On the evening of Wednesday 25 July 1984, the national television news showed a Spectrum platform game. It starred a mole stealing coal in the middle of the miners’ strike, and one of its characters was a big-headed caricature of the miners’ leader, Arthur Scargill. The game was Wanted: Monty Mole, and it came from a company few people had heard of: Gremlin Graphics, run from two rooms above a computer shop in Sheffield. CRASH said it arrived “almost from nowhere” and went straight to number one.
Gremlin lasted fifteen years. It went from Spectrum cassettes to the Amiga’s Lotus racing games and PlayStation football, bought the Scottish developer DMA Design, floated on the stock market, and was sold to the French publisher Infogrames in 1999.
A shop in Carver Street
In July 1985 CRASH’s Roger Kean drove to Sheffield to see how Gremlin’s first year had gone. He was told to stop outside Just Micro, “a thriving and very busy computer shop” in Carver Street owned by Ian Stewart and his partner Kevin Norburn. Gremlin’s offices were upstairs in Alpha House, “a gaunt Victorian office block” with long maroon-and-cream corridors that the staff called “the prison”.
Stewart had spent twelve years in retail, ending as a group manager for the Laskys chain, before he and Norburn opened the shop. “We always said as soon as the shop got rolling and we found the time and the necessary programmer, that we would like to have our own software house,” he told Kean. The first programmers were Peter Harrap and Tony Crowther, who was already known for his Commodore 64 games. Crowther became a company director and wrote Potty Pigeon and Suicide Express for Gremlin, then left after what CRASH called “differences on the board”.
The company on the register came first. It was incorporated on 2 April 1984 as Finchpost Limited, took the Gremlin name on 17 May 1985, spelled Softwear, and corrected it to Gremlin Graphics Software Limited that October.
Geoff Brown’s share
Gremlin looked like an independent Sheffield outfit, but it was not entirely one. To get good distribution, Stewart invited Geoff Brown, who ran U.S. Gold and had started the distributor CentreSoft, to become Gremlin’s managing director. CRASH printed the arrangement in November 1984: Brown was Gremlin’s managing director and “also the MD of Centresoft/US Gold”, Stewart handled sales and marketing, and Norburn was financial director, the one “who signs the cheques”.
Brown later described his stake in The Story of US Gold. Stewart “needed some money”, so Brown bought shares and “came to own 75% of Gremlin Graphics”, held through another of his companies, Woodward Brown Holdings. Tim Chaney, who ran U.S. Gold for Brown, remembered the rivalry that followed: “if I could have put Gremlin out of business I would have done.” The ties went further. Jenny Richards, CentreSoft’s first employee and head of sales, was going out with Ian Stewart and later married him. By Brown’s own recollection, he sold his Gremlin shares back to Stewart and Richards for about £17,000. These are recollections, told decades later by the U.S. Gold side.
Monty Mole
The mole was Stewart’s idea. Harrap had first come into the shop to complain that his Currah Microspeech unit had blown up his Spectrum. While the repair dragged on, Stewart suggested he write a game. “I came up with the idea of a mole, and we decided it would be a platform game,” Stewart said. Harrap’s father was a mine training officer, so the game went underground, and as the miners’ strike grew, the flying pickets and Scargill went in. Stewart then worked the caricature for publicity, with coverage on eight radio stations, in national newspapers and on the television news. “It didn’t just happen,” he said.
CRASH gave Wanted: Monty Mole 92% in October 1984, and one reviewer thought it might beat Manic Miner “by a touch”. CRASH’s readers voted it the best platform game of 1984, ahead of Jet Set Willy, with 40% of the vote. On the Commodore 64 the game was Crowther’s version. Ten years later Amiga Computing called Monty Gremlin’s first six-figure seller.
The series that followed:
- Monty is Innocent (1985), by Chris Kerry: not a platform game but a 3D-looking prison maze, in which Monty’s friend Sam Stoat collects keys to free him. CRASH gave it 78%.
- Monty on the Run (1985), by Peter Harrap: the escape, and a 94% CRASH Smash. The Commodore 64 version carried Rob Hubbard’s tune, which ZZAP!64’s readers voted the best music of 1985. See Monty on the Run.
- Auf Wiedersehen Monty (1987), by Peter Harrap: Monty on the run across Europe. CRASH gave it 85%.
