Micro Power / Program Power

Northwood House, North Street, Leeds, LS7

"Are you ready for brain to brain combat? Ultimate risk scenario. Your intervention urgently requested. The Master planning to use the Doctor's brain in a modified TIRU (Time Instant Replay Unit) to produce chaos weapon. Time-warping mineral Heatonite a critical component. Mine/Factory 2nd moon Rijar. Ky-Al-Nargath construction. Mega secure!!!!Madrag (genetically boosted saurian) + psycho-robotics + techno trickery. Force futile. Weapon skills NA. Machine skill vital. Full cerebral combat status needed at all times. Halt Heatonite production. Disable TIRU. Locate and regain plans. Impossible to stress to fully the importance of the Rijan mission. Invisible cat could prove useful." 

5 Wensley Road, Leeds, LS2

PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD printed a letter from R. G. Simpson in the May 1980 issue. "It has been apparent for some time that there has been a lack of software available for the Nascom 1 & 2... To remedy this situation, 'Program Power' has been set up to act as a form of program exchange. We will undertake to make programs available nationally to owners of Nascoms, at a price which will enable us to pay reasonable royalties to the authors." I get it. They're setting up a software house. I just have one question. What the heck is a Nascom? [5 minutes later]. Thanks Centre for Computing History. A Nascom was, basically,  a kit computer based around the Zilog Z80 processor -the same one used in the ZX80, ZX81, and Spectrum. According to the Centre for Computing History. "The purchaser had to assemble their 203-part Nascom by hand-soldering approximately 1,310 joints on the single circuit board."

The Nascom 1 had been on sale since January 1978 and the Nascom 2 was still relatively new when R. G. Simpson wrote his letter, having been launched in December 1979. The fruits of his search were revealed on page 121 of the August 1980 issue. "Due to great response we can NOW OFFER:-" Followed by a list of 14 games at prices ranging from £4.45 to an eye-watering £9.95. The adverts repeat monthly, with each month showing small differences; September 1980 brings something called a "Cottis Blandford cass. interface -load STAR TREK in 2 mins NOT 10!" Truly going where no one has gone before. By December 1980 the advert has grown in size from a tiny eighth of a page to a half. The Acorn Atom launched in the early summer of 1981 and Program Power was quick to launch a range of software for this new computer, with the first titles on sale by July. The company continues to expand in all directions. January 1982 sees Program Power make the first use of the Micro Power brand name, for a magazine for Nascom users. Program Power were unusual in that they also sell hardware. There's the Cottis Blandford cassette interface for the Nascom, along with a three channel sound chip, and extra memory for the Acorn Atom.

8/8A Regent Street, Chapel Allerton, Leeds, LS7

May 2022

Back in the early days of this blog I recycled an old joke about saving money by not taking a taxi from Leeds station to Leeds castle. Ironically, a failure to properly check addresses left me facing a two mile walk from Regent Street, Leeds to Regent Street, Chapel Allerton, Leeds. That's one and a half miles more than the distance Program Power travelled from their previous Wensley Road address in July 1982. I did question whether I had the time or the inclination for this walk but I'm an infrequent visitor to Leeds and I wanted to cover both Program Power and Superior Software in the same trip to avoid this blog becoming overly Spectrum focused. I gritted my teeth, set off uphill, and thought about how I'd have worn a different pair of shoes if I'd known I'd be walking this far in one day. The Program Power building is a Thai restaurant called Sukhothai now, lovely but I didn't really fancy a full meal before embarking on my -more or less- three mile walk back to Leeds train station. 

Back in 1982 the move was an excuse to really ramp up the marketing. The PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD advert takes up all of page 42 and focuses on the Acorn Atom and new BBC Micro. This advert includes a game called Munchyman, which probably got the company a legal letter from Atari, who held the European and US licence for Pac-Man and were taking action against companies selling unlicensed clones. Micro Power issued a strong reply in POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY (26 August 1982 page 4). Managing Director Bob Simpson, that's R. Simpson from the May 1980 letter, told PCW: "It is unlikely that we shall be supplying copies of any of our games [to Atari, so the company could inspect them for copyright infringement]. We have over 150 games on sale and if we start sending out tapes in this way, where will it all end? There is no doubt, though that any injunction taken out against us would be quite damaging, bearing in mind that the average life of a computer game is at most three or four months." The outcome of this dispute is not clear but by the end of the year Munchyman was not listed in Micro Power adverts.

Tucked away at the bottom of page 181 of the August issue is a much smaller advert for Program Power's Nascom software which is being downgraded in importance, although Micro Power magazine is still going. The move also provided space for expansion. Program Power had skipped Sinclair's ZX80 and ZX81 but now they started supporting the Spectrum with an add-on that promised to "COMPLETE your SPECTRUM" (YOUR COMPUTER, January 1983 page 124). A combined joystick interface and sound booster, plus games, sold separately, to take advantage of the improved sonic capability. Ironically the sound booster used the AY-3-8910 chip which in 1985 would be built into the upgraded 128k Spectrum. The Dragon 32 would also pick up support, as did, naturally, the 1983 Acorn Electron.

