Platinum Productions

Ayrshire

I'm slowly transferring residents of the Untraceables gulag to pages of their own (see the CGL article for a full explanation why). I was originally planning to move New Generation Software this week but they've unexpected turned out to be more complicated than expected, so they'll have to wait. We're off on a trip to Ayreshire instead. Can I learn anything new about Ocean and US Gold's preferred development house for converting games to the ZX Spectrum?

 

There's disappointingly little to go on when it comes to searching for clues to Platinum Productions home. CRASH interviewed founders David Anderson and Ian Morrison for the October 1985 issue. Roger Kean didn't stump up money for travel expenses from Ludlow. Graeme Kidd made a long distance phone call instead,  which probably didn't work out much cheaper. The interview includes two photos, one of the five members of Platinum Productions, and another of Ian Morrison and David Anderson standing on a "deserted bridgelet in the middle of a wild part of Scotland,"

 

I've covered a few development houses for this blog; notably Graftgold, Software Creations, Denton Designs, and Mr Chip/Magnetic Fields. But generally speaking the address of a development house didn't become public unless they were recruiting and Platinum Productions never needed to recruit. They quickly settled into a viable niche as Ocean and US Gold's preferred third party contractor for conversion work to the ZX Spectrum, and because they only ever worked on one game at a time they didn't need huge numbers of staff. 

 

David Anderson and Ian Morrison contributed some early games to Silversoft and converted Lode Runner for Software Projects. The bulk of their work was for Ocean and US Gold. Beach Head, Zaxxon, World Series Basketball, Rambo, Dam Busters and Tapper were all Platinum Production games. It's largely anonymous work although they cleverly work their names into the title screen of World Series Baseball, with a bit of text that looks like a match result, reading, "Anderson drew with Morrison"

 

That's where things rested when I first wrote about Platinum Productions. Can I learn anything new with the additional newspaper archives I have at my disposal? No. Newspapers.com returns a lot of hits for "platinum productions" but it turns out the search engine is ignoring the S and wants to tell me about the economy of South Africa (one of the world's largest producers of platinum apparently). 

 

I've also got better at trawling through the internet archive. One source I missed last time was an earlier interview in POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY (27 June-3 July 1985 page 10) which includes a nice photo of the pair standing by the sea.

 

The PCW interview is surprisingly frank about how Platinum Productions operated:

At this point I wondered how the tricky subject of payments is agreed. The explanation is simple, but astonishingly haphazard.
"We estimate how long it'll take us and suggest a figure, the company suggests a lower one and we agree in the middle. I sometimes think what we get is totally dependent on our first bid."
The actual sums involved are obviously secret, but a typical payment might be between £6,000 and £8,000. This is split between David and Ian and they pay Robin a fee for his work on the music as a sub-contractor. The taxman gets a big chunk of the rest.

£6,000 to £8,000 is £18,000 to £24,000 in 2025 money. Not bad, but Ocean and US Gold were getting a bargain considering how well those games sold . The PCW interview ends on an uncertain note:

After Basketball[1] things look less certain, mainly because David and Ian have had enough, for a while anyway, "Programming isn't so fresh and new any more and it isn't quite as interesting as it used to be - it can get a bit routine."
What there is to life beyond quite a lot of money and shiny new cars is university, "We missed the opportunity to go last year and pretty soon we'll be too late for this year - they'll get fed up with us putting it off if we're not careful. Anyway this work isn't by any means guaranteed - this isn't a very secure industry, you know."

With all this talk of university, it's slightly sobering to release David and Ian are both 18 at this point. The CRASH interview also touched on this point:

 

Ian and David have both been offered places at Strathclyde University on a double-degree engineering course, which lasts for five years and is very intensive. They've both postponed starting the course — but this year Ian has decided to get an education. 'I've enjoyed programming, it's been fun and has made be a bit of money, but I think it is time I got an education and expanded my mind. I'm not sure whether I'll have time to carry on with much programming — the course is going to require a lot of effort and I've got to get industrial experience during the vacations. I'll just have to wait and see what I can fit in.'

 

Platinum Productions don't seem to have lasted much longer. It's difficult to tell because crediting on game inlays is often intermittent, and also because David Anderson and Ian Morrison went on to have longer independent coding careers. I think their last game together was Dambusters because the inlay for Beach Head 2 (which came next, I think) names Platinum Productions but specifically omits Ian Morrision. The inlay lists:

Programming by Alan Laird and David J. Anderson
Graphics by Mark A. Craig, Alan Laird and David J. Anderson
Music by Robin Muir
Instructions by Mark A. Craig

 

Then Rambo, next after Beach Head 2, only mentions:

Spectrum version by David J. Anderson in association with Ocean Software Limited

It looks like there's an an odd backstory to the CRASH interview. David Anderson and Ian Morrison seem to have been long term readers of SINCLAIR USER, here's a ZX-81 routine they submitted for the February 1983 issue. May 1985 saw David Anderson write to SINCLAIR USER who published his letter with the provocative headline Should Women Review Games? The text of the letter reads:

 

