Superior Software | Code Like It's 198x

Superior Software began in 1982 with £100: £50 each from two Leeds programmers, Richard Hanson and John Dyson. “I think we’d only spent about £20 of it before the money from sales started to roll in,” Hanson remembered. Within four years the company was the main games publisher for Acorn’s BBC Micro and Electron, and when Acorn stopped publishing games itself, Superior took over the Acornsoft label and Elite. It kept selling Acorn games long after most publishers had moved to other machines, and the same company still sells new versions of Repton today.

Fast facts

Founded: autumn 1982, in Leeds, by Richard Hanson and John Dyson; incorporated as Superior Software Ltd in September 1983.
Addresses: 69 Leeds Road, Bramhope, Leeds (1982–84); Regent House, Skinner Lane, Leeds 7 (from mid-1984).
Run by: Richard Hanson, managing director, with his brother Steve Hanson from late 1983.
Best-known games: Tim Tyler’s Repton series (from 1985), Peter Johnson’s Deathstar, Overdrive, Citadel, Galaforce, Ravenskull, and Peter Irvin and Jeremy Smith’s Exile (1988).
Acornsoft: took over Acorn’s games label and back catalogue in 1986.
Later: trades as Superior Interactive, selling remakes of its BBC Micro games for PC and mobile.

Two programmers and £100

Hanson and Dyson were both writing games before Superior existed. Hanson told Electron User he had written about 20 programs for Acorn’s earlier machine, the Atom, all published by Program Power, the Leeds company later known as Micro Power. Home Computing Weekly profiled the new firm in June 1983. Hanson, a computing science graduate, worked full time on programming and marketing. Dyson, who had studied physical sciences, still had a day job as an electronics engineer with a broadcasting company. Cyril Dove handled the post, and the company copied its own cassettes.

The first four games came out in the autumn of 1982, all for the BBC Micro: Galaxy Birds, Space Fighter and Centibug by Hanson, and Invaders by Dyson. Superior sent out just over 300 cassettes in November and more than 4,000 in December. In March 1983 its advertisement in Acorn User offered Space Fighter and Invaders at £6.50 on cassette or £9.90 on disc. By the summer it had also written an assembler and a toolkit for the Oric-1.

Dyson did not want to leave his job, Electron User reported, so he was bought out, and Hanson’s older brother Steve, a food scientist, joined the firm.

Arcade copies, and their limits

Superior’s early catalogue was built on arcade games. By December 1983 it was selling Space Fighter, Galaxians, Invaders and Fruit Machine at £7.95, card games at £6.95, adventures such as Star Trek Adventure and Lost City, and every title on 5¼-inch disc at £11.95. The adverts claimed more than 300 dealers across Britain and overseas, among them selected branches of W.H. Smith, John Menzies and Boots.

Its biggest early hit was Hunchback, which the advertisements said was “sold under licence from Century Electronics Ltd”. Most early releases sold 6,000 to 7,000 copies; Hunchback sold 26,000 and, in Electron User’s words, “propelled Superior into the forefront of BBC Micro software suppliers”.

Copying arcade games had risks. In January 1985 Acorn User reported that Atari was pressing smaller software houses over games that resembled its own, and that Superior had stopped selling Winged Warlords after Atari said it copied Joust. “It’s not the same game at all — ours has winged warlords instead of the ostriches used in Joust,” Hanson said. “Nevertheless, we took it off the market — we can’t afford to argue the case in court.” Peter Johnson, whose conversions Superior published, later told Retro Gamer that his Q*Bert had also come out under the arcade game’s name without a licence, and was pulled after about three weeks when “a scary ‘cease and desist’ letter arrived”.

“Available before we advertise”

Superior’s adverts carried a numbered guarantee. In the version Acorn User printed in December 1983 it read:

WE GUARANTEE THAT:

All our software runs correctly on all current operating systems and BASIC ROMs.

All our software is available before we advertise.

All our software is despatched within 48 hours by first class post.

In the unlikely event that any of our software fails to load, return your cassette or disc to us and we will immediately send a replacement.

