PSS, short for Personal Software Services, was the Coventry company that sold wargames to people who had bought their computers for arcade games. Its founders, Gary Mays and Richard Cockayne, could not program when they started. Its best-known game, Theatre Europe (1985), let the player order a nuclear strike on a European city, and a real Coventry telephone number had to be dialled before the full nuclear option would unlock. PSS also gave its wargames something that divided reviewers: arcade sequences, played with a joystick, whose results fed back into the battle.
Fast facts
- Founded: November 1981, Coventry, by Gary Mays and Richard Cockayne.
- Addresses: 112 Oliver Street, Coventry, in 1982; 452 Stoney Stanton Road, Coventry, from early 1983.
- First products: ZX81 utilities, including the QSave fast loader and the MCoder compiler; then arcade games for the ZX81 and Spectrum.
- Wargamers series: Battle for Midway (1984), Theatre Europe (1985), Battle of Britain (1985), then Tobruk, Bismarck and Battlefield Germany. All three 1984–85 titles were designed by Alan Steele.
- Other titles: Swords and Sorcery, The Covenant, Sorcerer Lord; British releases of ERE Informatique’s French games, starting with Macadam Bumper.
- Afterwards: controlled by Mirrorsoft from 1987 (80%). It continued as a Mirrorsoft label, with Conflict: Europe in 1989 and Level 9’s Champion of the Raj in 1991.
Two graduates and a magazine rack
Amstrad Action told the founding story in March 1986. In November 1981 Mays and Cockayne, “recent Management Studies graduates from Warwick University”, walked into W.H. Smith’s in Coventry and found computer magazines full of advertisements for mail-order games. At that point “neither of them… could tell a bit from a byte”. They advertised for programmers, had fifteen programs within two months, and sold T-shirts while they waited for them.
Your Commodore, visiting in 1984, added the setbacks. The first idea, a software library that subscribers could borrow from and copy, failed. A Coventry enterprise scheme paid them £40 a week, which kept them going for three or four months until their first success: QSave, a fast-loading device for the ZX81, sold as hardware and software together. The two magazines disagree about how well it sold. Your Commodore gave a figure of 30,000 over eighteen months; Amstrad Action said 2,000.
The early advertisements show a mail-order house working from a home address, 112 Oliver Street, selling ZX81 utilities and programs. By February 1983 PSS had moved to Stoney Stanton Road and was advertising MCoder, a BASIC compiler. A PSS advertisement in Sinclair User called the Spectrum version “the first real integer compiler for the Sinclair Spectrum”, and another offered £1,000 for the best program written with it. By April 1983 it was selling arcade games under the slogan “The Future Makers”: Ghost Hunt, Hopper, Maze Death Race and Krazy Kong.
Mays was frank about that phase. “We didn’t have a huge success with Spectrum: we came in too late,” he told Your Commodore. PSS survived the shake-out, he told Amstrad Action, because “we weren’t programmers. We were more business-oriented, and we knew what to do.” By 1986 it employed eight people full-time: three on the business side and five programmers.
As for the name, Mays told Amstrad Action that it “was our first and biggest mistake”, and pleaded that “we Letraseted our first publicity ourselves. We just seemed to have more Ps and Ss than anything else.”
The Wargamers
The series was the idea of PSS’s senior programmer, Alan Steele, a lifelong wargamer who, Mays said, had come to the company “fed up with the standard” of the wargames he played. The first, Battle for Midway, came out on the Commodore 64 in the autumn of 1984; Amstrad Action reported that it had sold 45,000 copies in fifteen months. Theatre Europe was the second in the series and Battle of Britain, priced at £9.95, the third.
PSS’s distinctive idea was to put arcade action inside the strategy. In Theatre Europe, Computer Gamer explained, you planned on map and radar screens, “however, you will also need a keen fire button as individual battles are fought out with a joystick on action screens”. ZZAP!64 spelled out the consequence: “How well you do on this screen… plays a major part in the game”, as a strength factor for your forces elsewhere. In Battle of Britain the action screens put the player in a Spitfire and behind anti-aircraft guns, and Computer Gamer noted that “your skill in this stage will affect the outcome of the battles, as in Theatre Europe”.
Not everyone wanted them. ZZAP!64 advised “serious wargamers” to switch the action screens off. CRASH’s strategy reviewer, looking at the Spectrum Battle for Midway in July 1985, thought “a vast amount of wargame has been jettisoned to make way for an arcade section which is petty and pointless”. PSS carried on regardless. Mays promised that in Bismarck “it will be difficult to tell arcade from strategy – it will take over where Beach Head left off”, and in 1987 CRASH reported that the Spectrum Tobruk would have an arcade sequence and was “intended to appeal to a much wider market than the wargamers who have traditionally been the main supporters of PSS games”.
Theatre Europe
Theatre Europe simulates the first thirty days of a third world war, fought between NATO and the Warsaw Pact over West Germany. The player commands either side, against the computer, at one of three levels. Computer Gamer described them as a non-nuclear game for beginners, the accepted NATO or Warsaw Pact strategies for more advanced players, and “a highly unpredictable strategy that should only be tackled by experts”.