Northwood House, North Street, Leeds, LS7

May 2022

Late in 1983 the company moved again to Northwood House, a peculiar wedge-shaped end of terrace building for a terrace that was never constructed. This showroom was Micro Power, while their software continued to be sold under the Program Power label. Bob Simpson gave an interview to POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY not long after the move to Northwood House (8-14 December 1983 page 15). It's a confident interview but even so Bob Simpson sounds a note of caution: "A dealer such as ourselves can offer a wealth of expertise that a high-street chain cannot match, but sales of the Spectrum in major stores has shown that you don't need that back-up to sell a computer. In the same way that people go to a specialist shop to ask the technical questions about hi-fi, only to go down to Comet to buy, they are now beginning to do the same with computers.... It may well be that in two years time Micro Power does not have a home computer hardware business. Margins on machines like the BBC are very slim." Margins may have been slim but the software market was robust: "Program Power -the software side- contributes slightly less than half of the £750,000 turnover of the whole company... 'For any new title now we are looking for minimum sales of 10,000 copies in six months'." The interview ended with this comment: "we are looking at the Commodore 64 machine for software next. We will have to work quite hard, though, to establish ourselves as a Commodore 64 software house. It is strange but even if you have quite a big name for software in one computer, people with other micros don't know you exist."

CRASH, January 1985 page 99

That last comment could have been directed squarely at me. Mr Spectrum Kid 1985. I only knew of Micro Power through their occasional adverts in CRASH. I found the adverts fascinating. There was a charming low-level of desperation about the "only half a mile outside LEEDS town centre" line which reminds me, now, of spoof adverts in VIZ with lines like, "try and come and visit us in our new inconvenient location." But the best thing, and it captured my imagination at the time (I was very boring) was the mysterious junction which had to be circled and labelled with a warning. "BEWARE UNUSUAL RIGHT HAND LANE EXIT." What could it mean? When I was in Leeds I went to check out this 37 year old mystery. I had to do an online speed awareness course recently (I was going at a frankly shocking 26mph in a 20mph zone, for shame) and the instructor made a throwaway mention that he never drives into Leeds because "something always goes wrong." It became clear when I arrived at the junction of North Street and the Inner Ring Road that I was at ground zero for the instructor's comment and a classic moment in the Bad Town Planners Hall of Fame.

May 2022

It's worth expanding the picture to full size to savour the six-way junction controlled by traffic lights in all directions -including off the urban motorway Inner Ring Road-  plus the "unusual right hand exit" from the Inner Ring Road (non-drivers, they're normally on the left lane). Look at the horror of that junction. I count six No Entrance signs, and a No Right Turn sign. I imagine my speed awareness instructor crossing the junction with his eyes closed shrieking, "if I don't see it, it's not illegal," like Homer Simpson.

May 2022

Northwood House is a fine-looking piece of Grade II listed masonry but it's in a kind-of nowhere area of Leeds, and it's also an awkward shape. It's hard not to feel the building has fallen on hard times. It's for sale but I couldn't find it listed online which makes me suspect it's been on and off the market for ages. There didn't seem to be any information about an asking price. If you walk round the back, or approach from the direction of Chapel Allerton with sore feet, you'll see it still has the Micro Power sign on the rear. Let's hope that's included in the historic listing.

At some point in 1983 Program Power switched to also using the Micro Power label for their software. Chris Payne's website includes an article about his time working for Micro Power. One of the things he did was redesign the game artwork, and the old cover for Killer Gorilla is branded Program Power while the new one is Micro Power. The company continued spreading on to new formats with games for the Amstrad, Spectrum, and C64, but as Bob Simpson said in his 1983 interview they never really established themselves outside of the Acorn Computers range. Hopefully that would change with their big game Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror. RETRO GAMER did a Making Of feature in their December 2021 issue. If your local library subscribes to PressReader you should be able to download and read the issue for free; that's what I did.

"On Varos the Doctor learns that video games aren't always fun." - RADIO TIMES description for Vengence on Varos part one, 19th January 1985.

A short-lived BBC Enterprises spin-off company called BBC Software had released two dreadful games based on Doctor Who; Doctor Who: The First Adventure (1983) and Doctor Who and the Warlord (1985). Including these two, in 1985 you could count the number of games based on BBC programmes on your fingers; Mastermind (Mirrorsoft), The Tripods (Red Shift), and The Young Ones (Orpheus) are the only ones which spring to mind. Companies like Elite preferred to licence American series like Airwolf, The Dukes of Hazard, and Scooby Doo. Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror started out as a sequel to another 1985 Micro Power Game, Castle Quest. It's not clear when the sequel morphed into a fully licenced Doctor Who game but, according to RETRO GAMER, programmer Gary Partis had already started writing the game as Castle Quest 2 before contracts were signed with the BBC and the game changed.

