Repton | Code Like It's 198x

Repton reached Superior Software in Leeds as a cassette in the post in early 1985. Its author, Tim Tyler, was 16. He had never seen Boulder Dash, only read a review of it, and he had written his game in a little over a month without a level editor: he drew each cave on paper, turned the pieces into numbers in his head and typed them in, in binary. Superior’s Richard Hanson thought it “definitely had the makings of something special”. Two sequels, three sets of extra screens and a programmable spin-off later, the series had sold 120,000 copies on the BBC Micro and Electron, and Superior still sells Repton today.

Fast facts

Author: Tim Tyler, aged 16 when he wrote it.
Publisher: Superior Software, Leeds.
Released: summer 1985, for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron, at £9.95 on cassette and £11.95 on BBC disc.
Size: 12 caves, each a scrolling area about 16 times the size of the screen.
Sequels: Repton 2 (1985), Repton 3 (1986) with three sets of extra screens (1987–1988), Repton Infinity (1988) and Ego: Repton 4 (1992).
Other machines: ZX Spectrum (Repton Mania, 1989, with Repton 2); later PC, mobile phone and smartphone versions from Superior Interactive.
Series sales: 120,000 by February 1989; more than 125,000 by Richard Hanson’s later count.

Writing Repton

Tyler had learned to program from a magazine article and started on a BBC Model B at 13. “They were obviously very cool things to have,” he told Retro Gamer. Superior had already published his first game, Moon Cycle, as BMX on the Moon, and he had written two more, Cosmic Debris and Pink, that were never published. The idea for Repton came from reading a review of Boulder Dash, “but that was the extent of the earlier game’s influence: ‘I didn’t actually see Boulderdash for another 10 years or so, but the review was the inspiration.’”

The BBC Micro shaped the hero. Keeping enough of the 32K for the game meant a screen mode with four colours, three plus black, and the machine’s palette of eight primary colours had no flesh tones. So Tyler made his hero a green-skinned reptile, and named him from the “rept” of reptile with a technological “-on” on the end.

Hanson and his marketing manager, Chris Payne, asked for one real change: a password system, so that players could start on any of the 12 caves instead of playing them through in order. With that and a few smaller changes the game came out a few months later, and it was the first Superior game to carry a prize: £100 for the first photograph of the congratulations screen at the end. Hanson admitted later that the 12 caves “were perhaps a little too easy, but in some respects that is better than a game that is far too difficult”. Not all of them: players got stuck on Octopus and Giant Clam, and Octopus, he said, “has even perplexed some chess grandmasters”.

Rocks, eggs and a lizard that looks around

Repton digs through earth to collect every diamond in a cave within a time limit. Rocks fall when the earth under them is dug away, and they fall in whatever order the player loosens them, so, as Electron User explained, a careless dig can seal off the passage to a diamond for good. In later caves the diamonds sit under giant eggs, which drop when the diamond is taken and hatch into reptiles that chase Repton around the cave. Further on there are safes, which open to reveal diamonds once the player finds the key. A map of the whole cave can be called up at any time, and each finished cave gives a password.

The reviewers liked the animation as much as the puzzles. Leave Repton alone for a moment, Acorn User’s Bruce Smith noticed, “and there he is looking left and right waiting for something to happen”. Smith called it “for my money the best arcade game for the Beeb and Electron yet!” Electron User’s Philip Tudor called it “an astounding game reaching new heights in Electron arcade adventures”. By October 1985 it was number 4 in Acorn User’s games chart, behind only Revs and two Ultimate games.

Not everyone believed the caves could be finished. Players wrote to Superior convinced there was a bug, and one sent in a suggested cure. In letters printed in both Electron User and Acorn User, Hanson answered that “all twelve screens can be completed without losing a life”, and named the culprit: “Screen J seems to cause the most problems: some lateral thought is required to complete it.” By September 1985 the £100 had been won.

