Microsphere

 72 Rosebery Road, London, N10

"Little, and round, with no sharp edges." The explanation for Microsphere's name stuck with me ever since I read it in CRASH (February 1986 page 73). It's a very pleasing and charming explanation, and something about it strikes a chord. I like the way it takes two mundane words. Micro, as the interview notes, "from the days when any respectable software house had Micro in it's name" and sphere, and combines them to produce something new. It feels like that's what Microsphere did. It took mundane objects, trains, motorbikes, and of course schools, and made them into something unusual. And they did this from an ordinary London street where quietly and without any fuss they created some remarkable games.

Battle of Shrewsbury, 1403

Microsphere was a two person operation, David and Helen Reidy, with artist Keith Warrington designing artwork for adverts and covers, and taking over game graphics from Skool Daze. There are three good sources of information about the company; a lovely retrospective interview from 2006, originally published in RETRO GAMER; a CRASH profile (February 1986 page 72); and a high concept SINCLAIR USER interview (March 1985 page 50) which is buried by the style, because Chris Bourne is too in love with the idea of writing as nigel molesworth -although, fair play to Chris for persuading David Reidy to dress up as a headmaster for the photographs. 

David Reidy ("a genius who wrote machine code out of his head," according to Keith Warrington in RETRO GAMER issue 234) was programming before Microsphere. He worked on mainframes, and programmed several ZX81 utilities which were sold by other companies. Optimax, sold by Hilderbay, was one of them. It got a write-up in ZX COMPUTING (Oct/Nov 1982 page 111). I've read it several times, and I still can't tell you what it does. Not long afterwards, on 29th November 1982, the Reidy's set up their own company, Microsphere Computer Services Limited. 

March 2022

Battle of Lepanto, 1571

The most distinctive thing about Rosebery Road is the spelling. I keep wanting to type Roseberry. It's a quiet street just north of Alexandra Palace, and number 72 is a terraced house where Microsphere was run from the living room. The house has been split into two flats, to judge by the 72 and 72A house numbers, and it gave me my normal problem of not wanting to invade anyone's privacy by taking pictures of their house. In the end, as always, I compromised my principles by taking a more general photograph of the street. Number 72 is the cream coloured house on the left of the picture. It seems remarkable that for the duration of Microsphere's existence your telephone call to the company would be picked up in the Reidy's front room. Although calling carried a risk. Helen Reidy, a teacher, took a call from a boy who asked how to write on the blackboards in Skool Daze, "I told him how to do it and then went into the teacher bit and told him he shouldn't be writing on blackboards anyway." Letters weren't much safer. Helen once, "gave lines to a correspondent for being impertinent."

Battle of San Jacinto, 1836

The March 1983 issue of SINCLAIR USER contains the earliest Microsphere advert I've been able to find; (page 18). The company is already using the LCD style logo which would appear on all their games but the focus is as much on utilities. There's a spreadsheet program called Omnicalc, another utility called ZX Sideprint which allowed people to print sideways on their ZX Printer (this makes slightly more sense if you've seen a ZX Printer in operation), even stationery was on offer (pre-printed cassette labels, probably not done on a ZX Printer). Fourth on the list was Evolution, an educational sounding game "can you retrace the course of evolution and end up with man?" And, tucked away in the middle was a double-pack of 16K Spectrum games called Crevasse and Hotfoot. Three months later, both games got an enthusiastic, if staid, review in SINCLAIR USER (June 1983 page 29) under the headline Simply Wonderful: "Both games are enjoyable and are suitable for young children, although we are sure adults will be intrigued." This review seems to have been a turning point that encouraged Microsphere to focus more on games. The Train Game follows a couple of months later and then, just before the end of the year, motorbike game Wheelie. CRASH was very enthusiastic: "I spent about three hours playing before I remembered I was supposed to write something about it!" (March 1984 page 21). The game earned an overall rating of 93% and Game of the Month status, in the days before the CRASH SMASH was invented. June Mortimer was less keen in SINCAIR PROGRAMS (March 1984 page 9), "crash sequences are very graphic and tend towards the tasteless," she wrote and returned to the same theme in SINCLAIR USER (April 1984 page 40), "your rider will fly from his machine and skid to a halt on the road. While the animation is excellent, during those effects the crash sequence is a little too graphic and some people might find it tasteless."

