Beyond was a software label owned by a magazine company. EMAP, which published Computer and Video Games and Sinclair User, set it up in 1983 with Terry Pratt, formerly editor of Computer and Video Games, in charge. Pratt’s first big signing was a C&VG contributor, Mike Singleton, and the result was The Lords of Midnight, a war game and a quest in a landscape the player saw in pictures rather than words. When C&VG reviewed it, the reviewer felt obliged to “declare an interest, for Beyond is a subsidiary of EMAP, publishers of C&VG”. In about two and a half years Beyond published a run of games that the magazines, EMAP’s and others, rated among the best on the ZX Spectrum. Then British Telecom bought it.
Fast facts
- Owner: EMAP, until British Telecom bought Beyond around the turn of 1986.
- Run by: Terry Pratt, formerly editor of Computer and Video Games.
- Games: Space Station Zebra and Psytron (1984), The Lords of Midnight (1984), Doomdark’s Revenge (1984), Shadowfire (1985), Spy vs Spy (1985), Enigma Force (1986).
- Price: mostly £7.95 to £9.95, full price for the time.
- After the sale: part of British Telecom’s software business, Telecomsoft, alongside Firebird and Rainbird.
A slow start, then Psytron
Beyond’s first game, Space Station Zebra, was reviewed by CRASH in May 1984 and did not impress: the next month the magazine called it “good-looking but unplayable”. The second was a different matter. Psytron, by Tayo Olowu and Paul Voysey, was a 48K machine-code “arcade strategy game” at £7.95 in which the player, as the Psytron, defended the installation Betula 5 against attack. CRASH made it a Smash in June 1984 and, in an editorial, congratulated its rival: “It isn’t often you find one magazine praising a rival publication, but congratulations to Computer & Video Games, or rather to the parent company E.M.A.P., for their excellent game Psytron.”
The Lords of Midnight
Singleton told CRASH how Beyond got his game. “I’d done quite a bit of writing for Computer & Video Games when Terry Pratt was the editor. He moved across to set up Beyond within EMAP’s framework, and he’d been pressing me for quite a while for a game for Beyond.” In September 1983 Pratt went to see him in Chester, and Singleton described an idea he called landscaping: “a terrain type game rather than rooms like you get in most adventures.”
The Lords of Midnight came out in 1984 at £9.95. Beyond claimed 32,000 different views, and Sinclair User later gave the figure as “32,000 views on the screen from 4,000 locations”. The player could look in eight directions from every place, a feature CRASH still remembered when it reviewed a rival game in 1986. The views were not stored as pictures. As Singleton explained, each view was assembled from a stock of pre-drawn images of mountains, forests, towers and other features, stored in several sizes and placed according to where the character stood, so that distant things were drawn small and grew as you approached. Memory was tight. “I’d got about 3 bytes spare on Midnight,” he said, after streamlining it “about three or four times to get it to fit in”.
CRASH‘s Adventure Trail gave it ten out of ten in August 1984, and Computer and Video Games’ readers voted it Best Strategy Game of 1984 in the Golden Joystick Awards. The Lords of Midnight entry tells the game’s story in full.
Doomdark’s Revenge
The sequel followed in late 1984. Singleton said it took longer than he expected, because “an awful lot of new stuff went into Doomdark”. Lee Paddon, reviewing it for Your Computer in January 1985, counted “6,000 locations altogether and over a hundred characters”, and found that every character was now “trogging around the place bent on his own little scheme”: asked to join Luxor, one might agree, ignore him or turn on him. “This game is a worthy successor to Lords of Midnight,” he wrote. CRASH’s Adventure Trail gave it ten out of ten, in February 1985.
It kept its reputation on other machines. Amstrad Action made the Amstrad version a Mastergame with 95% in October 1986, and in 1988 was still offering it to new subscribers as a game with “over 6,000 locations to discover” in which “you control three out of a possible total of 128 characters”. Amtix!’s readers voted it third in their best strategy game award for 1986. Reviewing it in December 1987, ACE gave it 940 and found that it “plays completely differently” from the first game “and is certainly a worthy successor”.
Shadowfire, Spy vs Spy and Enigma Force
In 1985 Beyond published the Liverpool studio Denton Designs’ Shadowfire, an adventure played in real time with no typed commands at all. The player directed a team of six aboard General Zoff’s starship by pointing at icons. CRASH gave it 96% and its readers voted it straight to number 1 in both the Hotline and the Adventure chart in August 1985. Sinclair Programs began its review: “Beyond have taken the traditional text adventure, smashed it to pieces, thrown it on the scrapheap and put something radically different in its place.” The sequel, Enigma Force, reached CRASH in March 1986, still on the Beyond label, and took 88%.
