Christian Urquhart was still at school when he wrote one of Ocean Software’s first hits. He answered David Ward’s advert for programs in 1982 with a game written on a friend’s Spectrum, because he did not own one, and within a year he had written Ocean’s Spectrum Hunchback and passed seven O-levels at the same time. Sinclair User called Hunchback “the best-selling game from Ocean Software”. By the time he was nineteen he had also written Cavelon, co-written Daley Thompson’s Decathlon, moved to Gremlin Graphics in Sheffield, and was about to start a software company of his own.
Fast facts
- From: Wallasey, Merseyside; born around 1966.
- Ocean (1983–1984): Transversion (with Nick Pierpoint), Hunchback, Cavelon, and Daley Thompson’s Decathlon (with Paul Owens).
- Gremlin Graphics: one of its four in-house Spectrum programmers by July 1985.
- Alphabatim: a company he formed with Mike Smith and Mike Baxter in 1985; Robot Messiah, written with Smith.
- Later Spectrum games: Gun Runner (Hewson) and Star Runner (Code Masters) in 1987; for ACE Software, part of Xecutor and the arcade conversion Soldier of Light (1988).
Abu Dhabi to Wallasey
In 1980 Urquhart’s family was living in Abu Dhabi, where the international school he attended had an IBM computer. He was fourteen, and enjoyed using it; the year there, he told Sinclair User, “was like having a party every night”. Back home in Wallasey he bought a ZX81 and began writing games in BASIC, unimpressed by the ones in the shops.
His first published game was Transversion, a grid game in which, as he described it, “you had to go round picking up objects while evading the guardians”. He wrote it while learning Z80 machine code on a friend’s Spectrum, took it to Ocean on impulse, and Ward agreed to publish it. CRASH credited it to C. Urquhart and N. Pierpoint and reviewed it in its first issue, in February 1984, at £5.90 for the 16K Spectrum.
Hunchback
Ward had bought the home rights to Hunchback, an arcade game in which Quasimodo leaps across the battlements to rescue Esmerelda, and he asked Urquhart for a Spectrum version, quickly. Urquhart agreed, though his O-levels were due. He described the method to Sinclair User:
The first job was to design the various screens on paper, of which there are 15 in Hunchback. Machine code routines were then written to print them on to the screen. Next I introduced the little man. He started as a box — a hunchbox — and then became an animated hunchbox. After the man I did the fireballs and arrows.
CRASH’s review, crediting “C.F. Urquhart”, described the fifteen ramparts of fireballs, ropes and pikemen, and the red knight who climbs the wall and, if he reaches the top before Quasimodo gets across, sticks his sword into the hunchback’s bottom. When Urquhart turned up at the magazine’s stand at the ZX Microfair in February 1984, CRASH reported, he was “slightly disapproving” of that review but delighted to point out how high the game was in the charts. He spent the day showing visitors how to play Transversion and Hunchback, and arguing with David Shea, author of Quicksilva’s The Snowman, about whose game was better.
The game also started a joke between programmers. In Jet Set Willy, Matthew Smith included a room called “I think I’ve seen this somewhere before” that poked fun at a scene from Hunchback. Urquhart told Sinclair User in July 1984 that he was plotting his revenge.
Cavelon and Decathlon
By the summer of 1984 Urquhart had left school and was working full-time for Ocean in Manchester, commuting every day from Wallasey. Ocean developed on a Memotech system with disc drives by then; the days of writing games on a Spectrum and Microdrives instead of doing his homework were over. He said he preferred writing programs to playing them, and named The Pyramid as his favourite game. “I don’t go all out,” he said, “but I try to perfect a game as much as I can. Every program has bugs but I try to get rid of as many as possible.”
His next arcade conversion was Cavelon, a maze game in which a knight collects the pieces of a door to escape a castle, with a title screen designed by D. Thorpe. CRASH gave it 86% in August 1984.