Sky Ranger followed in late 1984. Its 3D line graphics are impressive but the game is thin. Fly around the city, try not to bump into buildings, and occasionally shoot robots. "A game should not depend on the desire to achieve a single aim... there should be distractions along the way," said David in the SINCLAIR USER interview. Unfortunately, those distractions are not there in Sky Ranger.

Battle of Borodino, 1812

Those distractions are there in spades in Microsphere's second game of 1984, Skool Daze. Explore the school. Attend lessons. Ignore the timetable. Write on the blackboards. Watch someone else write "Sky Ranger is grate" on the blackboards. Punch your school chums. Try and stop the school swot from grassing you up. The game contains the seeds of what later generations would recognise as open world/emergent gameplay. Complex reactions follow logically from simple actions. Go to class and sit in a desk that's already occupied, the displaced classmate will go to another desk and displace another student, who'll go to another desk, and so on (there aren't enough chairs for everyone in the class -thanks, Thatcher!). Eventually someone will come and knock you from the desk you are using and the teacher will give you lines for sitting on the floor. Dave Reidy was politely confused by the idea he was a pioneer when it was put to him by RETRO GAMER: "Um… I never really played anyone else’s games, and I still don’t. So I’m not really sure what you’re talking about... It just seemed to make sense to me — the characters, the school, and in particular the day being divided into things that you do." 

Keith Warrington's graphics are full of character. Look at the picture; even if you've never played the game you can spot the trendy geography teacher Mr Withit; the science teacher Mr Rockett; the history teacher Mr Creak; the headmaster Mr Whacker; and of the pupils who is Einstein the swot; Boy Wander, the school tearaway; and Angelface the bully?

Battle of Balaclava, 1854

Microsphere has a lot in common with Micromega, beyond the name. Both companies began operating in 1983, and 1984 was their peak year. Both companies spurned licenced games in favour of their own ideas. And both companies focused almost exclusively on the Spectrum; Microsphere released a C64 version of Skool Daze, and that was it. The key difference was one of scale. Micromega quietly disappeared in 1985 but Microsphere, with it's staff of three, could keep ticking over by releasing one game a year and that's what they did. Back To Skool followed for Christmas 1985, and hard-boiled detective spoof Contact Sam Cruise for Christmas 1986. The original plan for 1986 appears to have been Contact Sam Cruise for Easter and a third Skool Daze game for Christmas, Eric and Hayley's Decathalon, but, as David recalls in RETRO GAMER: "The Spectrum was dying on its feet. Sales volume declined rapidly from 1985. By Christmas 1986, it was about 30% of what it was before. I don’t think we made any money out of Contact Sam Cruise at all, so we thought it would be best to stop. It was time to get proper jobs."

Battle of Yorktown, 1781

Skool Daze was first licenced to Elite's 2.99 Classics label in 1986. When that label was discontinued, the rights were then sold to Alternative along with The Train Game, Wheelie, Skool Daze, Back to Skool, and Contact Sam Cruise (which ended up on Alternative Software's sister label Summit Software). Alternative still hold the rights and released Skool Daze Reskooled for mobiles and Steam in 2017. For some reason Sky Ranger was sold to a different budget software house, Mastertronic. What's surprising, is that Microsphere continued well past 1986. The Companies House register shows Microsphere Computer Services Limited existed until 18th October 2001 and even then it kept going,  following a name change to Electroprojects Ltd. That company existed until it was finally dissolved on 13th October 2020. David and Helen Reidy's little round company with no sharp edges had a remarkable 38 year lifespan.