Bug-Byte | Code Like It's 198x

Bug-Byte was one of the first British software houses, and the first of the Liverpool companies that made the city a centre of the early games business. It published Manic Miner in 1983. Before that it sold a ZX81 assembler that Sinclair User called “a remarkable program”. It is remembered, though, as much for the people who left it as for anything it released. Two of its staff left in 1982 to found Imagine, and at the turn of 1984 Matthew Smith and Alan and Soo Maton left to found Software Projects, taking Manic Miner with them.

One tape at a time

The company was started by Tony Baden and Tony Milner, two students reading chemistry at Liverpool University. Big K, which told the story in July 1984, dated it to May 1980, when Bug-Byte “had no duplicating facilities, so that each mail order requirement meant a SAVE”. Every tape sold was recorded one at a time from a computer.

The first addresses in the press are not in Liverpool. In June 1981 Your Computer gave Bug-Byte’s address as 251 Henley Road, Coventry. By October 1981 its advertisements asked for cheques to be sent to 98-100 The Albany, Old Hall Street, Liverpool. By 1983 it was at Mulberry House, Canning Place.

Atom, ZX81 and VIC-20

Bug-Byte did not start as a Spectrum publisher. Its 1981 advertisements in Your Computer sold cassettes for the Acorn Atom: a Fruit Machine with spinning reels, hold and nudge at £5, a 3D maze called Labyrinth, Lunar Lander, Golf (“an 18 hole, par 72 course”) and an Atom disassembler at £4. Your Computer reviewed its Atom Fruit Machine and Invaders in November 1981 alongside games from Acornsoft, the Atom maker’s own software house.

ZX81 software ran alongside. Dictator (£9, for the 16K ZX81) made the player president of a small state, managing “the secret police and army” and “a secure economy” while trying to “avoid revolution” and “escape from assassination attempts”. By February 1982 the same advertisement offered Vicmen, a machine-code maze game for the unexpanded VIC-20.

The ZX81 assembler

In 1981 Bug-Byte began selling ZXAS, a machine-code assembler for the 16K ZX81 at £3.95, and ZXDB, a disassembler and debugger that could be used alongside it. An assembler lets a programmer write instructions as readable mnemonics such as LD A,H and have the computer turn them into machine code, instead of working out the numbers and POKEing them in by hand.

Sinclair User reviewed ZX81 assemblers in July 1982. Phil Garrett explained that ZXAS took 5K, moved RAMTOP and loaded itself above it, so that source programs could be saved and loaded separately. The source went into REM statements, several instructions to a line separated by semicolons, with up to 256 labels written :L0 to :L255, comments after a *, and full stops in place of commas, so LD A,H was typed LD A.H. He found one bug: SUB A,n did not work, and had to be written as AND A; SBC A,n. His verdict: “ZXAS is a remarkable program and is excellent value at £5”, and using it or its rival from ACS Software was “the single biggest step to proficiency in machine code programming”.

Spectrum games

The Spectrum catalogue grew through 1983. Matthew Smith’s first game for the company, Styx, was one “which all sides admit bombed out”, in Big K’s words. His second, Manic Miner, was on sale by August 1983 and within weeks was the best-selling computer game in Britain. By December 1983 Bug-Byte had signed a deal giving CBS, the record and video company, exclusive rights to market all its software in the UK.

Other releases did well with reviewers. CRASH gave The Birds and the Bees 83% and Antics, written by the 17-year-old Adrian Sherwin, 90%. Twin Kingdom Valley, an illustrated adventure advertised with “over 175 different full colour, graphic locations”, was in Acorn User’s BBC Micro chart in March 1984 alongside two more Bug-Byte titles, Oblivion and Galaxy War, and was still in CRASH’s Spectrum adventure chart a year later.

Two walkouts

The first departure was in 1982. Big K says that Dave Lawson, a Bug-Byte programmer, left in July 1982, “rather unexpectedly, one gathers”, and that Mark Butler followed two months later. CRASH describes Butler as Bug-Byte’s sales manager and says the two left “after several disagreements with the Bug-Byte management” to set up Imagine in a small front room. Bruce Everiss, later Imagine’s operations director, told it differently in Your Computer in November 1984: both men had been offered, and turned down, a share of Bug-Byte, and after “the clash of personalities” Lawson “was given notice in late 1982”, while Butler “left of his own volition”. Eugene Evans, another young Bug-Byte programmer, soon joined them. Imagine’s first game, Arcadia, was advertised in the January 1983 Computer and Video Games and sold into shops over Christmas 1982. Some later retrospectives put the departures in January 1983, but these period sources place it in the second half of 1982. The departure was remembered in Manic Miner itself, where one cavern is called Eugene’s Lair.

