Players | Code Like It's 198x

At the Consumer Electronics Show at Olympia in April 1986, Richard Jones of Interceptor Micros had a stand, a promotional video and a stack of new packaging, but no games running. He was launching a budget label called Players. CRASH reported that its games would sell for £1.99 and that “the range kicks off on 29th April with sixteen titles for the popular machines”. Jones assured the magazine that “lots of work has gone into the packaging design as well as the software”.

The packaging came first, and it stayed the label’s best-known feature. The games were uneven. But the label that launched with sixteen cassettes at once also gave the teenage Oliver twins an early sale, and eighteen months later it published Joe Blade, a budget best seller that winter.

Fast facts

Owner: Interceptor Micros, of Calleva Park, Aldermaston, Berkshire, run by Richard Jones.
Launched: April 1986, at £1.99 a cassette.
Later ranges: Players Premier at £2.99 from 1989; 16-bit games at £9.95, then £14.95 from 1988.
Best known for: Joe Blade (1987) and Joe Blade II (1988), by Colin Swinbourne.
Last games: still being reviewed at £2.99 in 1991.

A second label for Interceptor

Interceptor was Richard Jones’s company. He had started it in Tadley after a short partnership with Jeff Minter, and by the mid-1980s it had its own tape duplication, printing and design departments at Calleva Park in Aldermaston. Players gave the same address in 1986. “Players came about because we had a mid-price point and we felt the need for another level,” Jones told Retro Gamer in 2013.

The look was the work of Interceptor’s studio manager, Mike Wood. ZX Computing noticed it straight away: a “geometric abstract look” aimed at “the impulse buyer”. “If they pay as much attention to the quality of software as they have done in devising the visuals,” it said, “Players may be a label to look out for.” Its first six Spectrum games included Shrewsbury Key, Cagara, Desert Hawk and Journey to the Centre of Eddie Smith’s Head.

The early reviews were cool. Looking back over 1986, CRASH wrote that the first Players games “were met with an almost unanimous lukewarm reception, despite the Hip-Hop packaging”. ZZAP!64 made the same point about Velocipede II on the Commodore 64: “As is the case with other Players’ releases, the graphics are very pretty, the music is quite jolly, and the presentation is first class”, but “there’s very little to do”.

New games, mostly

Most Players games were new. According to Jones, the label also reissued some of Interceptor’s older games.

Among the new names were Philip and Andrew Oliver, still at school and preparing for their A-levels. Their Killapede was a Centipede-style game with speech: it announced “Welcome to Killapede” when it had loaded. The twins threatened to take it to another publisher if Players would not pay more than £250 for it. Players would not, and they accepted. Amstrad Action reviewed it in July 1986, alongside Players’ Trollie Wallie and Nuclear Heist.

Interceptor’s software co-ordinator, Simon Daniels, later explained why so many Players games were about guns. When Codemasters launched, he told Retro Gamer, it had committed itself to non-violent games, and Players “went the other way”. He would ask programmers to replace a spaceship with an F-14 or a robot with a mercenary, because it gave the artists something more interesting to paint. The label also leaned on the action films of the day. Andy Severn, one of Interceptor’s programmers, wrote the music for most of Players’ Spectrum and Amstrad games.

Joe Blade

Joe Blade was Colin Swinbourne’s first game. The player sends a commando into the fortress of the terrorist leader Crax Bloodfinger to rescue six captured world leaders, disguising himself in a guard’s uniform and priming six bombs by rearranging an access code against the clock. CRASH reviewed it in September 1987 and gave it 84%. “Here’s a budget game that IS worth buying,” one reviewer wrote. The magazine’s look back at the year explained the score: two reviewers “loved the game (90%)”, a third thought it only above average at 65%, and the editor, Roger Kean, stepped in to agree 84%.

The public agreed. When CRASH reviewed Swinbourne’s next game, Deviants, in January 1988, it noted that Joe Blade “sat at the top of the sales charts for more than a month”. The charts of the time listed budget and full-price games separately: Commodore Computing International’s budget chart for January 1988 had Joe Blade at number three, and it was still in Your Sinclair’s Gallup budget chart in March. Deviants did less well. “I’ve been eagerly awaiting the next game from the programmer of Joe Blade — but I’m disappointed by Deviants,” one reviewer wrote, and it scored 65%.

