Code Like It's 198x

Steve Wilcox

Elite Systems

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Steve Wilcox ran a Walsall computer shop before he and his father, Brian, founded Elite Systems in 1984. He bid for Commando, flew alone to a Tokyo game show and came back with Paperboy, Bomb Jack and Space Harrier, and was still running Elite decades later, selling its old Spectrum games on phones and consoles.

In 1985 Steve Wilcox sat in a London hotel suite with his father, Brian, bidding for the home computer rights to Capcom’s Commando. Brian offered £25,000. Steve, sure the game would sell in six figures, turned that into 100,000 copies at a royalty of 65p each, and the offer went up to £65,000 on the spot. “My old man, to his credit, didn’t even flinch,” he told Retro Gamer twenty years later. Commando was the best-selling game of that Christmas, and Wilcox spent the next two years turning arcade machines into Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad games for the family firm, Elite Systems.

From shop to publisher

Wilcox took a chemistry degree, spent ten months in a big industrial company, got frustrated, and opened a computer shop in a back street in Walsall. He called it Bowies, after his favourite musician, which by his own account “confused everybody”. By autumn 1983 he was selling Spectrums “by the truckload”, Commodore Computing International reported.

His younger brother, Richard, had taught himself to program and written a shoot-’em-up for the Atari 400. Their father told them they should be making games, not just selling them. Richard converted his game to the Spectrum as Blue Thunder, and when the brothers took it to W H Smith’s head office, Steve recalled, the buyers ordered 5,000 copies, about £12,000 worth. It came out in 1983 under the name Richard Wilcox Software. Richard was 15 and still at school, so Steve hired four local teenagers to write more, and their Kokotoni Wilf was the first release under the new name. CRASH reported in October 1984 that “Elite Systems Ltd., formed from Richard Wilcox Software” had launched it, with Steve Wilcox as sales and marketing manager.

Period sources name Steve and Brian Wilcox as Elite’s founders and owners. Commodore Computing International found them in June 1987 in offices above a tandoori restaurant and a hairdresser, with a black Jaguar and a gold Lotus Esprit in the car park, “father and son, Brian and Steve Wilcox, who own Elite completely”. It described Steve, then 27, as tall, slim and moustached, a nervous smoker who was “reputedly” the youngest software millionaire in Britain, and credited his father, a retired foundry owner, with bringing “quality control” to the business. Edge still called them “founders Steve Wilcox and his father Brian” in 1994. By 2005 Retro Gamer was describing Steve as Elite’s chairman.

Writing to a formula

Wilcox was open about what Elite did and did not do. “We write to a formula,” he told Your Computer in July 1986, when Elite had had three games, Frank Bruno’s Boxing, Airwolf and Commando, in the top twelve sellers of 1985. “You do not have to read a 15-page instruction manual to play one of our games. … They have played it in the arcades, they want to buy it, load it and play it. After a short time they will get fed up with it, go out and buy another one.” He admitted the weakness that came with it: “If we have a weakness, it is that we cannot write anything original of any great consequence.” Elite had no in-house programmers then, he said, but about 40 freelancers it could call on.

The formula depended on licences, and Wilcox chased them himself. After the Commando deal was signed in August 1985 he flew to a game show in Tokyo that September to see what was coming. He found, he said, that he was the only British publisher there. He phoned his father, who told him to sign up everything worth having, and he came back with the rights to Paperboy, Space Harrier and Bomb Jack, among others. “I returned to the show the following year and it was absolutely swarming with UK publishing people.” By Wilcox’s figures Elite turned over about £600,000 in its first year, £1.5 million in its second and more than £3 million in 1986, the year Computer and Video Games’ readers voted it Software House of the Year.

He could also take criticism. When ZZAP!64 printed its readers’ awards for 1986, Wilcox, described as “Joint Director of Elite”, thanked the programmers and readers and added: “We recognise that our 64 conversions are perhaps the weakest amongst those we publish, so we intend to improve the standard of products over 1987.”

He was careful with new machines. Asked by 8000 Plus in October 1986 whether Elite would publish for Amstrad’s PCW, he said: “obviously it’s an extension to the market, but we’ve really got to suck it and see.”

