Quicksilva began because Nick Lambert could not get enough memory for his ZX80. In August 1980, tired of waiting for Sinclair’s 3K memory pack and put off by its price, he designed and built his own. He swapped one of his packs for an advertisement in a users’ club magazine, sold about 50 of the first design, and found he had a business. Within two years the company in his house in Southampton was selling arcade games and hardware add-ons for the ZX81, and by the end of 1983 it was publishing Ant Attack for the ZX Spectrum. In June 1984 the publisher Argus Press bought it, and the people who had built it left.
Fast facts
- Founded: 1980, in Southampton, by Nick Lambert and John Hollis.
- Addresses: 95 Upper Brownhill Road, Maybush, Southampton, in 1981–82; Palmerston Park House, 13 Palmerston Road, Southampton, by 1984.
- Managing director: Rod Cousens, who was introduced to the founders in 1981.
- Known for: the QS range of ZX81 games and add-ons; Ant Attack, Games Designer, Bugaboo (The Flea) and Meteor Storm on the Spectrum.
- Bought: by Argus Press, part of the BET group, in June 1984.
RAM packs and Defender
Lambert had built electronic organs for a living, and he soon decided to make memory packs as a business. He told ZX Computing in 1982 that he had charged about £40 when Sinclair’s pack cost £64, and had sold around 400 of them. When the ZX81 came out, he decided that “a good moving graphics game would go well” alongside his hardware. He chose Defender, because it was his favourite arcade game. It took three months, most of it his own work, and by his estimate it sold four or five thousand copies.
Games and hardware went on side by side. The ZX81 had no sound and could draw only with the blocks in its character set, so Quicksilva sold boards to add more: a sound board, a programmable character generator, a high-resolution graphics board and a motherboard to plug them into. Computer & Video Games listed the character generator at £26 in May 1982. It let the user define their own characters, from lower-case letters to “space invader-type meanies”. In the same round-up the magazine counted three Quicksilva games on the market, “all versions of popular arcade games”: space invaders, defender and asteroids, at £5.50 each.
By 1982 four people worked full time. ZX Computing described John Hollis as Lambert’s “sidekick”, who had “done most of the design work”. Mark Eyles was production manager, and Steinar Lund painted the cassette covers. Lund told CRASH in 1985 that he had known Lambert and Hollis before they started, did some rough sketches without being asked, and so painted the first cover, for QS Defenda. He thought it was probably the first games cassette cover in colour. Eyles made a similar claim for the whole company: “You know we were the first company to have coloured cassette sleeves and stories to go with each game.”
The ZX81 range was sold under a QS prefix. By 1984 the advertisements credited QS Defenda to Nick Lambert, QS Asteroids to John Hollis, and QS Invaders and QS Scramble to Dave Edwards, at £3.95 each. Computer & Video Games summed up the range in September 1982: Quicksilva had “already won themselves a good reputation for producing good arcade replicas within the limitations of the ZX81”.
Racing Bug-Byte to the Spectrum
When the Spectrum arrived in 1982, the early software houses raced to put the same arcade games on it. “Southampton firm Quicksilva were hot on the heels of Bug Byte with their version of Invaders for the Spectrum — Space Intruders,” Computer & Video Games reported in November 1982. It tested three Spectrum invaders games side by side, from Quicksilva, Bug-Byte and Psion. Quicksilva’s was the fastest, “so fast in fact that it detracted from the playability of the game”, though it had extras the others lacked, such as a hold button. The verdict went to Bug-Byte. Two months later the magazine compared three versions of Asteroids, and this time Quicksilva’s Meteor Storm won: “marginally better because of its extra facilities and graphics”. It was also the only one that let players enter their initials in the high-score table.
Quicksilva also gave its games a world of their own. Mark Eyles, by then its Creative Design Executive, invented the Faluvian Empire as the setting for many of them, and started the Game Lords club for its customers. Caroline Hayon, the third person to join the company, ran the club, and CRASH reported that it had more than 5,000 members at one stage. The company advertised under the slogan “Quicksilva are the game lords”.
Ant Attack and Games Designer
By early 1984 the Spectrum catalogue had grown well beyond arcade copies. A full-page advertisement in Sinclair User in February 1984 credited every program to its author:
| Program | Author | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Ant Attack | Sandy White | £6.95 |
| Games Designer | John Hollis | £14.95 |
| Bugaboo (The Flea) | Indescomp | £6.95 |
| Gridrunner, Traxx | Jeff Minter/Salamander | £6.95 each |
| Velnor’s Lair | Derek Brewster | £6.95 |
| 3D Strategy | Freddy Vachha | £6.95 |
| Aquaplane | John Hollis | £7.95 |
The same advertisement listed Commodore 64, VIC-20, BBC Micro and ZX81 programs. Among the BBC titles was Mined-Out, credited to Ian Andrew and Ian Rowlings. Andrew had written the Spectrum original in BASIC and sent it to Quicksilva in answer to an advertisement for programs. He told CRASH that it was “the sixth or seventh program released by Quicksilva”, and that Ian Rowlings converted it for the BBC. Andrew went on to found Incentive Software.
Ant Attack shows how quickly Quicksilva could decide. Sandy White had first sent a videotape of the game to Sinclair Research. According to Retro Gamer’s 2004 profile of White, after a month or two a phone call ended with the tape being sent back, and White later learned that Sinclair “didn’t own a video player and couldn’t view it”. He then phoned Quicksilva, and had to push hard before anyone would look. Once they had, he was in its Southampton offices signing a contract within 24 hours of the tape arriving. CRASH’s first issue had passed on the same story from Quicksilva’s press release: the company was so impressed that “they flew Sandy down from Scotland and signed a contract within 24 hours”. That issue gave the game 85%, and Bugaboo 92%. The artist David Rowe painted Ant Attack’s surreal cover. He had started working for Quicksilva in autumn 1982, when his friend Nick Lambert was setting it up, and by 1985 had painted more than 50 of its covers.