Then came the licence. CRASH credited the Spectrum Daley Thompson’s Decathlon to Paul Owens and Christian Urquhart and reviewed it in November 1984 at £6.90: ten events over two days, one on each side of the tape, ending with “the joystick killing 1500 metres”. It gave the game 82% and one reviewer called it “the best Spectrum ‘Track and Field’ type game around”. CRASH noted that Ocean was paying royalties to the British Amateur Athletics Board. Another reviewer had a single complaint: Daley Thompson, a Black athlete, appeared on the Spectrum as a white man.
Gremlin and Alphabatim
In July 1985 CRASH visited Gremlin Graphics in Sheffield and found Urquhart, now nineteen, among its four full-time in-house Spectrum programmers, working on a game called Beaver Bob in Dam Trouble. By the autumn he had a company of his own. In November CRASH reported a visit to its offices in Ludlow from Urquhart, Mike Smith and Mike Baxter, who had formed Alphabatim and came to show how work on its game, Robot Messiah, was going. CRASH called Smith and Urquhart “a cool pair of Liverpool dudes”, and reported that the visitors stayed the night and held their first board meeting the next day.
Robot Messiah was an arcade adventure about SID, a robot who escapes the mines where the androids keep his kind as slaves and sets out to free them. Alphabatim’s advertisements offered it by post from an address in Brighton and promised “152 screens and 3 levels”, and they spelt out the authors’ record in one line: “‘ROBOT MESSIAH’ written by Christian Urquhart and Mike Smith. Christian Urquhart is also the author of ‘Hunchback’ & co-author of ‘Daley Thompson’s Decathlon’.” CRASH gave the £7.95 game 72%.
Later games
In June 1987 Sinclair User reminded readers of “programmer Christian Urquhart from his stint at Ocean when he co-wrote Daley Thompson’s Decathlon”, who had since “moved into space, first with Gun Runner for Hewson” and then with Star Runner for Code Masters, a race through a space marathon at the Olympics of 2087. A year later the same magazine reviewed Soldier of Light, ACE Software’s first arcade conversion, coded by Urquhart, “who was responsible for the business end of Xecutor, ACE’s first, and much acclaimed release”. It thought the conversion “acceptable, though not particularly faithful”, and “mediocre”. Public sources do not record what he did after 1988.
Sources
- Sinclair User issue 28, July 1984, pp. 51–53: Chris Bourne, “Knight moves” (the magazine spells the name “Urquart”). Abu Dhabi and Wallasey; the ZX81; Ward’s advert; Transversion; Hunchback and the O-levels; the hunchbox quote; Cavelon; working full-time for Ocean and the Memotech system; The Pyramid; the Jet Set Willy room.
- CRASH issue 1, February 1984: Transversion review (Ocean, 16K, £5.90, “C Urquhart/N Pierpoint”).
- CRASH issue 2, March 1984, p. 73: Hunchback review (“C.F. Urquhart”, fifteen screens, the red knight).
- CRASH issue 3, April 1984, pp. 42–43: the ZX Microfair of 4 February 1984 (Urquhart and Nick Pierpoint on the CRASH stand; the argument with David Shea).
- CRASH issue 7, August 1984, pp. 88–89: Cavelon review (Christian Urquhart; title screen by D. Thorpe; 86%).
- CRASH issue 10, November 1984, pp. 93–94: Daley Thompson’s Decathlon review (Paul Owens and Christian Urquhart; £6.90; royalties to the British Amateur Athletics Board; 82%).
- CRASH issue 18, July 1985, pp. 27–32: visit to Gremlin Graphics (the four in-house Spectrum programmers; Urquhart’s career; Beaver Bob in Dam Trouble).
- CRASH issue 22, November 1985, p. 19: “Alphabatim is born” (Urquhart, Mike Smith and Mike Baxter).
- CRASH issue 24, Christmas Special 1985, p. 16: Robot Messiah review (Mike Smith and Christian Urquhart; £7.95; 72%); Robot Messiah advertisement.
- Sinclair User issue 45, December 1985: Robot Messiah advertisement (“152 screens and 3 levels”; the authors’ credits).
- Sinclair User issue 63, June 1987: Star Runner review (Gun Runner and Star Runner).
- Sinclair User issue 75, June 1988: Soldier of Light review (author Christian Urquart; Xecutor).