Vortex House, 24 Kansas Avenue, Salford, M5
I've written before that the foundation of this blog was a list of companies I wanted to cover for different reasons; some were big names, some had an interesting story, some were of niche interest, and some hit my nostalgia button. This is the latter. I've got a huge soft spot for Vortex Software. I spent hours playing T.L.L. and even more playing Highway Encounter. I love Highway Encounter. I think it's brilliant. It's a real neglected gem of a game as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't get talked about anywhere near enough when the ZX Spectrum is mentioned. It's a Top 10 title. It looks great. It plays great. Its got some really clever gameplay elements. And that ending! We'll get to the ending later.
26 Crawford Road, Hatfield, Herts, AL10
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| SINCLAIR USER August 1982 page 66 |
"A cheque for £200 helped Costa to make up his mind to form his own company." According to a 1988 article in the Manchester Evening News (Wednesday 17 February 1988). At this point Vortex and Costa Panayi were both based in Herfordshire. Costa worked for British Aerospace, presumably at their Hatfield Aerodrome site. 26 Hatfield Road is a nice looking semi-detached house not far from where the aerodrome would have been; the Hatfield site closed in 1993 and was redeveloped in the late nineties. The David Lloyd Leisure Centre uses the Grade-II-listed aircraft hangar.
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| POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY 20 May 1982 |
Vortex carried on ticking over. Costa produced Android One The Reactor Run. As the name suggests this was always planned as the first in a series of games, POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY noted in its review "presumably we should expect more android games soon -it could become a sort of macho Hungry Horace." (2-8 June 1983 page 49). Paul Canter contributed two more games in 1983. Serpent's Tomb and Gun Law for the Spectrum. Then his involvement with Vortex seems to have ended and the firm became a family business with Costa handling the games and his brother Crete taking care of advertising.
280 Brooklands Road, Manchester, M23
Vortex became a three-person company again when brother-in-law Luke Andrews took over the administration and finance side of the business. Costa later told CRASH: "soon, we realised that writing programs was okay as a hobby, but when we tried to run a business on the side it was taking up too much time. We knew Luke, who was a teacher at the time, and he was interested in the business side of things...." (October 1986 page 110). Luke got involved some time between May and August 1983 because that's when the address on adverts jumps from Hatfield to Manchester. The SINCLAIR USER interview was written in late 1984 at a time when " [Vortex] still operates from the front room of Luke's house in a leafy Manchester suburb." Brooklands Road is to the south-west of Manchester. It is indeed leafy and about a fifteen minute walk from the Frank Sidebottom statue in Timperley.
Android Two followed in December 1983. "A new dimension in excitement" was how the advert described Vortex's move into 3D. "I’m quite fascinated with 3D," Costa told CRASH, "I’ve always liked to have things neatly arranged and geometrically correct, and I suppose my engineering background all tied in with programming." The clever technique Costa developed resulted in a pseudo-3D perspective which moved fast and, most importantly, was colourful. This might not sound like much but the big weakness of the Spectrum hardware was its limitation of no more than two colours in each eight by eight block of pixels (take a look at this playthrough of Everyone's a Wally and see how characters are surrounded by a forcefield of colour when they move past different objects). Costa was able to judo the Spectrum's weakness into a strength. The next three Vortex games each had the same blocky but distinctive look.
The POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY review of Android Two noted that "since Android One very little has been heard of Vortex Software." The game had taken nine months for Costa to write while he was still working for British Aerospace and presumably still living in Hatfield. Another eight months passed before the next Vortex game. T.L.L. stands for Tornado Low Level and was presumably informed by Costa's day job. Although the game isn't the hardcore flight simulator you might expect. The 3D effect from Android Two is developed and allows your plane to fly under bridges and power cables and behind buildings. The world feels solid; an illusion helped by your plane's shadow which changes as you fly over objects on the ground. The SINCLAR USER interview must have taken place just after T.L.L. was released. Interviewer Chris Bourne notes that "Costa left British Aerospace earlier in the summer to devote himself full-time to programming." The result of that full time programming was a second game out in time for Christmas, Cyclone. The game is copyright Vortex Software (Sales) Ltd. rather than just Vortex Software, as all previous games were, and over at Companies House we can find company 01808811 incorporated on 13th April 1984.
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Vortex remained a Spectrum exclusive software house but in 1985 Android Two and T.L.L. were both licenced to fellow Manchester software house Ocean who produced Commodore 64 versions.
Vortex House, 24 Kansas Avenue, Salford, M5
"Prepare yourself for the Highway Encounter." Vortex went quiet again for another nine months. The wait was worth it. Their next game was Highway Encounter. Oh Highway Encounter. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
One, the graphics. Costa Panayi developed a new 3D look for Highway Encounter that allowed for a higher resolution and less blocky playing area, at the expense of colour. The main playing area is black and white with colour restricted to the edge of the screen. It looks great and I would argue you don't really notice the use of colour is cheated.