Joe Blade II (1988) took away Joe’s gun and sent him to rescue citizens from street gangs in 1995, with four puzzle sub-games. CRASH gave it 90% in October 1988.

Joe Blade also went abroad. Its 16-bit versions cost £9.95 in Britain, and in the United States DigiTek Software of Tampa, Florida, sold the Amiga version at $34.95, with the plot unchanged down to the name of Crax Bloodfinger.

Premier, 16-bit and the end

The label’s range and prices grew. By the end of 1987 Players was selling two-game “Zap Paks” on Spectrum +3 disk at £6.95. Its 16-bit games, which had sold at £9.95, went up to £14.95 in 1988, “for reasons of greed probably”, The Games Machine suggested. In 1989 a dearer 8-bit range, Players Premier, appeared at £2.99, with games such as War Machine and Mutant Fortress.

Interceptor itself did not last. By Jones’s account, the company lost £600,000 in a single year around 1989, as games grew more expensive to make and the 8-bit market shrank. Early in 1990 it went into voluntary receivership, and his father ran it while its assets were sold. Players games went on appearing for a while: CRASH reviewed Lop Ears and other Players releases at £2.99 in June 1991. The Story of the Oliver Twins says the label “fell victim to the decline of computer games and the rise of cartridge-based consoles in the early 1990s”. The sources checked for this entry do not record the last Players release.

Players and Kixx

Players is sometimes set beside Kixx, U.S. Gold’s budget label of 1988, but the two worked differently. Kixx was mainly a re-release label. It sold games from U.S. Gold’s back catalogue and other publishers’, including Gremlin Graphics, Thalamus, System 3 and MicroProse, and it signed Topo Soft to write a few original games such as Blackbeard. Players did the reverse: most of its games were new, with a few reissues from Interceptor’s own catalogue.

Sources

CRASH issue 29, June 1986, p. 12: news, “Players please?” (Richard Jones at the CES; £1.99; sixteen titles from 29 April; the packaging and video).
ZX Computing, June 1986, p. 21: “Players is an offshoot of Interceptor Software”; £1.99; the packaging; the six Spectrum titles.
Your Computer, July 1986, p. 19: “Interceptor has launched a label called Players.”
Amstrad Action issue 10, July 1986, p. 43: contents (Killapede, Trollie Wallie and Nuclear Heist, all Players).
ZZAP!64 issue 19, November 1986, p. 28: Velocipede II review (Players, £1.99).
Sinclair User issue 56, November 1986, p. 9: Players Software, Calleva Park, Aldermaston, Berkshire.
CRASH issue 36, Christmas Special 1986, pp. 57–58: review of the year (the first Players games).
CRASH issue 44, September 1987, p. 30: Joe Blade review (author Colin Swinbourne; £1.99; 84%).
CRASH issue 48, Christmas Special 1987: review of the year, pp. 153–154 (the reviewers’ 90% and 65%, and the agreed 84%); Deviants review, p. 168 (65%; Joe Blade “at the top of the sales charts for more than a month”); news, p. 186 (Zap Paks at £6.95).
Commodore Computing International vol. 6 no. 5, January 1988, p. 124: budget chart (Joe Blade third).
Your Sinclair issue 27, March 1988, p. 22: Gallup full-price and budget charts.
CRASH issue 52, May 1988, p. 14: Tanium review (Players, £1.99, author Colin Swinbourne).
The Games Machine issue 11, October 1988, p. 77: Players’ 16-bit prices (£9.95, then £14.95).
CRASH issue 57, October 1988, p. 30: Joe Blade II review (90%).
Amiga World, December 1988, p. 30, and November 1989, p. 46: Joe Blade for the Amiga from DigiTek, $34.95.
CRASH issue 69, October 1989, p. 26: Players Premier at £2.99. Your Sinclair issue 93, September 1993: index of reviews (Players Premier titles).
CRASH issue 89, June 1991, p. 42: Lop Ears and another Players release at £2.99.
Graeme Mason, “From the Archives: Interceptor Software”, Retro Gamer issue 115, June 2013, pp. 42–47: interviews with Richard Jones, Simon Daniels and Andy Severn (why Players was set up; Mike Wood’s design; reissues of Interceptor games; the violent themes; Severn’s music; the loss and the receivership in early 1990).
Chris Wilkins and Roger M. Kean, The Story of the Oliver Twins (Fusion Retro Books), pp. 48–49: Killapede, the £250 fee, Players’ packaging and its end.