Thrust did not look like a 1986 game. A wobbly triangle of a ship hangs over a jagged outline of rock, and a few lines and circles stand for guns, fuel tanks and a power plant. ZZAP!64 later said its graphics “would have been old hat on a 1983 Spectrum”, and its reviewer admitted that on loading it “just looks hopelessly dated”. Then he played it, and the magazine gave it 94 per cent.
The hook is weight. You fly down into a planet’s caves, lock a tractor beam on to a heavy pod and haul it back up to space. The pod swings on the end of the beam, and Sinclair User described how it “swings round chaotically as you attempt to change direction and sends you splattering into the side of the planet”. Gravity drags at both of you all the way. Its author, Jeremy Smith, had a first-class degree in physics, a fact his BBC Micro publisher put in its advertisements.
Fast facts
- Author: Jeremy Smith. The Spectrum version was converted by D. Lowe.
- Publishers: Firebird on the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum, at £1.99; Superior Software on the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron, at £7.95 on cassette and £11.95 on BBC disc.
- Released: Commodore 64, May 1986; BBC Micro and Electron, August 1986; Amstrad CPC by September 1986; Spectrum, October 1986. An Atari ST version followed.
- Music: Rob Hubbard wrote the Commodore 64 title tune.
- Compared to: Atari’s arcade game Gravitar, by many reviewers.
Flying it
The ship rotates left and right and has one engine. There are no brakes: to stop, you turn round and burn the other way, and the momentum you built up on the way down is still there on the way out. On the Commodore 64, ZZAP!64 listed A and S to rotate and SHIFT for the engine. ACE reported in 1988 that Smith had chosen Z, X and SHIFT to match the keys of Acornsoft’s version of Asteroids, and ZZAP!64 thought the ship itself a much advanced version of the Asteroids craft.
One more key, the space bar, does three jobs. In open air it raises a shield that stops bullets. Over a fuel tank it sucks up fuel. Over the pod it fixes the tractor beam. The shield burns fuel quickly, and an empty tank means the planet’s gravity wins.
Each planet is guarded by limpet guns, powered by a reactor. CRASH explained the gamble: a few shots at the reactor knock the guns out for a while, and more hits keep them out longer, but too many make it unstable, and then “you have a mere ten seconds in which to grab a pod and pull back before the entire planet self-destructs”. Destroying the planet with the pod safely in tow earns a large bonus.
Superior’s advertisement counted 24 planets, and the pods were “heavier than the spaceship”. The cave layouts repeat after six planets, with a twist each time round: from the seventh planet gravity is reversed, so the pod “balloons upwards as soon as it is wire-leashed to the ship”, as ZZAP!64 put it, and later the landscape becomes invisible, showing only when the shield is raised. Superior offered a trophy, £250 and copies of Patrick Moore’s New Atlas of the Universe to players who collected pods from all 24 planets by 31 January 1987.
Two publishers, two prices
Smith’s game came out on two labels at very different prices. Firebird sold it on the Commodore 64 first, as a £1.99 budget cassette in May 1986. Superior Software published the BBC Micro and Electron versions that August as a full-price game. Its advertisement said the Commodore version “shot immediately to No 1 in the software charts”, and in Acorn User’s show preview Superior said it believed the BBC version was “even better”. Firebird had once planned to publish the BBC version itself: in April 1986 Acorn User reported that Firebird would “return with Thrust at £1.99”. Sinclair User called the Spectrum game “Firebird’s long awaited conversion” of a “BBC bash”.
It did well on the Acorn machines too. It was at number one in Acorn User’s BBC Micro games chart that autumn, and the magazine’s reviewer named it Game of the Year in December: “a game with all the hallmarks of an arcade classic — wonderful keyboard response, the most convincing representation of gravity I’ve ever seen and — perhaps best of all — it’s a perfectly judged game.”
What the press said
| Version | Magazine | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Commodore 64 | ZZAP!64, May 1986 | 94%, a Sizzler; 99% for value |
| Commodore 64 | Computer & Video Games, 1986 | a C+VG Hit (“so simple but totally addictive”, as Superior’s advertisement quoted it) |
| Amstrad CPC | Amstrad Action, September 1986 | “at £1.99 it’s unmissable” |
| ZX Spectrum | CRASH, November 1986 | 76% |
| ZX Spectrum | Sinclair User, December 1986 | “Budget brilliance — don’t miss it” |
| ZX Spectrum | Your Sinclair, December 1986 | denied a Megagame because of bugs |
| BBC Micro | Acorn User, December 1986 | the reviewer’s Game of the Year |
ZZAP!64’s reviewers forgave the look at once. “At last! A version of Gravitar which plays just as well as the original,” one wrote, and the other called it “virtually flawless” and “a steal at only two quid”. Looking back on 1986 a year later, the magazine credited “Firebird’s superb budget Gravitar clone” with ending what it called “the severe shoot ’em up drought” of that spring.