Two, extra lives as part of the game. You are given five Dalek-like Vorton robots to defeat the terrible alien menace. You control one directly and the remaining droids automatically trundle down the middle of the highway until they are stopped by an obstacle. It adds an element of strategy. When do you shepherd your extra lives down the road and when do you stop them with a carefully placed barrel? How far ahead do you travel making each zone safe? Have you left enough time to get back? The clock is ticking.
Three, your firepower. You fire in bursts of three shots with a short recharge time in between. On alien-filled screens you can let fly a panicky volley of shots and then have to wait for a tense second or so while your laser recharges and aliens get closer and closer.
Four, the playing area. The game is divided into 30 zones and you can fire off screen into the next zone and hear your laser bouncing off objects or destroying out-of-sight aliens, and they can shoot back at you or, in the worst case, sneak past you to where your spare Vortons are parked. There's nothing worse than hearing the distinctive sound that indicates the loss of a spare Vorton, when you thought they were safe several screens back.
Five, the map. Although the game is linear the scenery around the road changes. The road starts off passing through green fields, then a bridge over a river, and then finally a hellish red landscape around the alien base.
Six, the Zone number counts down. It's a small detail but it really rachets up the tension as the number goes down and you realise how close you are to the end. It shows the thought put into the game.
Seven, the difficulty curve. The game eases you in and introduces you to the various aliens and puzzles you'll need to solve. It's not difficult but suddenly you're at Zone 9 and the time limit is running low, and you need to go back and collect a barrel from three screens ago, and there's a new species of hovering alien which floats over the barriers you've previously hid behind to snipe baddies, and the time limit has just dropped again and...
Eight, the ending. What happens when you reach Zone 0? This:
I think this looks amazing even thirty eight years later. That horrible moment when your remaining lives self destruct still makes me jump. The thing is, in 1985 even the best games generally didn't end with anything more advanced than a brief tune and a "Well Done!" message. This is how Ultimate Play The Game's Alien 8 rewarded the player. The absolute state of the art was probably Quicksilva's Max Headroom* which ended by giving the successful player a code that unlocked a separately loaded message from Max which looked and sounded like this. The six or seven screens that make up the end of Highway Encounter could have been additional puzzle screens. Costa Panayi's moment of inspiration was to realise that a 36 zone game would be less memorable than slightly shorter game with an animated ending. The ending adds an incentive to play the game through repeatedly, to see the ending again, and again. I know I did. [that's enough Highway Encounter -EVERYONE ELSE].
Vortex, like Microsphere survived by staying small but around 1985 the team began to expand. Alien Highway was the first Vortex game for the ZX Spectrum not written by Costa Panayi since 1983. Mark Haigh-Hutchinson was the author and he talked about his time at Vortex here and also wrote a history of the company which can be downloaded here. Mark got to know the Vortex team and was offered a part-time job in 1984. He handled the 1985 Amstrad conversions of Highway Encounter and Android One while Chris Wood took on Android Two and programmer for hire David Aubrey-Jones converted T.L.L. Meanwhile Costa took another nine months to produce his next game Revolution; a puzzle game which I could never really get into. Mark Haigh-Hutchinson once again handled the Amstrad conversion.
The problem in 1986 was getting games onto shop shelves. Distributor's simply didn't want to take games which weren't backed by enormous marketing campaigns and 1986 became the year that a lot of small companies either closed down or changed direction. Design Design and Realtime Games both shifted to become developers for hire and Vortex joined them. The CRASH interview notes that Vortex had signed a distribution deal with US Gold: "Now that the market's moved on to Europe, and we've moved on, Vortex has outgrown the Vortex team and with this deal, some of the pressure is taken off us. We can really concentrate on producing the software, and the aim is to build a team around Cos to keep producing the same standard of games. We have our own standards, and intend to stick to them. We're looking for talented programmers up in Manchester, so if anyone would like to get in touch..."
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| Left, 1986, and right September 2023 |
The CRASH interview also included photos of Costa Panayi and Luke Andrews propping up a couple of columns. These were taken in the entrance to the Buttercross, literally just round the corner from the CRASH offices in Ludlow.
The small print on the Revolution inlay notes the game is "produced under licence in the U.K. from Vortex Software by U.S. Gold." Just a couple of months later the Commodore 64 version of Highway Encounter was published by Gremlin Graphics; with the conversion credited to Pedigree Software, who I've never heard of. Had the deal fallen apart so quickly? It's difficult to tell. The relationship between US Gold and Gremlin was complicated. US Gold founder Geoff Brown also owned 75% of Gremlin Graphics so maybe Vortex just got passed between the two. Mark Haigh-Hutchinson recalls: "Sadly Vortex didn't have the marketing power to go up against people like Ultimate and after an unsuccessful partnership with US Gold the company was scaled down (to 2 people) & I left to work freelance.