The first point mattered on the BBC Micro, which was sold with more than one version of its operating system and BASIC ROMs, so a program that ran on one machine might fail on another. The second was a common line in mail-order adverts of the time. The Blackpool firm I.J.K. Software was printing “All our software is available before we advertise” in 1982, and it was worth printing because customers who paid by post could otherwise wait weeks for a game that did not yet exist. Within weeks the guarantee had lost the ROM promise: from January 1984 most of Superior’s adverts carried only the other three points.

Paying the authors

Superior advertised for programmers in the same space it advertised games. In December 1983 and January 1984 it offered “25% royalties for high quality BBC Micro, Electron and Oric-1 programs”; by the spring of 1984 the offer had become “up to 20%”.

In 1986 it advertised for programmers in magazines for other machines too, including CRASH, ZZAP!64 and Computer & Video Games. “Three years ago Richard Hanson set up Superior Software,” the advert began, and “now, 88 releases further on”, it called itself “the leading software house for BBC and Electron computers”. Authors received “80p for every cassette” sold, and the advert named two of them: “Tim Tyler’s Repton games have earnt him over £30,000 in less than a year — quite a sum for a 17 year old, and Deathstar author Peter Johnson has earnt almost £35,000 with us.” For comparison, the bedroom coder entry records typical Spectrum royalties of 10 to 25 per cent of the dealer price in the mid-1980s.

Repton

Repton arrived at Superior on a cassette in the post in early 1985. Tim Tyler was 16 when he wrote it; Superior had already published his first game, Moon Cycle, as BMX on the Moon. Tyler told Retro Gamer that the idea came from reading a review of Boulder Dash, which he did not actually see for another ten years or so. He drew the levels on paper and typed them in by hand, in binary.

Hanson and his marketing manager, Chris Payne, decided it “definitely had the makings of something special”. They asked Tyler to add a password system, so that players could start on any of the 12 levels, and published it a few months later with a £100 prize for the first photograph of the final screen. Repton 2 followed at the end of 1985 with one enormous level and a £200 prize. It was impossible when it first went on sale: one diamond was hidden under a transporter. Superior fixed new copies and replaced the game for players who wrote in. With 35,000 copies sold, Repton 2 was the best-selling game in the series by early 1989.

Counting Repton 3 and its extra screen sets, Electron User put the series’ total at 120,000 in February 1989; Hanson later gave Retro Gamer a figure of more than 125,000. The series reached beyond Acorn owners too. The Amiga public-domain game Wanderer, distributed on Fred Fish’s disks, was described in its catalogue entry as inspired by “games such as Boulderdash, Xor, and the Repton games from Superior Software”.

Taking over Acornsoft

In 1986 Acorn brought its software company, Acornsoft, back into the parent company, and its games passed to Superior. The two launched titles together for the BBC Master Compact that autumn, and by December a joint Superior Software/Acornsoft label was appearing on new games, starting with Galaforce. Superior reissued the back catalogue, including an Elite disc with versions for every BBC Micro and Master model. Its version of Elite had sold 17,500 copies by early 1989.

Exile and the later years

Superior kept publishing for the BBC Micro and Electron after most of the industry had moved on. Overdrive, a racing game, became its best seller, with nearly 40,000 copies across both machines, and the Electron version outsold the BBC one by two to one. Late in 1988 Superior took over the Sheffield publisher Alligata, and new games appeared on a joint Superior Software/Alligata label: first the boxing game By Fair Means or Foul, then in 1989 Repton Mania, which brought Repton and Repton 2 to the Spectrum. The company also bought in conversions from other formats: Peter Scott’s versions of Barbarian and The Last Ninja, and later Sim City. Its Play It Again Sam compilations collected games from its own list and from other publishers.

Exile, the arcade adventure Peter Irvin and Jeremy Smith spent two years writing, was one of Superior’s two biggest sellers at Christmas 1988, alongside The Last Ninja. Acorn User noted in April 1989 that “against the odds, Superior Software sold more games this Christmas than last”. Electron User reported that winter that the firm was moving from Leeds to Brigg in South Humberside, though Superior’s advertisements in the spring of 1989 still gave the Regent House address. In May 1990 The Micro User found the Repton series past 100,000 sales and the Play It Again Sam compilations, by then up to number 12, Superior’s best-selling line. It also published games for the Archimedes, Acorn’s 32-bit machine.