Games Designer was John Hollis’s. It came in a video-cassette box with eight simple arcade games, each of which the buyer could take apart and change: the sprites, colours, sound effects, movement and attack waves. CRASH gave it 89%. Sinclair User noted that Quicksilva had reached the shops before Melbourne House’s similar HURG, and that Quicksilva’s package had eight example games to HURG’s three.
The Guild of Software Houses
Quicksilva was also one of the companies that set up the industry’s own watchdog. In October 1983 Commodore Computing International reported that “leading software houses such as Quicksilva, Virgin Games and Bug-Byte founded the guild”. Members of the Guild of Software Houses pledged to a Customers’ Charter: keeping to promised mail-order delivery times, replacing faulty stock and dealing promptly with complaints. Quicksilva and Bug-Byte also held the Quick-Byte awards together, a spoof ceremony at which they handed out busts of Sir Clive Sinclair, the “Clives”, to people in the industry.
Bought by Argus
“Another rumble was to be heard at the very start of June,” CRASH reported in August 1984, “with the news that Argus had bought out Quicksilva.” Argus Press was the publishing arm of the British Electric Traction group (BET). Rod Cousens, the managing director, said the deal had been “on and off and on again for months”. Cousens had joined in 1981, when he was introduced to Lambert and Hollis. A 1990 history of the industry in ACE described him as brought in “to look after the company finances, and indeed, run the company”. Argus told Sinclair User that nothing would change in Quicksilva’s marketing or staffing.
CRASH told the rest in 1985, in a profile of Cousens. The deal came, he said, because the founders had decided they had had enough: “the structure of the industry was stifling their creativity — they wanted a complete break”. Lambert and Hollis moved to the Channel Islands. Cousens stayed until Argus moved the company from Southampton to its London offices, then left to start a new software house, Electric Dreams. Mark Eyles and Caroline Hayon set up a holography business in Southampton. “Much of the pioneering firm’s identity was submerged when Quicksilva was bought by Argus,” CRASH wrote.
The name carried on. In April 1985 Argus took over the production and marketing of Lothlorien’s games, and Quicksilva bought the rights to seven Bug-Byte titles. Sinclair User complained in 1986 that Argus had bought labels “left, right and centre”, Quicksilva, A’n’F, CCS and Bug-Byte among them, and done little with them. In September 1987 Commodore Computing International expected Argus’s The Tube to win back fans for “what was once one of the top games houses, Quicksilva”. In January 1988 CRASH reported that Argus Press Software, the publisher of Quicksilva, Bug-Byte, Mind Games and Lothlorien, had been bought by its managing director Stephen Hall, who planned to rename it Grand Slam Entertainment.
Sources
- ZX Computing, first issue, 1982, p. 74: Tim Hartnell, “Quicksilva: the man behind it” (Nick Lambert; the ZX80 3K pack; Defender; the add-on boards; John Hollis; Mark Eyles; Steinar Lund; 95 Upper Brownhill Road).
- Computer & Video Games issue 2, December 1981, and issue 4, February 1982: Quicksilva advertisements for ZX80 and ZX81 arcade games.
- Computer & Video Games issue 7, May 1982: games and the character generator; issue 11, September 1982: ZX81 review (“good arcade replicas”); issue 13, November 1982: three Spectrum invaders games; issue 15, January 1983: three Spectrum asteroids games.
- Commodore Computing International vol. 2 no. 6, October 1983: the Guild of Software Houses.
- Sinclair User issue 23, February 1984: Quicksilva advertisement (“Quicksilva are the game lords”; titles, authors and prices); the same issue, Games Designer and HURG.
- Acorn Programs, March 1984: the same advertisement (the QS ZX81 titles and their authors).
- Computer & Video Games issue 27, January 1984: Quicksilva’s address at Palmerston Park House, 13 Palmerston Road.
- CRASH issue 1, February 1984: Ant Attack review (the press release; 85%) and Bugaboo review (92%); issue 3, April 1984: Games Designer review (89%).
- CRASH issue 7, August 1984, news: Argus buys Quicksilva. Sinclair User issue 29, August 1984, news: “Quicksilva takeover”.
- Your Spectrum issue 8, October 1984, p. 88: interview with Mark Eyles (the Faluvian Empire; the early days; coloured sleeves).
- CRASH issue 14, March 1985: Steinar Lund profile. Issue 15, April 1985: David Rowe profile; news from the LET show (Lothlorien; the Bug-Byte titles).
- CRASH issue 16, May 1985, pp. 109–110: Ian Andrew profile (Mined-Out; Ian Rowlings’s BBC version).
- CRASH issue 20, September 1985, pp. 103–104: Rod Cousens profile (the founders; the labels and the Game Lords club; the Quick-Byte awards; the Argus deal; the move to London).
- CRASH issue 21, October 1985, p. 36: Mark Eyles and Caroline Hayon (the start of Quicksilva; the Game Lords club; the sale and move to London).
- Sinclair User issue 57, December 1986: Argus’s labels.
- Commodore Computing International vol. 6 no. 2, September 1987: The Tube and Quicksilva.
- CRASH issue 48, January 1988, news: “Argus renamed in massive change”.
- ACE issue 28, January 1990: history of the industry (Lambert, Hollis and Cousens).
- “Ant Attack”, Retro Gamer issue 5, 2004: Sandy White on Sinclair Research, Quicksilva and David Rowe’s cover.