When Software Creations converted an arcade game, the starting point could be the arcade board itself. Programmer Steve Ruddy remembered receiving the board for Ghouls ’n Ghosts from U.S. Gold, with little other help. Artist Andy Threlfall studied its graphics test pages; Ruddy played the game repeatedly to work out what to reproduce on the Commodore 64. A conversion meant reconstructing the game for different hardware, rather than moving the same program intact. (Ruddy’s retrospective interview, reprinted in Retro Gamer 266, p.51.)
The Manchester studio’s work crossed home computers and Nintendo consoles. Jason Brookes’s November 1992 interview with Richard Kay and Mike Webb in Super Play dates its start to late 1986. A later Howarth Games account gives 1985, with activity building in 1986; the contemporary introduction supplies the date used here.
An arcade game on another machine
Brookes’s introduction traces a route through The Sentinel, Bubble Bobble and arcade conversions to console development. These were different jobs for different machines, even when the game’s name stayed the same. The board’s display, memory and sound facilities could not be assumed to exist at home.
Ruddy’s account makes the division of labour concrete. Reading graphics from the board’s diagnostic screens was Threlfall’s work; deciding how to fit the action to the C64 was a programming problem. The original game supplied a reference, not a complete recipe for the new version. That distinction matters when crediting a conversion alongside its arcade creators.
Building the tools for Nintendo
In 1992 Webb told Super Play that the company had visited Nintendo of America in 1987 and reached a development agreement the following year. The studio’s NES work included Solstice. Its SNES projects included the related Equinox, Super Off Road, Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge and the then-unpublished Plok.
Kay described the cost of Nintendo development equipment. Webb had adapted the studio’s existing hardware to work with the NES and SNES, reducing the expense and disruption of moving to another machine. He also described fitting Plok’s graphics into a smaller cartridge through compression. These are the founders’ accounts of their working methods, rather than independent proof of their claims to have been first outside Japan.
Music belonged to the development work
The musicians were programmers too. Super Play’s interview names Tim Follin and Geoff Follin while discussing the SNES sound hardware. The music needed instructions, data and playback routines that fitted the game’s memory and processor budget.
That work links Software Creations’ Bionic Commando and Ghouls ’n Ghosts conversions to its later console games. The related sound drivers entry explains why composing for a machine and building the software that plays the composition were often closely connected jobs.
Sources
- Jason Brookes, interview with Richard Kay and Mike Webb, Super Play 1, November 1992, p.18: contemporary introduction, late-1986 start, Manchester studio, conversions, console agreement, tools, compression and musicians. Original issue in the public collection; file “super play 001 - november 1992 (UK)”. Founders’ priority claims are not adopted as fact.
- Steve Ruddy, conversion interview first published in gamesTM 197, reprinted in Retro Gamer 266, p.51: attributed recollections of the C64 Ghouls ’n Ghosts board and Andy Threlfall’s graphics work. Public text copy.