4 Little Essex Street, London, WC2R
"It's a lovely pub isn't it?" The question was directed at me as I started to line up my camera. It was one of the two men who had been standing at the side of Milford Lane discussing the Cheshire Cheese pub and a point of maintenance. "Yes," I agreed, because it is a nice pub. The pair were, I learned in the subsequent conversational back and forth, investigating alternative ways of lighting the sign because the current lack of access is a pain whenever the bulb blows. "Good luck with the sign," I said cheerily as I took my picture and walked away. I didn't have the heart to tell the bloke I was actually more interested in the blandly modern office on the opposite side of Little Essex Street.
Survival allowed you to roleplay as a hawk, lion, robin, mouse, fly or butterfly and aimed to bring "to life the hazards that different creatures must face in their struggle to stay alive." I suspect most people used to play it like I did, and see what happened when a butterfly tried to eat a lion; the results were technically educational but mostly hilarious. Sinclair & Macmillan would release another 13 titles early in 1985; four more Science Horizons titles, Oil Stike, Weathermaster, Planet Patrol, and Disease Dodgers; plus five more Learn to Read programs; and four counting programs, featuring a character called MacMan.
Macmillan released another batch of educational software for Christmas 1985 but the company was edging in a more commercial direction. Two games were based on Orm and Cheep, an ITV series for young children. CRASH's educational software correspondent Rosetta McLeod quoted a five year old who described the games as: "the worst programs he'd
seen," and a parent who said: "if he'd bought the
games for his children, he'd have returned them to the shop and tried
to get his money back." (Issue 22 page 24). There was also Magic, with an introduction by John Salisse of The Magic Circle, and World Cup Soccer; two programmes in one, World Cup Manager and World Cup Fact-File. Then, in July 1986, Macmillan unexpectedly released a proper game; Don Priestley's Popeye. The game was originally released by dk'tronics in Autumn 1985 but as the author later told CRASH (issue 34 page 109): "Unfortunately, DK had
lost interest in software by this time and the bottom had fallen out
of the market. They were ready enough to offer it to Macmillan."
July 1986 was the same month Macmillan announced Piranha, it's new software label. 1986 was an odd year for a company to spin off a software label. Newsfield (publishers of CRASH, ZZAP, and AMTIX) managed it with Thalamus but they knew the market. The era of bigger, non-games games companies, setting up software houses had largely been and gone by 1986 and only a few, like Mirror Group Newspapers, made any sort of success of it. What encouraged Macmillan to jump into the pool? I can't help wondering if much of the incentive came from The Fourth Protocol, a game based on the Frederick Forsyth thriller, which was announced in October 1984 at the Frankfurt book fair. It was quite a big deal at the time, MICRO ADVENTURER described it as "a coup," in an issue 13 news story. The story continued: "Doug Fox, Hutchinson Computer Publisher's General Manager, confirms that the company will be producing software in conjunction with major titles published by their traditional book side. Our objective is to back up our books with high-quality software. We hope to publish between six and eight packages a year, and we intend to proceed with caution -we only want top name stuff."
Piranha would launch in the autumn of 1986 with five games. Strike Force Cobra by Five Ways Software; an educational software company who had already worked with Macmillan, they wrote Survival, and were now moving into games, and also programmed The Rats for Hodder and Stoughton. Design Design, now working as programmers for hire, contributed Rogue Trooper and Nosferatu the Vampyre, their last two games before they regenerated into Walking Circles. The Colour of Magic was a text adventure from Delta 4. The fifth game was Trap Door based, according to POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY, on: "a new TV series by Terry Wogan Productions due for transmission in October." The Terry Wogan line crops up in most news stories about Piranha. His connection with the television series is obscure, presumably he was involved with either CMTB Animation or Queensgate Productions, but here's a picture from COMPUTER GAMER of him standing next to Piranha's Mandy Keyho.
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| COMPUTER GAMER October 1986 |
Popeye author Don Priestley wrote Trap Door. I'd love to know the circumstances that led Macmillan to also pick up the rights to Popeye. It would have been a two-way negotiation with dk'tronics and King Features Syndicate, the US copyright and trademark owner. It's odd Macmillan didn't also pick up Benny Hill's Madcap Chase, Don Priestley's follow up to Popeye and, as far as I can tell, dk'tronics' last game. Admittedly it's not a good game. Don Priestly didn't want to talk about it to CRASH and answered the question: "Do you think it fails
as a game or as a TV spin-off?" with "yes." Also, by 1986 Benny Hill was starting to be seen as tired and sleazy and perhaps not suitable material for a distinguished publishing house. The other thing odd about the Popeye is it's clearly a Macmillan game and not Piranha. Granted the company wouldn't want to release an old game as their first title but why not hold on to it until Autumn and make that initial batch of five games into six?
Popeye ends up being a weird halfway house between Macmillan and Piranha. Macmillan's Spectrum version (top) makes minor changes to the loading screen to add their logo and a new copyright date. Macmillan also commissioned a brand new C64 version*, which also appeared in July 1986, and is identical to the Spectrum version (except for the addition of a jaunty version of "I'm Popeye the sailor man"). It makes sense for these versions to be identical because licenced games usually require approval by the rights owner, and Macmillan would want to limit any back-and-forth across the Altantic to approve changes with King Features Syndicate. The Amstrad version was released in November 1986 and, as you'd expect, is identical to the other two versions but has a different loading screen that and also tucks a Piranha logo in the bottom left corner. It's as if someone got confused or forgot this wasn't supposed to appear on the Piranha label.
The reaction to all five launch titles was positive. Although Terry Pratchett would disagree. Seven years later he told PC GAMER (October 1993 page 20): "The Colour Of Magic came out just at the tail end of that
period, when publishers thought all you had to do was have software
and it would sell. They had the marketing skills of a wire
coat-hanger." Trap Door got the most attention because of its big, colourful graphics. Piranha's next game was the cumbersomely titled The Astonishing Adventures of Mr Weems and the She Vampires. This history of this game is odd. The April 1987 issue of SINCLAIR USER claims the game was originally called The Astonishing Adventures of Mr Weems and the Sex Vampires and was due to be released by a company called Wild Fire. The high concept idea was to advertise the game for £5 in classified adverts. The purchaser would then receive the game plus a utility to make copies, and they could make and sell copies of their own provided they sent a certain amount of money back to Wild Fire. True? False? Miscommunication? April Fools joke? A Google search for the term "sex vampires" is entertaining but not informative.
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| CRASH June 1988 page 8 |
Alternative Software snapped up the rights to Piranha's games and rereleased them at budget prices. They sexed up The Astonishing Adventures of Mr Weems and the She Vampires by shortening the title to the more exploitative She Vampires. Gremlin Graphics released Roy of the Rovers to terrible reviews in late 1988. Halo Jones and Judge Death vanished into limbo with Halo Jones author Mike Lewis delivering the Amstrad and Spectrum master tapes on the day Piranha were wound up by Macmillan.
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| October 2022 |
Little Essex Street is very little. In fact it's basically an alley. A narrow strip of road separating the Cheshire Cheese pub from the modern office block opposite. Macmillan moved out of Little Essex Street in 1990 and the building must have been demolished soon afterwards. The new building is occupied by Brick Court Chambers.
*Originally I wrote that I didn't know who converted Popeye to the C64 and Amstrad. Thanks to Nicholas Campbell who pointed out something I'd missed. The inlay for both versions thanks Five Ways Software.
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