The Spectrum conversion divided reviewers. CRASH called it “the most compelling budget game I’ve played in months”, but another of its reviewers felt it had “lost some of its sparkle in the transition from 6502 to Z80”: the scrolling was jerky and the sound was gone, replaced by a flashing border. Sinclair User told readers not to be put off by its “simplistic appearance”, calling it “fiendish and very inventive”. Your Sinclair’s Rachael Smith liked it but found that pressing too many keys at once crashed the game and the high-score table did not always work. ZX Computing still thought it “perhaps their best release for the Spectrum” when it surveyed Firebird’s budget games in June 1987.
Sequel and successors
Firebird’s Thrust II (1987), at £1.99 again, was not Smith’s work: CRASH credited the Spectrum version to Andrew Rogers. Firebird also took Thrust to the 16-bit machines, announcing an Atari ST version in late 1987 at around £10.
Smith went on to write Exile with his schoolfriend Peter Irvin, published by Superior in 1988. Its hero rotates and thrusts through caves under gravity with a jetpack, and when ACE previewed the Amiga version in 1991 it noted the resemblance to Thrust, adding that “these similarities are not surprising”. Edge’s 2000 history of Exile records that Smith had studied at Imperial College, and that he died in 1992.
The game itself kept turning up. ACE spotted its control layout again in the “very Thrustish” Oids in 1988, and in 2005 Retro Gamer picked out Matthew Partridge’s home-made Game Boy Advance version as the one conversion among several that kept “the ‘feel’ and purity of the original”.
Sources
- ZZAP!64 issue 13, May 1986, p. 16: review of the Commodore 64 version (£1.99, keyboard only; A, S, SHIFT and the space bar; the shield, fuel and tractor beam; six planet types, reverse gravity and invisibility; Rob Hubbard’s title music; Gravitar; 94% overall, 99% value; “hopelessly dated”, “virtually flawless”, “a steal at only two quid”).
- ZZAP!64 Christmas special 1986: the year’s games (“old hat on a 1983 Spectrum”). Issue 31, November 1987: look back at 1986 (“the severe shoot ’em up drought”).
- Acorn User issue 45, April 1986: Firebird “will return with Thrust at £1.99”. Issue 48, July 1986: the BBC version to be released by Superior. Issue 49, August 1986: show preview (Superior “believes the BBC micro version to be even better”) and Superior’s advertisement (24 planets, the pods heavier than the ship, Smith’s physics degree, the competition, the Commodore chart position, the review quotes from ZZAP!64 and Computer & Video Games, prices).
- Acorn User issue 52, November 1986: top 20 BBC Micro games (Thrust at number one for a second month). Issue 53, December 1986: top ten of 1985/6 and the reviewer’s Game of the Year.
- Computer & Video Games issue 58, August 1986: news of the BBC and Electron release by Superior, £7.95 tape, £11.95 BBC disc.
- Amstrad Action issue 12, September 1986, pp. 51–52: review of the Amstrad version (£1.99, keys only).
- CRASH issue 33, October 1986: news of the Spectrum conversion. Issue 34, November 1986, p. 149: review (author Jeremy Smith, conversion by D. Lowe; the reactor and the ten seconds; 24 screens; 76%). Issue 40, May 1987: Thrust II (author Andrew Rogers, £1.99).
- Sinclair User issue 56, November 1986: “long awaited conversion”. Issue 57, December 1986: review (author Smith/Lowe, £1.99).
- Your Sinclair issue 12, December 1986: Rachael Smith’s review.
- ZX Computing, June 1987: Firebird’s budget releases.
- ZZAP!64 issue 32, December 1987: Firebird’s Atari ST conversions of Thrust, Warhawk and IBall “at around £10”. CRASH issue 58, November 1988: Atari advertisement listing Firebird’s Thrust at £9.95.
- ACE issue 8, May 1988, p. 33: Smith’s choice of keys and Oids. Issue 43, April 1991: Exile preview.
- Edge issue 91, December 2000, “The making of… Exile”: Smith and Irvin as schoolfriends, Smith at Imperial College, Thrust, and Smith’s death in 1992.
- Retro Gamer issue 20, 2005: Matthew Partridge’s Game Boy Advance conversion.