- Moley Christmas: a short game given away on the cover cassette of Your Sinclair issue 25, January 1988, by Harrap and Shaun Hollingworth.
- Impossamole (1990): a superhero Monty for the 16-bit machines, written by a different team after the original programmers had left.
The 8-bit catalogue
By mid-1985 Gremlin had four in-house programmers writing for the Spectrum: Harrap, Kerry, Hollingworth and Christian Urquhart. A separate firm, Micro Projects, wrote its Commodore games and conversions. Stewart described how games began: “brain bashing sessions” in the office, then a plan and a storyboard from the programmer before any code. “I’m the culprit as far as the characters go.”
The characters were the point. ACE later said Gremlin were “expert at marketing their cute characters”, and named Monty Mole, Thing and Jack the Nipper. Thing on a Spring (1985), a bouncing toy sent to stop an evil goblin, was a Commodore 64 game, and ZZAP!64 found its Hubbard music “unbelievable”. Jack the Nipper (1986) made the player a baby whose aim was to be as naughty as possible, and CRASH liked its “monochrome cartoon style that makes Jack look as though he’s just leapt out of the Beano”.
CRASH’s scores for Gremlin’s Spectrum games show a range, not a steady middle:
| Game | CRASH score | Issue |
|---|---|---|
| Monty on the Run | 94% | 20, September 1985 |
| Jack the Nipper | 93% | 30, July 1986 |
| The Way of the Tiger | 93% | 28, May 1986 |
| Wanted: Monty Mole | 92% | 9, October 1984 |
| Bounder | 90% | 29, June 1986 |
| Metabolis | 87% | 20, September 1985 |
| Jack the Nipper II | 87% | 46, November 1987 |
| Auf Wiedersehen Monty | 85% | 40, May 1987 |
| Avenger | 85% | 36, January 1987 |
| Monty is Innocent | 78% | 14, March 1985 |
| Deflektor | 77% | 47, December 1987 |
| Future Knight | 76% | 36, January 1987 |
| Footballer of the Year | 68% | 37, February 1987 |
| Samurai Trilogy | 49% | 45, October 1987 |
| Krakout | 46% | 40, May 1987 |
| Death Wish 3 | 45% | 45, October 1987 |
Krakout, a Breakout variant, did better on other machines than on the Spectrum, where one reviewer called it “dead boring”. Deflektor, a puzzle game about steering a laser beam with mirrors, was written by Costa Panayi of Vortex, which had linked up with Gremlin; the Vortex name still appeared alongside Gremlin’s on its releases.
Lotus and Zool
On the Amiga and Atari ST, Gremlin’s biggest name was a car. Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge came out in November 1990, written by Shaun Southern’s team at Magnetic Fields. Twenty identical Esprits raced over hills, roadworks and fuel stops, and two players could race at once on a split screen. Amiga Format gave it 89%. ACE explained the appeal a year later: no tyre compounds or pit stops, “just staying on the road and going as fast as possible and winning”.
The sequel was not a certainty. Lotus did not want its cars shown being smashed, and ACE reported that Gremlin considered an unlicensed game with crashes before deciding that “the Lotus name was vital”. Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 (1991) added changing weather and an Elan alongside the Esprit, and two linked Amigas could race four players. Lotus III: The Ultimate Challenge (1992) added the M200 and RECS, a construction system that built a track from a string of letters, so players could type in a friend’s name or a football team and race on the result. Amiga Format regretted that the link-up option had gone to make room for it.
Zool (1992), “the Ninja of the Nth Dimension”, was Gremlin’s answer to Sega’s Sonic. Amiga Power reviewed it in October 1992 under the headline “Zool’s too cool to fool, he makes Sonic look comic”.
Gremlin Interactive
In 1994 Gremlin marked its tenth birthday by renaming itself Gremlin Interactive and retiring its rainbow logo. “It was beginning to be a bit like wearing flares and platform shoes in a room full of Doc Martens,” Stewart told Amiga Computing. The magazine listed the hits so far: Monty on the Run, Jack the Nipper, Thing on a Spring, Switchblade, Hero Quest, Lotus, Zool and Premier Manager.
