Dalali Software

29-33 Church Street, Croydon, CRO

You've never heard of Dalali Software? Join the club. I hadn't and it turned out I'd played a couple of their games. I stumbled across the name while writing about Micromega. I had visited lemon64.com to try and learn something about Jinn Genie, Micromega's sole Commodore 64 release, and learned it was written by Dalali Software. The name cropped up again a few weeks later when I was writing about Mirrorsoft. Then I learned they were also responsible for Front Runner's version of Boulderdash. This was my cue to leap into action and do nothing for a couple of years. I like obscure but apparently this was a level of obscure too deep for me. And so Dalali hung around on my to-do list without ever rising to the top.

Dalali were quietly industrious over a seven year period from 1984. They produced around 22 games, mainly for the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad although there were a few forays onto other formats. Boulderdash earned them a CRASH Smash rating on the Spectrum and their Amstrad version was equally well received; 89% in AMTIX and an AA Rave in AMSTRAD ACTION. Dynamite Dan, for Mirrorsoft, also earned the company an AA Rave rating. Unfortunately what got the company the most attention was their 1986 game of the film Biggles. It didn't achieve much success because it was based on the 1986 film Biggles.

Dalali Software was formed in late 1983, 3rd October to be precise, by Hanan Samara and a Thorn EMI colleague Adrian Wadey. Hanan Samara learned to program in Fortran as part of her Master's degree in Maths. She then moved on to Thorn EMI in the early 1980s, where she worked as a program designer and project manager. She was interviewed by POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY for the 17-23 January 1985 issue:

She remembers her first experience of a computer game and the enthusiasm she felt then remains now. "I remember it was a child's game based on Humpty Dumpty. It was like a little movie and I was totally captivated by it."

That game was probably Jigsaws - Humpty Dumpty released by Thorn EMI in 1981 for the Atari 400/800[1]. Hanan Samara is then credited on a 1982 Thorn EMI game Jumbo Jet Pilot ("Programmed by H. Samara."), this was another game for the Atari 400/800. ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast interviewed Hanan Samara in 2017 and when Jumbo Jet Pilot is mentioned it rates a very noncommittal "mmm". 

The PCW interview notes that Hanan Samara was one of the few, if not the only, woman to run a software company at the time. Dalali is the maiden name of Hanan Samara's mother and becames the new name of, what was presumably an off the shelf company (Company number 01758052) originally called Windcrew Ltd. Their first few games were Jinn Genie for Micromega, the Spectrum version of Boulderdash for Front Runner, and Special Delivery, a game for Creative Sparks; the new brand name for Thorn EMI software. It gets mentioned in a June 1986 AMSTRAD COMPUTER USER profile of Dalali, conducted as part of the publicity for Biggles.  

Special Delivery was a Christmas game but the marketing company failed to market the game so, not surprisingly, it wasn't a success.

AMSTRAD COMPUTER USER also covered the development of Biggles in a January 1987 feature by Pat Bitton, marketing manager for Mirrorsoft:

We became aware of the Biggles project around the time the film completed shooting in the summer of 1985...
Four software developers were approached, with a view to getting the game on to the streets around the time the film was scheduled for release in the spring of 1986.
Dalali Software came up with the goods for the main action sequences of the film with the time-slips.

The June 1986 profile gave Dalali's view of the pitching period:

"We were one of four software houses who were asked to do story boards for it. We decided that the task was impossible, there just didn't seem to be enough time. So we came up with some bizarre ideas and to our surprise they liked them."

Biggles was an oddly structured game. Dalali took responsibility for the game on side one of the cassette while independent programmer Rod Hyde handled the game on side two; the attack on the secret weapon, a separate game in its own right. Dalali usually focused on the Spectrum and Amstrad (they used the same Z80 processor) but for Biggles they also handled the C64 version.

Around October 1985, that's before Biggles, Mirrorsoft released Dalali's Amstrad version of Boulderdash. I've always assumed[2] that Dalali were commissioned by Front Runner to work on both the Spectrum and Amstrad versions before they were closed down by parent company K-tel. The Amstrad version was then hanging around in the Dalali office and offered to Mirrorsoft, probably when the two companies were first talking about Biggles, and Mirrorsoft saw a quick and easy opportunity to expand their Amstrad range with a title that had already proved popular.

Looking back on Boulderdash and Dynamite Dan, Hanan Samara told AMSTRAD COMPUTING that:

We learnt a great deal from doing all this conversion work, lots of very useful techniques. But on the whole I prefer doing original work.

There were opportunities to write original games; Mean Streak, also for Mirrorsoft, and Yogi Bear [3] for Piranha. There were also more conversions; Activision commissioned Dalali to convert Little Computer People and Rescue on Fractalus! from the C64 to the Amstrad and Spectrum, and arcade hit Afterburner to the C64. Then, like so many other companies, Dalali made the leap to the next generation and coded Cluedo for MS-DOS and the Atari ST and Amiga. This was released by Leisure Genius in 1989.

And then Dalali stopped.

They didn't close, in fact Dalali as a company is still running today. Hanan Samara told the ANTIC podcast: 

It was getting to become way to expensive and so we thought perhaps we need to look into some other ways of earning a living. And so we started doing information systems for exhibitions and, hence, touchscreen technology... we provided exhibition organisers with information points... it moved on and we started doing registration services, and then of course the internet came on board so we started doing websites, back office systems, databases...

29-33 Church Street, Croydon, CRO

June 2024

Jeremy Spencer described visiting Dalali's Croydon office in June 1986:

I'm standing ankle deep in old lettuce leaves, squashed tomatoes and a few broken cucumbers, my every attempt to move frustrated by anxious stall holders....
It wasn't an imposing building. It didn't even have an imposing doorway.

It still doesn't. The doorway is tucked in next to a shop called Meat Wise and the old offices of Dalali were above a larger shop now called Mr Meat. This is clearly the Meat district of Croyden now. The fruit and veg market is long gone. It was busy. Busier than I expected it to be at 6.30 on a Friday evening in June. I always feel terribly visible when I'm taking a picture like this but the shop staff were all occupied and nobody walking past cared about what I was doing.

I felt guilty. I've had Dalali on my to-do list for two and half years, and in the end I only got a picture of their old office because I was in Croydon to cover Grandslam. It was something of a relief to read Jeremy Spencer:

I learned one thing -no one in the Croydon fruit and vegetable market had ever heard of Dalali. And, on reflection I am not altogether surprised. Three days ago I hadn't heard of them either, and yet I had enjoyed playing the games they had converted on to the Amstrad more than any others.

The type of work Dalali did on conversions is frequently anonymous because the credit goes to the publisher. Denton Designs, another developer, produced something like 52 games and are remembered for five titles; Gift From The Gods, Shadowfire, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, The Great Escape, and When Time Stood Still. Who remembers Madballs, or Fox Fights Back, or even their excellent work converting Spy Hunter to the Spectrum? Dalali never coded a breakout game. But somewhere out there is someone who was given the Biggles computer game for their seventh birthday, and loved it.

And they won't have heard of Dalali either.

[1] Written by Chris James, now husband of Hannan Samara.
[2] Please leave a comment or email if you know differently, whereweretheynow@gmail.com.
[3] Original in the sense that Dalali had to create a new game around the Yogi Bear licence rather than converting an existing title. I don't mean to imply that Dalali came up with a fantastic never-before-done idea for a bear that lived in Jellystone Park and stole pick-a-nik baskets.

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