Orpheus

The Smithy, Unit 1, Church Farm, Hatley St. George, Nr. Sandy, Beds, SG19

Orpheus were a relatively short-lived software house who were notable for a couple of games. First, an MSX version of Boulder Dash when they joined the increasingly long line of companies who licenced First Star's game. Secondly for The Young Ones. The looks-like-but-wasn't-officially-licenced game of the BBC comedy series.

I can point you to Church Farm. It is in the village of Hatley St. George which is near Sandy, Beds, the town with the comedy name. I can even point you to the location of Church Farm. It's here. What I can't do is point you to the location of The Smithy or, as I suspect, its former location. When Orpheus was in business, The Smithy was either part of what was then a working farm and is now someone's house, or it lies buried under the St George's Tower business park which has been built around an old Victorian water tower. As a result, I formally declare Orpheus Ltd to be untraceable. 

CAMBRIDGE EVENING NEWS
Friday 1 March 1985 page 33

Looking back to my original article for the Untraceables page (see the CGL article for why that page was decommissioned), I confidently asserted Orpheus were founded around February 1985. I have no idea where I got that date. It's clearly not right. Orpheus published their first games in 1984; three titles for the Oric, Krillys, The Hellion, and Trouble In Store. 

POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY covered the launch of Orpheus in the 1 November 1984 issue, page 4 under the headline All Change At Tansoft. 

ONLY weeks after two Oric directors, Barry Muncaster and Paul Johnson, bought out Qric software house Tansoft, three senior Tansoft executives have left the company.

Paul Kaufman, Cathie Burrell and Geoff Phillips have set up a new software company, based in Bedfordshire, called Orpheus Software. Tansoft developed from Tangerine, the company that originally designed the One I computer...

"The split between us and Tansoft is amicable," said Paul Kaufman. "There is no acrimony involved. Tansoft wanted to do things differently from the way Orpheus now has plans to operate — for example, the conversions to other machines.

"At Orpheus we are currently working hard to get products out for Christmas. At the end of November, we will be bringing out three — as yet untitled — arcade games for the Atmos. followed by programs for the Spectrum, Commodore 64. MSX and Amstrad," A Spectrum adventure called Underworld — the Village is set for release before Christmas. For the Commodore 64, Orpheus intends to concentrate on utility programs 

The story was also covered in ORIC OWNER, a magazine published by Tansoft themselves which suggests that on this occasion the declarations of amicability were actually genuine. 

MSX COMPUTING
August/September 1985 page 45

Orpheus wrote a BBC Micro racing game called Chicane published by joystick and interface manufacturer Kempston Microelectronics, on that company's very short-lived software label [1]. Orpheus also brought the rights to make an MSX version of Boulder Dash, becoming the third company of five to release a version of Boulder Dash in the UK. However, the UK software market was consolidating around the Amstrad, Commodore, and Spectrum formats and Orpheus' next game would only support those three formats.

BBC2 began a repeat of all 12 episodes of The Young Ones at 9.30pm on 18 March 1985. Licencing the rights to the series must have seemed like the most obvious idea in the world. The Young Ones was right on target for the teenage boy demographic of most computer games and a licence was increasingly being seen as essential to the success of a game. The game got an enthusiastic "first review" in the October 1985 issue of COMPUTER GAMER. Then, in December 1985, COMPUTER GAMERS' parade was rained on by the misery guts at ZZAP!64 who opened their preview of The Young Ones with:

Yes PREview. The game is far from finished and we're not out to mislead you by printing SO called 'exclusive REviews' of what is most certainly an incomplete product. 

ZZAP spoke to John Marshall of Orpheus who gave some insight into the development of the game: 

...it was suggested early on that we would need help from the original scriptwriters.

That would be Ben Elton, Rik Mayall and Lise Mayer, ZZAP wanted to know what it was like working with them:

God that's a difficult one to answer. No, they were really nice people. They were very enthusiastic and it was important to them that the original theme of the series wasn't lost. They didn't want a game of 'dodge Rick and throw an axe at Neil' sort of thing.

The copyright message on the back of the ZX Spectrum box is oddly specific and completely fails to mention the BBC, which I would have expected. 

©1985 Rik Mayall, Ben Elton, Lise Mayer as creators of the "Young Ones" characters, format, and storylines of the television series.

The Young Ones, it turns out, is not an officially licenced game. The idea clearly never got anywhere near BBC Enterprises because they don't rate a mention on the packaging. There is a list of people on the back of the box in a Special Thanks To section. They are; Aude Powell (Rik Mayall's agent), Jene Cassarotto (another theatrical agent), Peter Ross-Howden and Cathie Burrell (who both worked for Orpheus), Russell Heffer of Qualis (a Cambridge based graphic design company, so presumably they did the packaging), Jen for the bed and Annette (who is described as, 'er indoors).

Whatever licence Orpheus obtained, and from whoever, it clearly doesn't extend anywhere beyond the rights to make a game called The Young Ones with characters named Mike, Neil, Rick, and Vyvyan. There are no actor's likenesses in the game or packaging although I'd argue the pasted together letters do a good job of aping the style of the series two logo without being anything like a copy. The in game music, on the C64 version at least, is likewise an attempt to create something that sounds like the closing theme to The Young Ones without actually being the closing theme.

Something else that vaguely sounds like something else is this advert for The Young Ones which cropped up on an instore video magazine called BULLETIN 1000. It features the voiceover talents of someone doing the worst impression of Vyvyan, and briefly Neil, that I've ever heard. That's taking into account everybody in my class in 1985, including me, who were all also doing terrible impressions of Vyvyan.

Meanwhile, the cover of issue two of YOUR SINCLAR nearly got the magazine into trouble. Again the problem seems to have been down to actor's likenesses. Deputy Editor, Theresa Maughan, revealed the story in issue five:

Crumbs! YS nearly came a cropper last month when Young Ones’ star Nigel Planer’s agents rang up to sound off about issue 2’s cover. Luckily they didn't have a leg to stand on., least not after we sent Vyvyan round to deal with 'em. There's no pleasing some people.

The Young Ones didn't do well with critics. It mostly received middling reviews. The C64 version was never reviewed by ZZAP for some reason, and COMMODORE HORIZONS somehow printed a review of the preview version. The game doesn't seem to have been a success and Orpheus Ltd moved on to become developers rather than publishers. They did work for Ariolasoft, Databyte, and Virgin. Orpheus Ltd disappeared from view by the end of 1987.

The cover for Krillys came from Universal Videogames List, as did the cover for Boulder Dash. The Young Ones is from Spectrum Computing.

[1] Chicane and nothing else, basically. 

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