Ultimate Play the Game | Code Like It's 198x

Ultimate Play the Game, usually just Ultimate, was the label of brothers Tim and Chris Stamper in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire. Its first two ZX Spectrum games, Jetpac and Pssst, came out in 1983 and fitted into 16K. Within two years it had made Atic Atac, Sabre Wulf and Knight Lore, and won three of Computer & Video Games’ 1985 Golden Joystick awards.

Looking back in April 1988, CRASH counted “an unbroken chain of 14 Spectrum hit games” between 1983 and 1986, with review scores averaging 93%. That made Ultimate “the magazine’s most highly-praised software house of all time”. It managed this while telling the press almost nothing.

Ashby Computers and Graphics

The company was Ashby Computers and Graphics Ltd (ACG), and Ultimate Play the Game was the name it sold under. The small print of Ultimate’s own advertisements said so: “ULTIMATE PLAY THE GAME is a Trade name of Ashby Computers & Graphics Ltd., The Green, Ashby de la Zouch”. The initials turned up inside the games too, as Atic Atac’s Key of ACG and Sabre Wulf’s Amulet of ACG. At the end of 1986 a ZZAP!64 reader was still writing about “Ashby Computers and Graphics, more commonly known as Ultimate”, having spotted ACG in the status area of preview shots of Hypersports.

CRASH described Ultimate as “wholly owned by one family”: the two brothers and Tim’s wife, Carole. With “one or two other programmers”, “the Stampers were Ultimate”. Tim acted as business spokesman and graphics director. Chris, the elder and quieter of the two, concentrated on coding: The Games Machine gave their ages in December 1987 as 29 and 26. (CRASH had them the other way round.) The brothers had started out designing programs for real arcade machines.

That background explains their first reaction to the Spectrum. As Tim told CRASH: “when the Spectrum came out we had a look at it and thought, ‘What a piece of garbage!’” Compared with arcade hardware it was, but it was cheap, and he came to admire Sinclair for it.

The 16K games

Computer & Video Games, looking back in 1996: “JETPAC and PSST, their first two games, were crammed into just 16K and also came out on the Sinclair Interface II”, the Spectrum’s cartridge interface. “Then came COOKIE, TRANS AM and the awesome LUNAR JETMAN.” CRASH put it the same way: two more 16K releases, Cookie and Tranz Am, followed Jetpac and Pssst. Then, when CRASH launched in 1984, came the “even more complex 48K games, Lunar Jetman and Atic Atac”. Jetpac sold for £5.50.

The Spectrum catalogue

Dates below are the year of release. The CRASH issue that reviewed each game helps to pin them down.

Jetpac, Pssst, Cookie, Tranz Am (1983). 16K games, sold on cassette and, at least for Jetpac and Pssst, on Interface II cartridge.
Lunar Jetman and Atic Atac (1983). The first 48K games, reviewed in CRASH’s first two issues.
Sabre Wulf (1984). Ultimate’s price jumped from £5.50 to £9.95 with this game, which Tim Stamper said was meant to fight piracy. CRASH wrote that in Ultimate’s heyday a game like Sabre Wulf would sell more than 350,000 Spectrum copies.
Underwurlde (1984). CRASH’s caption called it “continuing Sabreman’s adventures”.
Knight Lore (1984). The first game using Filmation, Ultimate’s name for its isometric 3D technique.
Alien 8 (1985) and Nightshade (1985).
Gunfright (1986). Chris Stamper remembered it as the last game the brothers developed as a team.
Cyberun and Pentagram (1986).
Martianoids and Bubbler (1987).

Tim Stamper said Bubbler and Cyberun “were not really our involvement”: the brothers had left Spectrum development to the rest of Ultimate.

Knight Lore and Filmation

Knight Lore drew each room as a solid-looking 3D scene in forced perspective. Objects could hide one another, and the player could walk behind them. It did this on a 3.5 MHz Z80 with no hardware sprites. CRASH called it “revolutionary”, said it “brought about a new genre, the forced-perspective (or isometric) 3-D arcade adventure”, and passed on one reader’s claim that it had become “the second-most-cloned piece of software after the word processor WordStar”. It won Game of the Year at the 1985 Golden Joysticks.

Ultimate followed it with Alien 8, and critics began to complain that later Ultimate games were too alike: “Sabre Wulf is a copy of Atic Atac, Alien 8 is a copy of Knight Lore.”