Repton 2 and the diamond nobody could reach

Repton 2 followed at the end of 1985, written in about a month and a half. Instead of 12 caves in sequence it had one enormous level: 16 screens joined by transporters, each usable only once. The player had to collect every diamond, clear every piece of earth, kill every monster and gather 42 jigsaw pieces that spelled out “Repton 2 is ended”, then dodge a meteor shower on the surface. Acorn User counted “4804 lumps of earth, 1652 diamonds, 42 puzzles and 18 monsters”. New hazards included spirits, which follow the walls and must be steered into cages to release diamonds, and skulls, which kill on contact. Bruce Smith called it “better than anything I’ve played on the BBC micro or Electron. Brilliant!”

The prize this time was £200, with T-shirts for the first hundred people to finish. But Tyler had rewritten the rock-falling routine in a way that slowed the whole game down, and had not tested the result as carefully as he should have. As Retro Gamer told it, “one diamond was ‘hidden’ under a transporter and was impossible to collect, a cause of much embarrassment all round”. Superior fixed new copies and replaced the game for players who wrote in, and the prize was eventually won. With 35,000 copies sold, Repton 2 was still the best seller in the series in 1989.

Repton 3 and the editor

By then Tyler had had enough. “I had more money than I knew what to do with, and lost interest,” he said. In 1986 Superior’s own advertisement boasted that his Repton games had earned him over £30,000 in less than a year, “quite a sum for a 17 year old”. He designed some levels for Repton 3, though he found that “the least fun bit”, and Superior gave the programming to Matthew Atkinson, who had first met computers at Keele University in 1981 and was chosen, he recalled Hanson telling him, because “you’re not the best programmer on our books but you live locally and you’re dependable”.

Repton 3 came out for Christmas 1986. It went back to separate levels with passwords, 24 of them in three sets of eight named after musical forms (Prelude, Toccata and Finale), and added fungus, time bombs, time capsules and crowns. Its big addition was a screen editor and a character editor, so players could design caves and redraw the game’s graphics. Superior used the same editor to sell new screen sets: Around the World in 40 Screens and The Life of Repton in 1987, and Repton Thru Time in 1988. Many people designed their levels, Hanson said, “particularly Steve and Mark Botterill, and Graham Dubber, a customer who sent some excellent new Repton 3 level designs to us”. Retro Gamer reported that Repton 3 topped Gallup’s BBC Micro chart for 12 weeks.

Repton Infinity (1988), by Dave Lawrence and Dave Acton, went further: a game engine with its own scripting language, Reptol, in which players could rewrite how every object in the game behaved. It came in a large box at £15. Ego: Repton 4 (1992), for the Archimedes, began as Personality Crisis, an Amiga and Atari ST game Gary Partis had written two years earlier, and had little in common with the earlier games.

Beyond the Acorn machines

Superior advertised Repton 3 for the Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC as well as the Acorn machines from December 1986; Retro Gamer dates the Commodore 64 release to 1988. ZZAP!64 was unimpressed, calling it a “mediocre Boulderdash clone” when it printed a reader’s list of passwords in March 1987.

The first two games reached the ZX Spectrum in 1989 on one tape, Repton Mania. Your Sinclair’s Marcus Berkmann thought the first “unreconstructed Boulderdash”, “a perfectly adequate Boulderdash clone”, but called Repton 2 “one of the most compulsive games I’ve played in months” and “the best multi-screen arcade adventure we’ve seen for ages”. Superior’s name meant little outside the Acorn world, and Retro Gamer described these conversions as “reasonably successful but not huge sellers”.

Sales

Counting Repton 3 and its three screen sets, Electron User put the series’ sales at 120,000 in February 1989. Hanson told the magazine that “Repton 3 did not sell as well as its immediate predecessor”, although Retro Gamer’s 2004 history said the opposite. The same Retro Gamer feature gave the total as over 125,000 copies.