OVER the past couple of months I have noticed a substantial increase in the number of software reviews, I notice the review team seems to be split 50/50 male and female, and welcome as it may be to have women in the business I wonder if it gives a true reflection of the user base on the Spectrum. I have often wondered what qualifies a person to pass judgement on other people's products, particularly since so many mistakes are made.
Some reviews suffer from misinterpretation and oversights, or simply not reading the instructions properly. That is unacceptable as it may damage the sales potential of some programs,
I would also like to reply to a letter from Miles Sturt who claims to be the first person to finish Beach Head. As the co-author of this program I would like to set the record straight. The highest known score is 382,000, set by myself on the day the program was completed and it was the first recorded score on the fully debugged version of the game.
Finally, you really seem to be scraping the board with your interviews recently. Since Mathew Smith there hasn't really been anyone remotely well known. Most decent programmers still design their own graphics and very good they are too. If you really want a scoop get an interview with the people behind Ashby Computer Graphics and give us some real state of the art

 
David J Anderson,
Platinum Productions,
Kilwinning,
Ayrshire

 

Obviously that address is terribly exciting, I'll come back to it later. What's odd is, the letter doesn't really deserve the headline or the tremendously snotty reply from editor Bill Scolding.

So, reviewers must be male because the majority of Sinclair users are male, and women are incapable of reviewing games which will be played by men. Such a pathetic, illogical attitude deserves to be treated with contempt.
The 'mistakes' you refer to are largely a matter of opinion. Where we make genuine errors we are happy to accept the blame, and do so within the pages of the magazine.
As for our interviews , I am sure that Julian Chappell, Lee Kristofferson, David Reidy and the Automata team — all authors of best-selling games — are of interest to our readers. Perhaps you're just hurt that we haven't talked to you about your mediocre efforts. Ed.

Scolding by name, scolding by nature. David's letter is clumsy in its opening. It's not clear exactly what he means but the reply from Bill Scolding is in very bad faith. It's a massive reach to conflate David Anderson's observation that a review team with a 50/50 male/female split doesn't reflect the userbase of the ZX Spectrum with a statement that "women are incapable of reviewing games which will be played by men." The headline and reply have been deliberately written to frame the letter and outright claim it says something it doesn't. To my eye, Bill Scolding has decided a public shaming is in order as payback for some additional mild criticism of his magazine. As for that comment about "your mediocre efforts." Ouch. Take a chill pill, Bill. The magazine he edits scored Beach Head at 8/10 and gave Lode Runner an above average 6/10 [2].

 

Ironically, the very next issue saw SINCLAIR USER made a mistake in their Denton Designs interview, implying they were responsible for the Spectrum version of World Series Baseball. It must have been with no small degree of schadenfreude that David Anderson wrote again and got SINCLAIR USER correct the record in August 1985:

I HAVE just read the Hit Squad interview with Denton Designs July 1985. I believe the paragraph detailing programs written by Denton Designs to be misleading.
In the list of games given you include World Series Baseball, The Spectrum version of the game was not written by Denton Designs, but by Platinum Productions for Imagine '85, which is owned by Ocean.

The same issue added icing on the cake with a rave review and SINCLAIR USER Classic award for Platinum Productions' latest game Tapper.

Anyway, SINCLAIR USER having skilfully alienated a long term reader, David Anderson moved over to CRASH and must have contacted the magazine when they made a mistake in their review of World Series Baseball. CRASH were considerably more gracious and wrote this in their July 1985 issue:

TRIO OF SMASHERS!

Slaving away over hot Spectrum keyboards, many miles away from Ludlow, is a trio of programmers. Ian Morrison, David Anderson and Robin Muir have between them achieved no less than three consecutive CRASH SMASHES, with their conversions for the US Gold/ Imagine labels.
First off, their conversion of Raid Over Moscow for the Spectrum was a Smash. Then followed World Series Baseball, and last but by no means least, Tapper,
Unfortunately, we credited Robin Muir and Ian Robinson as the programmers on World Series, which was a bit unfair as while Robin did the the music, David Anderson and Ian Morrison were really the main men behind the programming.
Now we learn that up in the Highlands all the avid CRASH readers won't believe Ian Anderson when he tells them that we made a mistake, Well folks, this bunch of sassenachs did slip up on the credits and we're sorry.
And they sound like a bunch of interesting fellows — I mean, three CRASH Smashes on the trot, that's got to be a first. Maybe we'll get to interview them next issue, ...

 

Unsurprisingly, CRASH got their interview. Now, about that address.

Kilwinning, Ayrshire

 

It doesn't help much, unfortunately. Although it did allow me to locate the PCW interview photo, above, to the end of Saltcoats harbour wall. This update deadends in Kilwinning in Ayrshire. I've shrunk the potential search area down from 1,129 square miles to a single town but ultimately the home of Platinum Productions remains elusive.

 

VERDICT: STILL UNTRACEABLE! 

 

[1] PCW names this as an unreleased game for Elite. It's possible there's some confusion with World Series Basketball which Platinum Productions converted for Imagine in 1985.
[2] SINCLAIR USER didn't review Raid Over Moscow, which was brilliant, or Zaxxon, the one Platinum Productions conversion which could genuinely be called mediocre. These were the days when the magazine didn't feel under any pressure to offer its readers a comprehensive range of game reviews.

 

Do you know where Platinum Productions were based in Kilwinning? Email your Steetview directions to whereweretheynow@gmail.com and I'll drive up to Scotland at some point. I am also on Bluesky. @shammountebank.bsky.social