Beyond also brought Spy vs Spy, the two-player game based on the MAD magazine strip, to the Spectrum in 1985. CRASH’s readers voted it into the Hotline at 23 in September 1985, and by November it was at 4.
Sold to British Telecom
British Telecom had been publishing games since 1984 through Firebird, and at the turn of 1986 it bought Beyond. Your Sinclair reported the sale in its first issue, in January 1986: “Beyond has been bought out by British Telecom much to Buzby’s delight.” ZZAP!64 said in April that Beyond “was the first to be captured” of the companies BT was taking over. At the Consumer Electronics Show that spring CRASH noted that “Beyond was the only other wing of British Telecom present”, beside Rainbird.
The name lasted a little longer. In March 1987 Herbie Wright was “Group Publisher for Firebird Gold and Beyond”, but after that the Beyond name faded from the magazines.
The third part
Singleton had planned Lords of Midnight as the first of three games, although, he said, “Terry Pratt was keeping his options open to see how the first one went.” In July 1986 Amtix! described “Mike Singleton’s great ‘Midnight’ Trilogy” and named the third part, Eye of the Moon, suggesting it might be ready for Christmas. It did not appear. In December 1987 ACE wondered “whether Mike Singleton can ever find the time to write that promised third part of the trilogy”, and a year later CRASH described it as “almost permanently shelved”.
Beyond’s two landscaping games outlived the label. After Singleton’s death in October 2012, Chris Wild, who had worked with him on a new version of The Lords of Midnight, released it for iPhone and iPad, followed by versions for Windows and Android in 2013. The Lords of Midnight entry covers them.
Sources
- CRASH issue 4, May 1984: Space Station Zebra review.
- CRASH issue 5, June 1984: editorial on Psytron and EMAP; Psytron review (Beyond, 48K, £7.95, Tayo Olowu and Paul Voysey; CRASH Smash); preview of The Lords of Midnight (32,000 views).
- Computer and Video Games issue 34, August 1984: The Lords of Midnight review (“Beyond is a subsidiary of EMAP”).
- CRASH issue 7, August 1984, p. 72: The Lords of Midnight, Adventure Trail.
- Sinclair User issue 31, October 1984: Doomdark’s Revenge competition (the Beyond pyramid game Spellbound among the prizes).
- Your Computer, January 1985, p. 65: Lee Paddon’s review of Doomdark’s Revenge.
- CRASH issue 13, February 1985: Doomdark’s Revenge, Adventure Trail (ten out of ten).
- CRASH issue 14, March 1985: interview with Mike Singleton (Terry Pratt and Beyond; September 1983; landscaping; “3 bytes spare”; the trilogy).
- Sinclair User Annual 1985: profile of Mike Singleton (32,000 views from 4,000 locations; the pre-drawn images in several sizes).
- Computer and Video Games issue 44, June 1985: Golden Joystick Awards (Best Strategy Game).
- CRASH issue 17, June 1985, pp. 16–18: Shadowfire review (96%). Sinclair Programs, July 1985: Shadowfire review.
- CRASH issue 19, August 1985: Spy vs Spy review; Hotline and Adventure charts (Shadowfire at number 1 in both). CRASH issue 20, September 1985, and issue 22, November 1985: Hotline Top 30 (Spy vs Spy).
- Your Sinclair issue 1, January 1986: news of the sale to British Telecom.
- CRASH issue 25, February 1986: Runestone review (Lords of Midnight “allowed eight directions”).
- CRASH issue 26, March 1986, pp. 128–129: Enigma Force review (Beyond, 88%).
- ZZAP!64 issue 12, April 1986: British Telecom and Beyond.
- CRASH issue 29, June 1986: the Consumer Electronics Show (“the only other wing of British Telecom present”).
- Amtix! issue 9, July 1986: the “Midnight” trilogy and Eye of the Moon.
- Amstrad Action issue 13, October 1986: Doomdark’s Revenge, Mastergame. Amstrad Action issue 31, April 1988: subscription offer (95%, 6,000 locations, 128 characters).
- ZZAP!64 issue 23, March 1987: Herbie Wright, Group Publisher for Firebird Gold and Beyond.
- Amtix! issue 18, April 1987: the 1986 Amtix! Readers’ Awards (Doomdark’s Revenge third for best strategy game).
- ACE issue 3, December 1987: strategy buyers’ guide (Doomdark’s Revenge, ACE rating 940; Eye of the Moon).
- CRASH issue 59, December 1988: Eye of the Moon “almost permanently shelved”.
- Singleton’s death and the 2012–2013 versions: as cited in the Lords of Midnight entry (web, secondary).