Superior Interactive

In 2004 Retro Gamer reported that the company, now Superior Interactive, was remaking its BBC Micro games for the PC with new graphics and levels. Repton was out, Galaforce Worlds and Ravenskull had been produced, and Repton 2, Repton 3, Pipeline, Codename: Droid and Stryker’s Run were in progress. Superior Software Ltd is still an active company at Companies House, with Richard Hanson as a director, and Superior Interactive sells Repton, Galaforce and Ravenskull for PC, iOS and Android.

Sources

Acorn User issue 8, March 1983, p. 51: Superior Software advertisement (Space Fighter, Invaders, £6.50 cassette, £9.90 disc).
“Superior Software”, Home Computing Weekly, 21 June 1983 (web transcription, secondary): Dyson and Hanson, autumn 1982, Bramhope, Cyril Dove, the November and December sales, the Oric-1 assembler and toolkit. https://www.stairwaytohell.com/articles/HCW21JUN83-Superior.html
Acorn User issue 17, December 1983, p. 175: advertisement with the four-point guarantee, the price list, the dealer list and 25% royalties. The Micro User vol. 1 no. 11, January 1984, and Acorn User issue 20, March 1984: the three-point guarantee.
Acorn Programs, April/May 1984, p. 2: advertisement (Hunchback “sold under licence from Century Electronics Ltd”; “up to 20% royalties”; Bramhope).
Acorn User issue 25, August 1984, and issue 27, October 1984: advertisements from Regent House, Skinner Lane, Leeds 7.
Acorn User issue 2, September 1982, and Computer & Video Games issue 12, October 1982: I.J.K. Software advertisements, “All our software is available before we advertise”.
Acorn User issue 30, January 1985, p. 17: news, Atari and Winged Warlords.
CRASH issue 29, June 1986, p. 120; ZZAP!64 issue 14, June 1986, p. 56; Computer & Video Games issue 56, June 1986, p. 65; Computer Gamer issue 15, June 1986, p. 52: “Can You Write Games?” advertisement.
Amstrad Action issue 38, November 1988, p. 10: news, Alligata taken over. Commodore Disk User, January 1989, p. 4: “By Fair Means or Foul is on the new Superior Software/Alligata label”. Sinclair User issue 85, April 1989, p. 99: Superior Software and Alligata advertisement for Repton Mania on the Spectrum.
Acorn User issue 81, April 1989, editorial: “against the odds, Superior Software sold more games this Christmas than last”.
“Superior Software”, Electron User, February 1989 (web transcription, secondary): the £50 stakes, the first four games, Hanson’s Atom programs, Dyson’s buy-out and Steve Hanson, Hunchback, Overdrive, the Repton figures, Elite, Exile and The Last Ninja, the move to Brigg. https://stairwaytohell.com/articles/EUFEB89-Superior.html
“Superior Software”, The Micro User, May 1990 (web transcription, secondary): Repton sales, Play It Again Sam, Peter Scott. https://www.stairwaytohell.com/articles/MUMAY90-Superior.html
Amazing Computing vol. 4 no. 7, July 1989, p. 114, and AC’s Guide to the Commodore Amiga, Fall 1990, p. 277: Fred Fish disk catalogue entry for Wanderer.
“Repton retrospect” and “retro revival”, Retro Gamer issue 3, 2004, pp. 24–31: Tim Tyler, Hanson and Chris Payne, the prizes, the Repton 2 bug, Superior Interactive’s PC remakes.
“Retroinspection: BBC Micro”, Retro Gamer issue 42, 2007, pp. 60–66: founded in 1982; Hanson’s Atom games for Program Power; Peter Johnson on Q*Bert; “over 125,000 copies”; Exile; the compilations.
Retro Gamer issue 101, April 2012, p. 32: Hanson “the founder of Superior Software, the most prolific BBC Micro publisher”; Archimedes games.
Companies House, company 01753598 (web, secondary): Superior Software Limited, incorporated 16 September 1983, active; Richard Hanson a director. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/01753598
Superior Interactive, company website (web, secondary): current PC, iOS and Android titles. https://www.superiorinteractive.com/