Held back on purpose

In 1988 Tim Stamper told Roger Kean: “Knight Lore was finished before Sabre Wulf.” Ultimate decided the market was not ready for it. “If we released Knight Lore and Alien 8, which was already half-finished, we wouldn’t have sold Sabre Wulf.” So Sabre Wulf went out first, “a colossal success”, and the other two followed. “They could have had Knight Lore possibly the year earlier. We just had to sit on it because everyone else was so far behind.”

The silence

Ultimate’s reputation for secrecy was real. CRASH said the Stampers “were secretive and gave no interviews”. Ultimate “never even showed its wares at exhibitions after one early experiment”, and news came out only through “all-too-sparse” press releases. It even promised CRASH an interview, “always only after the next game was completed, and that tomorrow never came”.

The Stampers’ own explanation, in 1988, was less mysterious than the legend. “No it wasn’t,” said Tim, asked whether it was a deliberate policy. “That’s the way it turned out. We were so busy producing a few products a year and making sure they were right.” He also said that some magazines gave bad reviews to companies that did not advertise, “so we steered clear of speaking to anyone”. Meanwhile fan mail ran at “50 to 60 letters a day”, and one person’s full-time job was answering it.

Silence did not mean staying away from everything. At the Golden Joystick awards reported in June 1985, Ultimate won Game of the Year (Knight Lore), Software House of the Year and Programmer of the Year. Louise Stamper collected the awards at a luncheon in London and “thanked the many readers of C&VG who voted for them”. The trade address and phone number were printed in its advertisements: The Green, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, telephone 0530 411485.

From Ultimate to Rare

CRASH thought Ultimate’s magic was fading by the end of 1985. Its readers’ letters kept referring to the “once-great software house”. After a rumour that Ocean had bought the company, “it was announced that in fact US Gold had won out and taken over Ultimate”. CRASH called the terms “obscure”: the Stampers kept a majority shareholding, and Ultimate games kept appearing, “though to less and less acclaim”. By April 1988 the label had been “largely dormant since mid-1987”. CRASH does not date the deal. The Games Machine, interviewing the brothers in December 1987, put it “two years ago”, alongside the founding of Rare, which puts it around 1985–86 rather than the 1988 some later accounts give.

The clue to what came next was already in the credits of some later Ultimate games: “Rare Ltd.” The Stampers had incorporated Rare in April 1985 and moved to a farmhouse at Twycross, near Ashby. They had discovered Nintendo’s console through their contacts in the Japanese coin-op industry, spent eight months learning the hardware, and by 1988 had seven Nintendo games finished or nearly finished, with thirteen full-time staff.

Rare went on to make R.C. Pro-Am, Battletoads, Donkey Kong Country, GoldenEye 007, Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark. Microsoft bought the company in 2002 for $375 million.

Sources

CRASH, issue 51 (April 1988), pp. 35-38: Roger Kean’s feature on Ultimate and Rare, the main source for this entry. It covers the 14 hits and 93% average, the 16K and 48K releases, ACG, the family ownership, the silence, “What a piece of garbage!”, Knight Lore as “revolutionary” and the WordStar claim, US Gold’s takeover and the majority shareholding, dormancy since mid-1987, Rare at Twycross, the price rise to £9.95, Sabre Wulf’s 350,000 copies, Knight Lore being finished before Sabre Wulf, Gunfright as the last team game, and the table of CRASH review scores.
The Games Machine, issue 4 (March 1988), pp. 26-32: interview recorded on 17 December 1987; the Stampers’ ages, Carole Stamper, Rare formed and a minority interest in Ultimate sold to US Gold “two years ago”.
Companies House, Rare Limited, company number 01905690: incorporated 16 April 1985. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/01905690
Computer & Video Games, issue 44 (June 1985), p. 122: Golden Joystick awards; Louise Stamper collecting them for Ultimate.
Computer & Video Games, issue 181 (December 1996), p. 103: “crammed into just 16k … Sinclair Interface II”.
Sinclair User, issue 17 (August 1983), p. 92: mail-order list with Jetpac and Pssst at £5.50.
Sinclair User, issue 20 (November 1983), p. 127, and CRASH, issue 2 (March 1984): Ultimate advertisements naming Ashby Computers and Graphics, with address and telephone number.
ZZAP!64, issue 21 (Christmas 1986), p. 22: reader’s letter on ACG and Hypersports.
Release years: CRASH reviews in issue 25 (February 1986, Gunfright), 28 (Cyberun), 29 (Pentagram) and 40 (Martianoids), as listed in CRASH issue 51.
Founding year (1982): Wikipedia, “Stamper brothers” (web, secondary). Rare’s later games and the Microsoft purchase: Wikipedia, “Rare (company)” (web, secondary).