“Push a chair and it will move quite a long way; push a table and it moves less far.” That sentence from CRASH’s review in November 1985 is the best short description of what made Fairlight different. Isometric games on the Spectrum had been showing off solid-looking rooms since Ultimate’s Knight Lore. Bo Jangeborg, a Swedish programmer working with The Edge in London’s Covent Garden, gave the objects in those rooms weight. CRASH gave the game 95% and 97% for graphics, and one of its reviewers wrote that it “knocks Filmation and Filmation 2 into a cocked hat”.
Fast facts
- Author: Bo Jangeborg. Publisher: The Edge. £9.95, 48K Spectrum, machine code.
- Full title: Fairlight: A Prelude: the Light Revealed, the first part of “the Chronicles of the Land of Fairlight”.
- Screens: 80. Skill levels: one.
- CRASH: 95% overall, issue 22, November 1985.
- Other versions: Commodore 64 (reviewed by ZZAP!64 in June 1986) and Amstrad CPC (previewed by Amtix in April 1986).
- Sequel: Fairlight II: A Trail of Darkness (1986).
Isvar in Castle Avars
The player is Isvar, a reluctant hero who wanders into Ogri’s Wood, is carried off by the woman-monster Ogri, and is lured into Castle Avars by the apparition of an imprisoned sorcerer. To get out again he has to find the Book of Light somewhere in the castle and take it to the sorcerer. He starts with 99 units of life force, which trolls and guards wear down and food and wine restore. Some enemies can be killed with his sword; others ignore it and are best avoided.
Objects that have mass
Isvar has five pockets. CRASH explained that “each object has a mass and obeys the laws of physics”: he can carry several pieces of food, because each is light, but a barrel is so heavy that he has to put everything else down first. A message such as “too heavy” appears on a small scroll beside the life counter.
Weight also made the puzzles. One reviewer’s favourite part was “shoving things around the place and piling objects on top of one another to make ramps which Isvar can climb”, and he added that “very soon you do feel as if you are playing in a real world”. Another reviewer set it against Ultimate’s games: “Ultimate first introduced us to realistic 3D graphics but sadly not a lot of game was bolted on to them. Now, thanks to The Edge, that gap has been filled.”
The rating panel read 89% for use of computer, 97% for graphics, 90% for playability, 86% for getting started, 91% for addictive qualities, 92% for value for money and 95% overall. Its summary called Fairlight “a stunning game, achieved with a new programming technique”. The magazine’s own index of its 1985 reviews, printed in January 1986, lists the game at 96%, which may be where the 96% sometimes quoted for it comes from; the review itself says 95%.
Colour and speed
The Spectrum can show only two colours in each 8×8 character cell (see attribute clash), and Fairlight keeps to black and one other colour per location. CRASH found a use for that: “Each location in the castle is colour coded — which helps you keep your bearings while you explore. All the open air locations, for instance, are blue.”
The reviewers were also frank about the cost of the graphics. When Isvar leaves a room, “the screen will go blank for a couple of seconds while the change is made”, and one reviewer found that “a little infuriating”. Isvar slows down in a crowded room, “but in an empty room he can really motor!” There is no sound during play, but the title music uses what the review called a “two channel simulation” that “pushes the Spectrum’s Beeper to the limit”.
Grax and Worldmaker
In the same issue CRASH’s John Minson visited Jangeborg to see Grax, “the programming utility at the heart of the Worldmaker technique which gives Fairlight its realistic solidity” (see Worldmaker and Grax). Jangeborg had already written the drawing program The Artist for Softechnics, a division of Softek, and Grax worked in a similar way: the designer drew a room in overhead perspective with rubber-banded lines and 26 fill patterns, then placed pre-drawn doors and windows into it. It had begun as a way to produce half-screen illustrations for adventures written with The Quill.
Minson reported that Jangeborg was “returning to Sweden and his own company, Xcellent Software”, but leaving Grax with The Edge. It was meant to be the basis of more adventures and, one day, a product in its own right, so that readers could “create your own Fairlight type adventure as easily as you can write a text adventure with The Quill today”.
In the charts
CRASH ran its Hotline chart and its Adventure chart side by side from 1985, and both counted readers’ votes, not sales (see Reading the charts). Fairlight entered the Hotline at 6 in December 1985 and was at 4 in February 1986. It entered the Adventure chart at 4 in June 1986, and for a time it was in both: in July 1986 it was at 23 in the Hotline and at 2 in the Adventure chart. Adventure-chart voters kept it much longer. It was still at 5 in the Adventure chart in the Christmas 1986 issue, a year after its review.
The sequel
Fairlight II: A Trail of Darkness followed about a year later at £9.95. Isvar, it turns out, had been deceived and had handed the Book of Light to the Dark Lord. CRASH’s reviewers were cooler this time. One wrote that “Fairlight only impressed me and many other people because of its extremely detailed graphics but the game is much too hard for the basic Spectrum owner”, and another that it was “no real step forward from the original”. By April 1987 a reviewer of another Edge game wrote that “THE EDGE have been disappointing lately, Fairlight II was pretty but unplayable”. The sequel still found voters: in March 1987 it was at 2 in the Adventure chart, with the original at 15.
Sources
- CRASH, issue 22, November 1985, pp. 26–27: Fairlight review (The Edge, 48K, £9.95, machine code, author Bo Jangeborg; 95%).
- CRASH, issue 22, November 1985, p. 20: John Minson, “Trip to Grax”.
- CRASH, issue 20, September 1985, pp. 85–87: Franco Frey’s Tech Niche review of The Artist (producer SofTechnics, “a division of Softek International Ltd”).
- CRASH, issue 24, January 1986: The Edge’s Fairlight advertisement (12/13 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden; “By Bo Jangeborg (author of The Artist)”); “The Official 1985 Index” of reviews (Fairlight, 96%).
- CRASH, Hotline Top 30: issue 23, December 1985, p. 100; issue 25, February 1986, p. 93; issue 30, July 1986, p. 50. Adventure Top 30: issue 29, June 1986, p. 103; issue 30, July 1986, p. 51; issue 36, Christmas Special 1986, p. 117; issue 38, March 1987, p. 108.
- CRASH, issue 36, Christmas Special 1986, pp. 32–33: Fairlight II review, headed “Trial of Darkness” (The Edge, £9.95).
- CRASH, issue 28, May 1986, p. 40: reader’s letter on the sequel “called A Trail of Darkness”. Edge issue 135, April 2004, p. 113: the game’s closing message, “THE QUEST CONTINUES IN A TRAIL OF DARKNESS”.
- CRASH, issue 39, April 1987: Shadow Skimmer review (“THE EDGE have been disappointing lately”).
- ZZAP!64, issue 14, June 1986: Commodore 64 Fairlight review (The Edge, £9.95).
- Amtix, issue 6, April 1986: preview of the Amstrad CPC Fairlight.