The second came at the turn of 1984. Matthew Smith left with Alan and Soo Maton to found Software Projects. CRASH‘s first issue, in February 1984, reported the Matons’ move. Personal Computer Games described Alan Maton’s career at Bug-Byte as a rise “from despatch rider to marketing manager in a matter of months”. He was not the company’s managing director, as is sometimes said.

The Manic Miner split, from Bug-Byte’s side

Manic Miner went with Smith. Sinclair User explained in February 1984 that Bug-Byte “held a licence to produce Manic Miner but not the copyright”. By July, Big K noted, the same game had been in the charts under two labels, old and new.

Smith’s complaint, that he had not been paid enough for the game, is the account most often repeated. Tony Baden gave Bug-Byte’s side to Big K: “they all know what Matthew’s been saying, that he didn’t get enough from Manic Miner… But I can tell you he got £50,000 cash from that one game while we sold it.”

On why the game left with its author, Baden said the contract was ambiguous because of a comma in the wrong place, or a missing one; he could not remember which. Rather than spend time and money fighting it in court, Bug-Byte let Smith take the game. Baden explained why: Smith had been a minor, and the company’s lawyers told it that “against a minor in open court nobody has a chance”.

Receivership, and a budget label

In April 1985 CRASH reported that Quicksilva had bought the exclusive rights to seven games developed by Bug-Byte. Two months later the company itself went into receivership. CRASH’s news pages regretted that it severed “any final link with the original flowering of Liverpool programming talent that began with Bug-Byte and flowed into Imagine, Software Projects and many of the programming houses that now exist”. Looking back two years later, the magazine called it “the biggest failure” of June 1985: Bug-Byte had been the “founding father of the home-computer game and many well-known individuals and several software houses had sprung from the Liverpool company”. It admitted that “the quality of Bug-Byte’s products had dropped”, but the collapse was “a sad surprise to many, causing almost as many fears that the end was nigh as had Imagine’s disintegration”.

Argus Press Software had been trying to agree a merger, and failed to complete it before the receivership. It then bought Bug-Byte from the receiver and used the name as a budget label. Computer Gamer described it in December 1985 as Argus’s “most recently acquired marque”, selling at £2.95. CRASH was still reviewing games under the Bug-Byte name in 1987, Arena among them.

Sources

Your Computer, November 1984, pp. 76–77: Bruce Everiss on Imagine (Lawson “given notice in late 1982”, Butler “left of his own volition”).
Big K, issue 4 (July 1984): Tony Tyler’s feature on the Liverpool software houses (Baden and Milner; May 1980; “each mail order requirement meant a SAVE”; Lawson’s departure in July 1982 and Butler’s two months later; Styx; Antics and Adrian Sherwin; the two labels; Baden on the £50,000, the comma and the minor).
Your Computer, June 1981 (Coventry address and Atom advertisement), October 1981 (Liverpool address; Atom advertisement with Labyrinth, Lunar Lander, Golf and the disassembler; ZX81 advertisement for ZXAS and ZXDB), November 1981 (Atom games review) and February 1982 (Dictator, Vicmen).
Computer and Video Games, issue 1 (November 1981): Bug-Byte advertisement for ZXAS and ZXDB. Issue 15 (January 1983): Imagine’s advertisement for Arcadia.
Sinclair User, issue 4 (July 1982), pp. 41-42: Phil Garrett on ZX81 assemblers. Issue 23 (February 1984), news: “a licence to produce Manic Miner but not the copyright”.
Personal Computer News, 11-17 August 1983, p. 48: review of Manic Miner (Bug-Byte, Mulberry House, Canning Place).
Personal Computer Games, issue 2 (December 1983): “CBS takes over Manic Miner”. Issue 3 (February 1984), p. 3: “Smith leaves Bug-Byte” (“from despatch rider to marketing manager”). Issue 4 (March 1984): Twin Kingdom Valley advertisement.
CRASH, issue 1 (February 1984), news: the Matons leave Bug-Byte to form Software Projects. Issue 2 (March 1984): The Birds and the Bees, 83%. Issue 6 (July 1984): Antics, 90%. Issue 14 (March 1985): adventure chart. Issue 15 (April 1985): Quicksilva’s deal for seven Bug-Byte titles. Issue 18 (July 1985), news: the receivership and “the original flowering of Liverpool programming talent”. Issue 12 (Christmas 1984), pp. 60-63: Butler and Lawson at Bug-Byte.
CRASH, issue 46 (November 1987): the magazine’s history of its June 1985 issue (“founding father of the home-computer game”, receivership, Argus). Issue 48 (January 1988), review index: later Bug-Byte titles including Arena (issue 46).
Acorn User, issue 20 (March 1984), chart: Twin Kingdom Valley, Oblivion, Galaxy War.
Computer Gamer, issue 9 (December 1985): Argus’s “most recently acquired marque — Bug Byte”, £2.95.