Steve Crow
Wizard's Lair, Starquake, Firelord
Bubble Bus's programmer, billed in 1986 advertising as the previous year's Programmer of the Year — and author of three of the Spectrum's best-liked flick-screen arcade adventures.
Steve Crow wrote Wizard’s Lair, Starquake and Firelord for Bubble Bus, and the company advertised him by name — which in 1986 was a commercial decision, not a courtesy:
Another fast-moving, richly animated scorcher from 1985’s Programmer of the Year, Steve Crow — author of Wizard’s Lair and Starquake.
Fast facts
- Games: Wizard’s Lair (1985), Starquake (1985), Firelord (1986).
- For: Bubble Bus Software.
- Price: Firelord at £8.35 across Spectrum, Amstrad and Commodore.
- “1985’s Programmer of the Year”: Bubble Bus’s billing, in its own advertising. The British press does record such an award for 1985 and 1987; the wording quoted is the publisher’s.
The name as a selling point
That advert is doing something worth noticing. It leads with the programmer, treats his previous two games as the argument for buying this one, and expects a fourteen-year-old reading CRASH to recognise all three names.
Publishers only do that when it works. By 1986 a section of the Spectrum audience followed individuals — this is the same phenomenon that let ZZAP! tell readers a game was John Twiddy’s and expect it to mean something, and that put Pete Cooke on a magazine cover.
It did not last. Within five years a game was a team and no advertisement led with a programmer’s name, which is why this Vault’s people list has a shape: dense through the mid-eighties, thin afterwards.
Three games, one structure
Wizard’s Lair, Starquake and Firelord are all flick-screen arcade adventures — a large map of single screens, an inventory, things to find and places they unlock, and enough combat to make moving around dangerous.
The form suits the hardware exactly. A screen at a time means no scrolling, which the Spectrum cannot do cheaply; a flat map of rooms means the world’s size is limited by how compactly a room can be described, not by memory for pictures. Starquake in particular is enormous for a 48K game and stays fast, because none of it is stored as an image.
That is the same reasoning Mike Singleton applied to landscapes and the Quill applied to text: describe the world and draw it on demand. Crow’s version is the arcade one.
Why he matters
Crow’s games are the British arcade adventure at its most confident — real maps and real exploration, made by one person, sold on that person’s name.
He is also a reminder to read advertising as evidence with care. The billing above is the best single line about his standing in the period, and it was written by the company selling his game.