This would have been late '86." Two more games followed, both for Gremlin Graphics rather than U.S. Gold; Deflektor, 1987, and H.A.T.E: Hostile All Terrain Encounter, 1988. And that was it. Mark's History of Vortex notes there was an unsuccessful attempt to relaunch Vortex in 1990, with 16-bit versions of Highway Encounter and Deflektor "Unfortunately the state of the software industry at that time meant that we were unable to find a publisher for the game." Companies House records Vortex Software as dissolved on 23rd January 1990.
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| December 2022 |
This picture was taken at half-past four on a Sunday afternoon in December. Can you tell? There's almost certainly an interesting history to be written on the history of the Kansas Avenue area of Salford but this isn't it, although I did disappear down a sea of holes while trying to find out more. The whole area has American themed street names, there's Missouri Avenue, Boston Court, Dakota Avenue, Dallas Court. It feels like the area has some local history connection to the USA of which I'm not aware.
Kansas Avenue sits between Weaste Cemetary and what is now Salford Quays but in 1984 was the recently closed Manchester Docks. The Wikipedia page for Manchester Docks includes a nice scan from a 1927 Ordnance Survey map and the area that would become Kansas Avenue is basically the blank white bit to the right of the word cemetery just above the O in Salford. Then, in 1947, Aerofilms took a lovely picture of the docks which just happens to be looking in exactly the right direction for me. You can see the cemetery in the distance and in front of it is what appears to be empty ground with a white circle in it (surely not the real life O in Salford?). Jump forwards another 40 years to this photo on the MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS website and you can see the tree-lined cemetery and, just in front of it, a collection of low-rise buildings; I've taken the liberty of snipping the relevant section of the photo and highlighting the bit I mean.
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| Vortex House? Detail from photo showing "Derelict Manchester Docks and the Manchester Ship Canal. May 14, 1984" |
The next photo in the MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS gallery shows an "Aerial view of Old Trafford Stadium with Salford Quays in the background. March 2, 1995" and again I've snipped what I think is the relevant bit.
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| Vortex House! |
For what it's worth, I think the first photo shows the Kansas Avenue site before construction. Vortex probably moved into one of the buildings in the second photo. Mark Haigh-Hutchinson says: "On finishing CYCLONE, VORTEX moved into offices based in Salford on the NorthWest edge of Manchester." This is probably somewhere between November 1984 and very early 1985. I'm not sure the building/shed Vortex called Vortex House looked like the neat single-floor metal box that's there today (as with A&F and their Rochdale address on the Canal Side Industrial Estate I think the site has probably been redeveloped before the start of Streetview in 2008).
UPDATE 22/08/2023. The Salford Local History Library replied with a very nice email confirming the units were built in 1984, with the section containing 24 Kansas Avenue being built first. It's possible the 1984 aerial photograph does show the block containing Vortex House after all. The street names come from the Buffalo Bill roadshow which stayed in Salford from December 1887 to April 1888. The roadshow set up on the then Salford Racecourse, now where the Lowry Theatre stands, less than half a mile from Kansas Avenue.
I came down to Kansas Avenue via South Langworthy Road so I had the excitement of driving along a set of tram tracks and wondering what I was supposed to do if a tram came along; fortunately the problem never came up. The green gates to the industrial units which include 24 Kansas Avenue were partially closed but the car in front of me drove through, so I did the same. The car I was following then stopped and parked but I wanted to try and be inconspicuous so I drove right to the back of the estate before parking up. I walked back and realised the car I'd followed had stopped in front of number 24. I always like to respect people's privacy so I wanted to avoid taking a picture of the car if possible but I also didn't want to spend ages lurking in the shadows in a Salford industrial estate, people can get the wrong idea. While I stood and considered how long the car was likely to be parked I realised the banner outside number 24 featured a familiar looking Pippi Longstocking-esque figure. Unit 24 is now a kitchen for Wendy's deliveries. If you are Salford-based or Salford-adjacent and you've ordered Wendy's for delivery then it was prepared in, or on the site of, Vortex House. The car I was watching moved off and I snapped a photo, taking in the extensive collection of bins, before another delivery driver pulled up and the cycle continued.
*Mel Croucher would probably want me to point you in the direction of Automata's Deus Ex Machina however I'd argue that for all the sophistication of the game and soundtrack and story telling the ending itself is a high score screen which doesn't look too dissimilar to most other games. That's my controversial hot take!
I've emailed the Salford Museum and Art Gallery, so I'll update this page if I find out any more about the history of the Kansas Avenue area. Leave a comment, or email whereweretheynow@gmail.com and follow me on Twitter @shammountebank.
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