Mikro-Gen | Code Like It's 198x

Mikro-Gen made the Wally Week games, Spectrum arcade adventures about an everyman called Wally Week and his family that CRASH scored 92%, 93%, 90% and 93% between 1984 and 1986. Then, in 1985, it tried to change the Spectrum itself. The Mikro-Plus was a plug-in interface whose ROM took over from the Spectrum’s own and gave a game an extra 16K. It was sold only with a game, Shadow of the Unicorn, at £14.95, and the company’s advertisements promised that it would beat the pirates. CRASH’s tips writer predicted that the price would “do more damage to sales than the pirates ever could”. One of Mikro-Gen’s programmers later said the game “went out there and it died”, and within two years Mikro-Gen had been sold.

Fast facts

Founders: Mike Meek and Andrew Laurie, the technical director.
Based: 24 Agar Crescent, Bracknell (1982); 44 The Broadway, Bracknell (1984–85); Unit 15, The Western Centre, Western Road, Bracknell (from late 1985).
Wally Week games: Automania (1984), Pyjamarama (1984), Everyone’s a Wally (1985), Herbert’s Dummy Run (1985), Three Weeks in Paradise (1986).
Programmers included: Chris Hinsley, David Perry, Raffaele Cecco and Nick Jones.
The hardware: the Mikro-Plus interface, 1985, sold with Shadow of the Unicorn.
The end: sold to Creative Sparks Distribution, which was in receivership by October 1987.

From the ZX81 to Wally Week

Mikro-Gen began in 1982 selling ZX81 programs and add-ons, among them an analogue-to-digital converter board. Meek did not pretend it was a hobby. “We started Mikro-Gen to make money,” he told Sinclair User in 1985. He had been at the first ZX Microfair and had once run the Sinclair User Club; Laurie had been a founder member of the Sunbury Computer Club and once built a 256-byte computer with binary switches. A club member wrote Bomber for the Commodore PET and helped convert it to the ZX81. Until Automania, Meek said, most of the programming was subcontracted. Chris Hinsley joined on 1 January 1984. He was the lead programmer on Pyjamarama and then wrote Everyone’s a Wally, and David Perry later said that working with Hinsley’s code “changed everything for me”.

Automania introduced Wally Week, a mechanic in a car factory; CRASH gave it a Smash at 88%. In Pyjamarama (92%) he was trapped in a dream, and Everyone’s a Wally (93%) gave the player five characters to control. Mikro-Gen previewed Everyone’s a Wally at the LET trade show in February 1985 with, as Retro Gamer remembered it, “a bloke in a large foam Wally Week suit and perhaps the most annoying song ever recorded”. “We were very chuffed to see Everyone’s a Wally knock Alien 8 off the top,” Meek told Sinclair User; Alien 8 was Ultimate’s new game that month. Laurie was proud of the graphics. Mikro-Gen talked about “replacement graphics”, which, Sinclair User explained, meant Wally could move behind objects in Everyone’s a Wally, where in Pyjamarama “his legs and belly tended to change colour”. “Every last bit of the Spectrum is used up,” Laurie said.

The games sold. “Overall, Pyjamarama has sold best,” Meek said in mid-1985, “but Everyone’s a Wally will probably surpass it.” For Herbert’s Dummy Run (90%), in which Wally’s baby son is lost in a department store, Mikro-Gen sent disposable nappies to people in the trade printed “There’s a big one coming your way”. Three Weeks in Paradise (93%), in 1986, was David Perry’s.

Mikro-Gen’s CRASH scores, from the magazine’s index of January 1988:

Game	Score	Issue
Everyone’s a Wally	93%	14
Three Weeks in Paradise	93%	26
Pyjamarama	92%	10
Sir Fred	91%	26
Herbert’s Dummy Run	90%	18
Stainless Steel	89%	32
Automania	88%	7
Equinox	87%	30
Frost Byte	86%	35
Laserwarp	77%	2
Battle of the Planets	71%	26
Cop-Out	65%	37
Cruise Attack	62%	2
Knockout	62%	2
Pat the Postman	52%	2

The Mikro-Plus

In August 1985 CRASH put the Mikro-Plus on its cover: “At last the 64K Spectrum! MIKRO-PLUS — 16, 48 now 64K of Program Power.” Inside, the magazine explained how it worked. The interface, which looked like a joystick interface and had a joystick port built in, carried a ROM holding part of the game. When it was plugged in, that ROM replaced the Spectrum’s own, and the rest of the game loaded from cassette into the normal 48K of RAM. Meek claimed a programmer could write a program 50% larger than usual. Each interface was specific to its own game, so the hardware and the game were sold together, for £14.95. The extra code also gave the game a one-command Microdrive copy and, because Meek worried about poorly aligned tape recorders, a routine for adjusting the cassette head.

Two games were planned to launch it, the shoot-’em-up Battle of the Planets and Shadow of the Unicorn, a role-playing adventure with ten characters and a book to set the scene. Sinclair User had heard about the book in June: Mikro-Gen had “commissioned a non-wally to write a fantasy novel on which a game will be based”, and Laurie described the game as “Lords of Midnight-ish but animated”. In the end Shadow of the Unicorn was the only game sold with the Mikro-Plus. David Perry later recalled that Three Weeks in Paradise had also been meant for the hardware, and that he was left “sitting there with a version of Three Weeks In Paradise far too big to fit in a normal Spectrum”.