The games press first mention The Mines of Terror in the autumn. COMPUTER GAMER appears to be first, with an October 1985 story that hits all the essential points; the BBC Micro version would include a 16k plug in ROM chip, to give the game extra memory; Amstrad, C64, and BBC versions would ship on 17th October 1985; and a Spectrum version would follow in November. Two things make the story unusual. It's illustrated with a picture of Roy Castle from the 1965 film Dr Who & the Daleks, rather than a still from the television series, presumably this was the only Dalek picture the magazine had to hand. Perhaps more importantly, it contains one of the few descriptions I've found of the Spectrum version, "... a bit disappointing. Due to the limitations of the graphics and hardware, the display does not take up the whole screen, but a small window in the top left hand corner. However the rest of the screen is filled with pictures of The Doctor and a small schematic map, that should make things a little bit easier." POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY (10-16 October 1985 page 13) carried an advert designed to look like a news story which covered the game's launch at the Cafe Royal. The advert went on to note a £25,000 marketing spend, tried to account for the expensive price (£18.95 for the BBC version -with the ROM chip- , and £14.95 for C64, Spectrum, and Amstrad), and noted this was the only way you'd see Doctor Who on TV in autumn 1985 because the series had been postponed by Michael Grade until September 1986.

The game didn't make it's October launch date. It's not even clear if it was in the shops by the end of the year. RETRO GAMER says the BBC version did make the important Christmas market, although all the reviews I've found are in March 1986 issues. It's possible the game arrived for review in December, and then the long lead time for monthly magazines resulted in the reviews being printed in the March issue; which would be on sale in February. ACORN USER quite liked it, COMPUTER AND VIDEOGAMES were more lukewarm, although their review is a fence-sitting classic stating: "Doc Who fans will buy the game and may be disappointed. Of course they could be extremely satisfied." The review ends with the suggestion the reader, "ask the dealer for a demo before you decide." Well thanks. Is there any other part of your job you'd like me to do for you? The most interesting part of the C&VG review is the mention of the ROM chip: " [it] went in without too much bother, except having to bend all the legs inwards so they'd stay in the damned holes!" ZZAP 64 was much more positive about the C64 version (May 1986 page 26). They rated the game at 86% "a very good C64 arcade adventure -timeless perhaps?" AMSTRAD ACTION printed their review in August 1986 (page 67) with a final score of 56%. The Spectrum version never appeared. CRASH described the situation in March 1986: "An impenetrable wall of silence seems to surround Dr Who from Micropower, despite several telephone calls and the rather strange sheep's brain advertisement they've had in the computer press for a couple of months." The game was delayed until April 1986, delayed again, and still being talked about in January 1987, but never appeared. If you want to see the sheep's brain advert, click here. Full screen scrolling, as seen on the BBC version rarely looked good on the Spectrum and there's a chance the game would have ended up looking like the cave section from Domark's A View to a Kill. CRASH and ZZAP readers had the chance to win a visit to see the programme being recorded. I wonder if anyone claimed that prize?

"Now that the Doctor is a 'star' of a video game, will he survive to show Sil the error of his ways?" RADIO TIMES description for Vengence on Varos part two, 26th January 1985.

Micro Power's licence allowed them to use the Doctor Who logo, TARDIS, and theme music. There's a decent picture of Colin Baker on the loading screen, which is interesting because this is around the time his face disappeared from the novelisation covers. His agent asked Target books about the fee for using the actor's likeness on the cover, and rather than getting into negotiations the publishers decided not to feature the sixth Doctor. With this in mind, it's interesting that Colin Baker features on the loading screen but not the game cover. I suspect Micro Power just felt the TARDIS was a more recognisable symbol and would stand out better on shop shelves. I also suspect Colin Baker's agent had never heard of computer games. Colin Baker did appear on the BBC2 series Micro Live on 22/11/1985 but that was to raise money for Children In Need by answering questions on some futuristic computer-chat-on-telephones-thingy. Micro Power's licence also didn't include anything which would involve paying extra money. No Daleks, the game features robotic Controllers with familiar looking eyestalks. 

K9 is also out, the Doctor is given a robotic cat called Splinx instead. Now there was at one point an odd rumour that the sixth Doctor would have a robot cat -Colin Baker even got questioned about it on Saturday Superstore- but I think Splinx's appearance here is unrelated to the rumour. It's just a good joke, being the opposite of a robot dog. What I can't work out is if the naming of Splinx is related to Jon Pertwee's road safety campaign which featured the incomprehensible acronym SPLINK. Splinx is obviously a pun on Sphinx, but it's also so close to SPLINK that I can't help wondering if there's a connection (boring answer: probably not).

Micro Power just kind of petered out around 1987. Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror was their last game and gets a lot of the blame because of it's high development costs, licence, and marketing. The RETRO GAMER article has a slightly throwaway line at the end, "Alan Butcher, Micro Power's software manager, tells us there were several reasons for the eventual demise of the company and it can't be laid solely at the Doctor's door."

Sheepscar House, 15 Sheepscar Street South, Leeds, LS2

Now. Let's discuss my failure. I do my best going into these blogs to track down all the different company addresses but I overlooked Sheepscar House, where Micro Power's mail order department was based. Which is embarrassing because it's the only address listed on the company's MobyGames page. I've also got a nasty suspicion I walked past it. Twice. Let's mark this page as incomplete, and I'll pick up a picture when I get the chance.

Are you ready for brain to brain combat? Well are you?