Chemical and nuclear strikes are part of the game. To take direct control of targeting and warheads, ZZAP!64 explained, a player had thirty seconds to ring a real number, a Coventry one “contactable 24 hours a day”, and obtain an authorisation code. The game opened with “Give Peace a Chance”, and its instructions pledged it to peace. Steele told ZZAP!64 that PSS had researched both sides’ forces, including contacts with the Ministry of Defence and the Soviet embassy in London. When the computer played itself, the Warsaw Pact won every time, so PSS “had to fiddle the figures” to make a playable game.
It sold. The Gallup chart printed in Computer Gamer in August 1985 had Theatre Europe at number 7 on the Commodore 64 top ten and number 26 in the overall top thirty.
It also drew complaints. Amstrad Action noted that the Wargamers series had “stimulated its fair share of controversy”, with letters to the magazine when Battle of Britain came out, and that Theatre Europe “was not calculated to dampen public interest”. Mays defended it: “Some people will always think they’re distasteful, but personally I don’t understand why a TV series or a comic or a film is acceptable when a game dealing with a conflict is not… I find the concept of a game like Rambo much more distasteful than what we do.” Theatre Europe, he said, “was an attempt to make people think a bit more”. The magazine added that Mays had begun “as a staunch supporter of CND”, and now said, “I’m not sure any more. I can see both sides of the argument.”
No copier adverts
PSS also took a public stand on piracy. In October 1984 Acorn User reported that PSS “has adopted a policy of not advertising in any magazine which carries adverts for tape or disc copiers”. Richard Cockayne, one of the directors, said he was “fairly appalled” at the companies selling copier programs:
In the longer term they are cutting their own throat. There’s no need for such devices. We will replace any tape which doesn’t load.
Beyond the wargames
PSS published more than wargames. In 1984 it went to the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago looking for Commodore software and came back with Symbol Software’s Neoclipse. It released Hyper Biker, a BMX game, and planned Theatre Europe for the MSX as well as the Commodore 64, Amstrad and Atari. Swords and Sorcery, a role-playing game built on what PSS called its MIDAS animation system, was promised for mid-October 1984 in Your Commodore. In March 1986 Amstrad Action found it “advertised for well over a year” and still not quite ready on the Amstrad. PSS had “bit off more than we could chew”, Mays admitted. The same visit found PSS bringing ERE Informatique’s French games to Britain, starting with the pinball game Macadam Bumper.
Mirrorsoft
In March 1987 CRASH reported that Mirrorsoft’s parent group “has conquered wargames specialists PSS”. Gary Mays, by then joint managing director, was “happy about the move - it’ll give his company guaranteed distribution and financial security for new projects”. Mirrorsoft took an 80% holding. A year later CRASH reported that PSS was turning its product line towards 16-bit machines, although Spectrum owners “should still be seeing PSS games on the shelves, but merely less frequently”.
As a Mirrorsoft label, PSS published Conflict: Europe (1989), a 16-bit game on the same theme as Theatre Europe: the first thirty days of a possible third world war. Amiga Action said “due to its previous 8-bit success, PSS have decided to bring it out in 16-bit format”. In 1991 PSS published Level 9’s Champion of the Raj. Mirrorsoft went into liquidation at the end of that year.
Sources
- Pete Connor, “PSS”, Amstrad Action issue 6, March 1986, pp. 97–98: the name, the founding in November 1981, the Wargamers series, Alan Steele, Battle for Midway’s sales, the controversy and Mays’s replies, CND, Bismarck, Tobruk, Swords and Sorcery, ERE Informatique, the staff of eight.
- Alison Hjul, “Behind Closed Doors”, Your Commodore issue 2, November 1984, pp. 76–77: the software library, the £40 enterprise allowance, QSave, Spectrum and Commodore, Symbol Software and Neoclipse, Battle for Midway, Hyper Biker, Swords and Sorcery.
- PSS advertisements: Your Computer, May 1982, p. 96, and November 1982, p. 147 (112 Oliver Street); Your Computer, February 1983, p. 150 (452 Stoney Stanton Road, the £1,000 MCoder prize); Sinclair User issue 12, March 1983, p. 79 (MCoder); Your Computer, April 1983, p. 140 (“The Future Makers”).
- Computer Gamer issue 2, May 1985, p. 6: Theatre Europe preview, including the planned formats.
- Computer Gamer issue 4, July 1985, p. 7: Battle of Britain preview.
- Computer Gamer issue 5, August 1985, p. 10: Gallup charts.
- ZZAP!64 issue 2, June 1985, pp. 18–20: Theatre Europe review and “Developing Theatre Europe”.
- CRASH issue 18, July 1985, p. 129: Battle for Midway review.
- Geoff Nairn, piracy feature, Acorn User issue 27, October 1984, p. 20.
- CRASH issue 38, March 1987, p. 10: “Merger mania”.
- C16 & Plus/4 Handbook issue 9, April 1987: “Mirrorsoft Takeover” (80% of PSS); see Mirrorsoft.
- CRASH issue 52, May 1988, p. 7: PSS turns towards 16-bit machines.
- Amiga Action issue 1, October 1989, p. 57: Conflict: Europe review.
- For Champion of the Raj and Mirrorsoft’s liquidation, see Level 9 and Mirrorsoft.