After the licences

By Wilcox’s account Elite gave up on licences when agents pushed the prices up: one of Atari’s agents wanted £50,000 up front for 720°, and Elite walked away. It spent 1987 to 1989 on original games, which he admitted sold poorly. He had seen the Famicom’s success on his trips to Japan, and had a subcontractor reverse-engineer it so that Elite could write NES games. From 1990 Elite published for Nintendo’s consoles, and its Super NES football game Striker sold more than 200,000 copies, he said. Wilcox even appeared in one of his own games: Computer and Video Games noted in 1989 that “‘thrifty’ Steve Wilcox, as he is known in the trade”, made “a starring appearance” in Elite’s A Question of Sport.

At the end of 1994, Wilcox said, Sony cut the price it paid publishers for new products just before Christmas, and Elite lost £2 million. It became a developer instead, and by his account its PC game Test Drive: Off-Road was its first million-seller. From about 2002 he took Elite back to its old catalogue, re-acquiring the rights to Bomb Jack, Buggy Boy, Ikari Warriors and Paperboy for mobile phones. “We’re still here today, 21 years on, and I don’t imagine I’ll ever do anything else,” he told Retro Gamer in 2005.

In October 2010 Elite released ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection for the iPhone, which reached number seven in the UK paid chart, and in 2012 it put Manic Miner on Xbox Live Indie Games. Wilcox called Elite’s software a “facilitator” rather than an emulator, and told Retro Gamer that the market for Spectrum games in 2011 had been worth about £250,000 at retail prices: “And we have significantly more than half of that market.” In 2014 Elite sought £60,000 on Kickstarter for the Recreated ZX Spectrum, a Bluetooth keyboard shaped like a Spectrum 48K (see Elite Systems).

Sources

  • Retro Gamer issue 13, 2005, Martyn Carroll, Elite Systems feature and interview with Steve Wilcox: “Chairman and co-founder”; the shop, Bowies; Richard, the Atari 400 and Blue Thunder; W H Smith; the four teenage programmers; the Commando bid and “didn’t even flinch”; the August 1985 deal and the Tokyo show; turnover; agents and 720°; the original games; the Famicom; Striker; the Sony price cut and the £2 million loss; Test Drive: Off-Road; the mobile re-releases; “21 years on”.
  • Commodore Computing International, vol. 5 no. 10, June 1987, pp. 10–11 and 42, “Gamesworld: The Wilcoxes”: Brian and Steve Wilcox “own Elite completely”; the offices and cars; Steve’s age, degree, industrial job and shop; “by the truckload”; “reputedly” the youngest software millionaire; Brian’s foundry and “quality control”.
  • CRASH issue 9, October 1984, news: “Elite Systems Ltd., formed from Richard Wilcox Software”; Steve Wilcox as sales and marketing manager.
  • Your Computer, July 1986, pp. 22–23, company profile of Elite: sales director Steve Wilcox; three titles in the top twelve of 1985; “We write to a formula”; “we cannot write anything original of any great consequence”; 40 freelance programmers.
  • Computer and Video Games issue 53, March 1986, p. 14: Commando the number one game at Christmas.
  • ZZAP!64 issue 23, March 1987, p. 84: readers’ awards for 1986, Steve Wilcox, “Joint Director of Elite”, on its C64 conversions.
  • 8000 Plus issue 1, October 1986: Steve Wilcox on the Amstrad PCW, “suck it and see”.
  • Computer and Video Games issue 88, February 1989: A Question of Sport review by Eugene Lacey (Steve Wilcox appears in the game).
  • Edge issue 7, April 1994, p. 35: “founders Steve Wilcox and his father Brian”.
  • Retro Gamer issue 106, September 2012, “Rise of the Spectrum”: ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection (October 2010, number seven in the UK paid chart); Manic Miner 360 (June 2012); the “facilitator”; Wilcox’s estimate of the Spectrum games market.
  • Simon Sharwood, “Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum to LIVE AGAIN!”, The Register, 29 January 2014 (web, secondary): the Recreated ZX Spectrum and its £60,000 Kickstarter target. https://www.theregister.com/2014/01/29/sinclairs_zx_spectrum_to_live_again/

See also

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