a Tandy TRS-80 to solve geometry problems. Sample dialogue "the jetliner is plummeting on a 44 degree downward course at 505 miles per hour... and gravity is pulling downward at 32 feet per second. In addition the thunderstorm is whipping up a powerful wind towards me at 63 miles per hour. What I need to know is how fast I should fly to compensate for the wind and still reach the jetliner before it crashes to the ground." Later problems contain less specific detail; as if writer Cary Bates suspected a TRS-80 couldn't calculate the amount of heat vision needed to evaporate water from a broken dam, or the speed and circumference Superman needed to fly to contain a radioactive gas cloud and draw it up into space. This turns out to be a promotional comic for US store Radio Shack. TRS =Tandy Radio Shack. Do you see? Why did I have a copy of this comic? I lived in Essex, 3000 miles from the nearest Radio Shack.