Later versions

The series outlived the 8-bit Acorns. John Wallace rewrote the first three games for his own Archimedes; Superior published his Repton 3 in 1988, and in 1997 ProAction released his versions of all three for RISC OS. Darren Salt’s Desktop Repton, a Repton 3 that ran in a window with its editor alongside, followed in 2001. In late 2002 Repton reached mobile phones and PDAs through Masabi, a company set up by Tom Godber and Ed Howson, with Dave Hampson writing an engine faithful to the BBC game logic.

Superior itself, renamed Superior Interactive, released a PC Repton in December 2003, written by David Bratton, with 32 main levels instead of the original 12, 20 more for young children, and the first level editor ever made for Repton 1. Versions of Repton 2 and Repton 3 followed. Superior Interactive still sells Repton 1, 2 and 3 for Windows PCs, and versions for iPhone and Android. Tyler, meanwhile, wrote a Repton-like Java game of his own, Rockz.

No source code for the original games has been published.

Sources

“Repton retrospect”, Retro Gamer issue 3, 2004, pp. 24–31: Tyler’s age, background, earlier games and the Boulder Dash review (p. 24); the colours and the name (p. 24); writing in binary (p. 24); Hanson, Chris Payne, the password system and the £100 prize (p. 25); Repton 2’s single level, the impossible diamond and the £200 prize (p. 25); Tyler losing interest, Matthew Atkinson and Repton 3 (pp. 26–27); the editor and the screen sets (p. 27); Repton Infinity (p. 28); Ego: Repton 4, the Commodore 64 and Spectrum conversions and John Wallace’s Archimedes versions (p. 29); Hanson on the easy caves and Octopus (p. 25); Desktop Repton and the mobile versions (p. 30); the 2003 PC version, Rockz, Gallup chart, and “over 125,000 copies” (pp. 30–31).
Acorn User, July 1985: competition for Repton, “Superior Software’s new game” (giant eggs, four-way scrolling over 16 screens’ area, 12 levels).
Superior Software advertisement, Computer Gamer, July 1985: Repton for BBC Micro and Electron, the £100 competition.
Bruce Smith, “A gem of a challenge”, Acorn User, September 1985, p. 155: Repton review (£9.95, disc £11.95).
Philip Tudor, “Arcade you must enter”, Electron User, September 1985, p. 41: Repton review (web scan at the Internet Archive, secondary).
Richard Hanson, letter “Yes, Repton can be done”, Electron User, September 1985, p. 47: Screen J, and the £100 prize won.
“Lateral thought saves lives”, Acorn User, October 1985, p. 11: players’ bug reports; Hanson on Screen J.
Acorn User, October 1985: games top 20 (Repton at number 4).
Bruce Smith, “Massive complications”, Acorn User, December 1985, p. 171: Repton 2 review.
Computer Gamer, December 1985: Repton 2 review (the jigsaw pieces, spirits, skulls, 64 transporters, T-shirts and £200 prize).
“Big name games”, A&B Computing, December 1985: Repton II preview (16 levels, transporters usable once, fatal skulls; web scan at the Internet Archive, secondary).
Superior Software advertisement for programmers, CRASH issue 29 and ZZAP!64 issue 14, June 1986: Tyler’s earnings (“quite a sum for a 17 year old”).
Superior Software advertisement for Repton 3, ZZAP!64 issue 20, December 1986: Commodore, Amstrad, BBC Micro and Electron versions; 24 screens; screen and character designers.
ZZAP!64 issue 23, March 1987: tips pages, Repton 3 passwords (“mediocre Boulderdash clone”).
Marcus Berkmann, Repton Mania review, Your Sinclair issue 42, June 1989, p. 45.
“Superior Software”, Electron User, February 1989 (web transcription, secondary): Repton in the summer of 1985; Repton 2’s 35,000 sales; the series total of 120,000; Repton 3 selling less than Repton 2. https://stairwaytohell.com/articles/EUFEB89-Superior.html
Superior Interactive, website (web, secondary): Repton 1, 2 and 3 for PC; Repton 2 for iOS and Android; Repton 1 and 3 for Android. https://www.superiorinteractive.com/