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| April 2021 |
Lavender Hill is not a glamorous part of London. The local cafes have put tables and chairs on the pavement but the air of continental street culture and sophistication is undercut by the South Circular traffic grinding past two feet away as you sip your cappuccino. Mortimer House, which covers Lavender Hill numbers 230-236 is an unremarkable yellow-brick block built in 1961 with offices above Pizza Express, which also (stand by fact-fans) used to house the subscription office for PRIVATE EYE. Micromega's early adverts list their business address but from May 1984 the contact details disappear. This is unusual. Most contemporary companies listed a postal address, or at least a PO Box number, but Micromega rapidly decided they valued their anonymity.
Micromega's history is opaque. Their early adverts refer to themselves as the "Personal Computer Division Quantec Systems and Software." But who are Quantec Systems and Software? They appear to be an offshoot of another company called Taxsoft but it's not really clear. because neither company has left much of a digital footprint. Quantec get a one line summary in this 1983 review of the Wren business computer, "Quantec Software, a small CP/M* software house," PERSONAL COMPUTER NEWS (18 March 1983 page 19). And Taxsoft was sold to Sage in 1999 for £10.5 million; nice work. Neil Hooper was always the face of the company, POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY even interviewed him in his pre-Micromega job at the Tape Duplicating Company (11 November 1982 page 10).
To simplify, massively, Micromega's fortunes revolve around three people. The first being Neil Hooper. Before he arrived the company bumbled along unremarkably releasing games for the ZX81, Spectrum, and Jupiter Ace. Then towards the end of 1983 Micromega released two new games, one each by the other two members of the Micromega triumvirate. Game one was Lunar Crabs. It sounds like a recurrent parasite but it was actually the first game by Mervyn J. Estcourt. Who is better known for his second game. The programming miracle that is Deathchase. If you've never played Deathchase then a) why are you reading this, and b) you can watch a playthrough of the game here. Granted it doesn't look, or sound like much now, but it was remarkable in 1983 and was part of a wave of games which demonstrated the ZX Spectrum could do astonishing things; see also Ant Attack, Jetpac, and Manic Miner. Even more remarkably, the game runs in 16k.
Game two was Haunted Hedges by Derek Brewster. It took a little longer for Derek to make his mark but Code Name Mat, his third Micromega game and the company's first of 1984, really hit the spot. In fact 1984 was the key year for Micromega. After Code Name Mat came Full Throttle. Mervyn Estcourt's last game for Micromega. Then Braxx Bluff. Micromega's only non Estcourt or Brewster game of 1984 and the only one not to earn a CRASH SMASH, it was a near miss at 87%.. The last two games of the year, Kentilla, and Jasper, were also by Derek Brewster.
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| Evening Chronicle, Friday 22nd November 1984 |
Derek used his royalties to pay his way through a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in geophysics at Newcastle University and went on to write games for Tynesoft, and helped found Zeppelin Games. Mervyn Estcourt disappeared after writing Speed King (1985) a Commodore 64 game for Digital Integration. It's odd that Mervyn Estcourt moved to Digital Integration for his C64 game but Micromega released very few games on non-Spectrum formats; the most significant being Jinn Genie written for Micromega by Dalali software on the C64, and Haunted Hedges and Code Name Matt, which were licenced by Amsoft for the Amstrad CPC.
Around March 1985 Micromega released A Day In The Life. A very odd game "dedicated to the man
who put us all into business in the first place," Clive Sinclair. "Suburban super-hero
Clive's special day has arrived - he is to be made a Dame Commander
of the British Empire. He hates travelling to work but will willingly
face its horrors today!" You can see a playthrough here. Unfortunately the reviews were mixed. The most interesting response came from CRASH (issue 15 page 46) which reviewed the game in tones of hurt disappointment. "I admit for a soft spot for Micromega after giving us wonderful games like Deathchase, Full Throttle, Code Name Mat and others, so you can imagine my sense of letdown when I loaded A Day In The Life." "I have come to expect more of Micromega." "This is a really big disappointment coming from Micromega and I hope they never release another game like this." The review was enough to spur Neil Hooper into sending a letter for the next issue. "Thought you were somewhat harsh on A Day In The Life but as an ex-journalist I would be the first to defend a reviewer's right to say what he feels. ...Watch this space... we're going to give you all something to make your TV cry for mercy (no it's not The Price is Right...)."
TVs never did cry for mercy. A Day In The Life was Micromega's last game. It's just not clear what happened but the company went from having an astonishingly good year in 1984 to releasing a single game in 1985 and then closing down. Two years later CRASH romantically summed up the fate of the company. "The label was absorbed into its commercial-programming company as quietly as a ship sliding under the waves."
* CP/M=Control Program/Monitor. A pre-DOS operating system as any fule kno.
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