The reviews were lukewarm. CRASH’s adventure column found the game “far inferior in terms of basic structure” to the eighteen-month-old Lords of Midnight. Sinclair User thought “most of the extra memory seems to be about having a really enormous playing area. The graphics themselves are not particularly special”. Your Sinclair’s first issue nevertheless showed it new in its top ten at number five.

“It went out there and it died”

CRASH’s tips writer, Robin Candy, saw the problem for his own column in December 1985:

With the advent of Mikro Plus pokes will be a thing of the past because the EPROM inside the interface takes over the Spectrum’s ROM so there is no BASIC. As a result, if you can’t complete a game that uses Mikro-Plus then it’s tough.

Pokes, the short memory changes that gave a player infinite lives, were typed into BASIC before a game loaded. With no BASIC to type them into, the magazine could no longer help. Candy went on:

Mikro-Gen’s advertisements in the trade press boast of beating the pirates but I would venture to suggest that the £15 price mark carried by Mikro Plus games is likely to do more damage to sales than the pirates ever could.

Perry told Retro Gamer in 2008 that the idea came when “the games were selling very well and Mikro-Gen was making a lot of money — almost to the point where we were starting to get a little cocky”. He praised Laurie’s design, “a very clever piece of electronics”, but described the result plainly: “Shadow Of The Unicorn shipped first. It went out there and it died. Like corporately, it was a disaster, retailers were upset, so much so that Mikro-Gen couldn’t afford to do a second game using the technology.” ACE, listing the industry’s failures in December 1988, put it in one line: “Mikro-Gen faded away not long after their unicorn.”

Creative Sparks

Mikro-Gen carried on for another year without the interface. Raffaele Cecco’s Equinox (87%), Stainless Steel (89%) and Frost Byte (86%) all reviewed well, and at the end of 1986 the company ran a competition to find its top games player of the year, with the finalists playing its new game Cop-Out. By spring 1987 the company had been sold. Computer Gamer noted in April that “Mikro-Gen has made Creative Sparks glow brighter”, and in June listed Mikro-Gen with Melbourne House, PSS and Thalamus among companies that had sought “the shelter of larger companies”. In October CRASH reported that Creative Sparks Distribution had “recently went into receivership”.

The Wally games outlived the company. Alternative Software reissued Everyone’s a Wally on budget, and CRASH reported in 1988 that Alternative’s re-releases usually sold between 40,000 and 100,000 copies each. In 2025 the Spectrum Next magazine Next reported a deal to bring the Wally games to the Next; see the Alternative Software entry.

Sources

Your Computer, July 1982, p. 92: retailer’s advertisement (“We’ve got Mikro Gen products in stock”).
Sinclair User issue 6, September 1982, and Computer & Video Games issue 11, September 1982: Mikro-Gen advertisements (ZX81 programs, the A/D converter board, 24 Agar Crescent, Bracknell).
Sinclair User issue 39, June 1985, pp. 59–61: “Hit Squad”, profile of Mikro-Gen (Meek and Laurie; “We started Mikro-Gen to make money”; Sunbury Computer Club; the first ZX Microfair; Bomber; subcontracting before Automania; Chris Hinsley from 1 January 1984; replacement graphics; Everyone’s a Wally and Alien 8; the nappies; the commissioned novel).
CRASH issue 48, January 1988: the CRASH index (all scores in the table) and the review of the year (Automania a Smash; Battle of the Planets 71%). Issue 9 to issue 15, October 1984 to April 1985: advertisements at 44 The Broadway, Bracknell.
Retro Gamer issue 13, 2005: the LET show of February 1985.
CRASH issue 19, August 1985: cover, and p. 20, the Mikro-Plus explained (£14.95, the 50% claim, the Microdrive and head-alignment routines, the two launch games). Issue 20, September 1985, p. 13: John Minson on Shadow of the Unicorn. Issue 23, December 1985, p. 79: Robin Candy’s tips column. Issue 24, Christmas 1985, p. 163: Shadow of the Unicorn review (£14.95, “far inferior”).
Sinclair User issue 45, December 1985: Shadow of the Unicorn review.
Your Sinclair issue 1, January 1986: top ten (Shadow of the Unicorn at number 5).
Computer & Video Games issue 50, December 1985: advertisement at Unit 15, The Western Centre, Bracknell.
Retro Gamer issue 55, 2008, p. 76: David Perry on the Mikro Plus and Three Weeks in Paradise. Retro Gamer Collection volume 4 (2010): the same Shiny Entertainment feature (Hinsley on Pyjamarama and Everyone’s a Wally). Retro Gamer issue 104, July 2012: Nick Jones at Mikro-Gen.
ACE issue 15, December 1988: “Company closed”.
Computer Gamer issue 22, January 1987: Mikro-Gen’s top-player contest and Cop-Out. Issue 25, April 1987, and issue 27, June 1987: the sale to Creative Sparks.
CRASH issue 44, September 1987: Forum (sold to Creative Sparks Distribution). Issue 45, October 1987: Creative Sparks Distribution in receivership. Issue 49, February 1988: budget re-releases selling 40,000–100,000 copies.