The football management series Premier Manager was, by Edge’s account in 1995, “a consistent bestseller on the PC”. Gremlin’s next football game was a new kind for it. Actua Soccer, developed on the PC and also due for the PlayStation, used a new in-house motion-capture studio to record 120 moves from professional footballers. Edge later counted the “Actua range of sports titles” among Gremlin’s main attractions to a buyer.
Gremlin floated on the stock market in 1996. In 1997 it bought DMA Design, the Dundee creator of Lemmings, which was then finishing Grand Theft Auto and Body Harvest. Edge called it potentially “the most significant takeover of 1997”.
Sale to Infogrames
The shares did not do well. Edge reported in 1999 that Gremlin’s share price had “been under pressure despite its solid performance”. Infogrames offered 120p a share, valuing the company at £23 million, against £29 million when it floated. Ian Stewart and Jenny Richard-Stewart controlled more than half the shares, and their acceptance gave Infogrames control. “There are exciting times ahead,” Stewart said. The registered company became Infogrames Studios Limited in March 2000 and was dissolved in 2012.
Sources
- CRASH issue 9, October 1984: Wanted: Monty Mole review, 92%.
- Commodore Horizons, October 1984: Gremlin competition describing the Commodore 64 Monty Mole as “another Tony Crowther spectacular”.
- CRASH issue 10, November 1984, p. 90: Gremlin’s Beaver Bob competition; Wanted: Monty Mole at number one and on the national news on 25 July 1984; Geoff Brown as managing director of Gremlin and of CentreSoft/U.S. Gold; Ian Stewart (sales and marketing) and Kevin Norburn (financial director).
- CRASH issue 12, January 1985: readers’ awards for 1984, Monty Mole best platform game with 40% of the vote.
- CRASH issue 14, March 1985, p. 122: Monty is Innocent review (Chris Kerry), 78% overall.
- CRASH issue 18, July 1985, pp. 27–30: Roger Kean’s visit to Gremlin; Just Micro and Alpha House, Carver Street; Stewart’s retail background; Harrap and Crowther; Brown invited as managing director; the origin of Monty Mole; the in-house programmers and Micro Projects.
- ZZAP!64 issue 4, August 1985, p. 18: Thing on a Spring review.
- CRASH issues 20, 28, 29, 30, 36, 37, 40, 45, 46 and 47 (September 1985 to December 1987): the reviews and scores in the table; CRASH issue 48, January 1988, index of reviews (Samurai Trilogy, 49%).
- CRASH issue 30, July 1986: Jack the Nipper review.
- CRASH issue 40, May 1987: Krakout and Auf Wiedersehen Monty reviews.
- CRASH issue 47, December 1987: Deflektor review (Costa Panayi).
- ZZAP!64 issue 20, December 1986: Highway Encounter credited to “Gremlin Graphics/Vortex”.
- Amstrad Action issue 30, March 1988, pp. 41–43: Deflektor as “the first Vortex title since they linked up with Gremlin”.
- Your Sinclair issue 25, January 1988: Moley Christmas on the cover cassette.
- ACE issue 35, August 1990: feature on cute games, on Gremlin’s marketing of its characters.
- Amiga Format issue 17, December 1990, p. 80: Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge review, 89%.
- ACE issue 48, September 1991: preview of Lotus 2; Magnetic Fields and Shaun Southern; the first game’s November release; the licence and the unlicensed alternative.
- Amiga Power issue 18, October 1992: Zool cover and review.
- Amiga Format issue 40, November 1992: Lotus III review; the three games’ cars, link-up and RECS.
- Amiga Computing issue 79, November 1994: Gremlin’s tenth anniversary and rename to Gremlin Interactive; Monty Mole as its first six-figure seller.
- Edge issue 24, September 1995: Actua Soccer preview; Premier Manager; the motion-capture studio.
- Edge issue 45, May 1997: “DMA snatched by Gremlin”.
- Edge issue 71, May 1999: “Infogrames gobbles up Gremlin”.
- Arcade issue 6, May 1999: Monty Mole retrospective; Moley Christmas and Impossamole.
- Chris Wilkins and Roger M. Kean, The Story of US Gold (Fusion Retro Books, 2015), pp. 64–66 and 99: Geoff Brown’s 75% stake through Woodward Brown Holdings; Tim Chaney and Martyn Savage on the rivalry; Jenny Richards; the sale of Brown’s shares.
- Companies House, company 01805165: incorporation, changes of name and dissolution.