Tony Crowther | Code Like It's 198x

In May 1985 ZZAP!64 put Tony Crowther in its first issue, and he was 19. It was, the magazine said, “barely a year since the yellow-topped, lightning-fingered Tony Crowther burst upon the games-playing scene” with Killer Watt, Blagger, Loco and Son of Blagger, and in that year he had changed companies twice. He enjoyed the attention. When he rang the publisher Curraha and gave his name, he told the magazine, the answer was “not THE Tony Crowther”. “Everyone knows who I am, it’s really good.” Two years later Computer Gamer was calling him “the gypsy of the software world”. He kept working long after the fame faded: by 2000 Edge reckoned he was “probably unique in having developed hit products on six different hardware platforms”.

Fast facts

Born: 1965, in Sheffield.
Alligata, 1983–84: Killer Watt, Blagger, Loco, Son of Blagger; later Trap (1986).
Gremlin Graphics, 1984: a director; Potty Pigeon, the C64 Wanted: Monty Mole, Suicide Express.
Wizard Development: his own company, by 1985: William Wobbler.
W.E.M.U.S.I.C.: a music company with Ben Daglish, by 1986.
With David Bishop, for Mirrorsoft: Zigzag, Fernandez Must Die, Phobia, Bombuzal (1988).
Mindscape, on the Amiga: Captive (1990), Captain Planet (1991), Knightmare, Liberation: Captive II (CD32).
Later: Gremlin’s 3D engines (Realms of the Haunting, 1997), then Infogrames, Electronic Arts and Sumo Digital.

A borrowed PET and a loaned Commodore 64

Crowther told ZZAP! he started at about 16, when a friend of his father’s lent him a Commodore PET 4032. For three months he could make nothing work. Then he wrote a version of the board game Mastermind, sent it to Computer and Video Games as a listing and heard nothing back, so he bought a VIC-20 “out of frustration”. He had always been the best in his art class, with an A at O level, and meant to go to art college, but “I’ll have a look at software for a bit” became a year at Alligata, and he never went. Physics was another matter: “I took it four times, the O level, and failed every time.” He could program, he said, because he had taught himself. “If someone had tried to teach me I’d have had no chance.”

He showed a car game to Superior Systems, a Sheffield computer shop that he remembered as having “just started”, though it had appeared in dealer lists in Computer and Video Games since 1981. Its Mike offered him a Commodore 64, then £299, as an advance on royalties. Two weeks later he had written Lunar Rescue, his first commercial program.

Alligata, Gremlin and Wizard

At Sheffield’s Alligata he wrote the games that made his name. Blagger was a platform game about a burglar, and Son of Blagger added scrolling. Loco was a train game, “inspired by an arcade game Tony Crowther once saw in Spain”, as ZZAP! put it, with music by the teenage Ben Daglish.

Then he moved, and moved again. He left Alligata, he told ZZAP!, because “I didn’t get out of the company what I wanted to”. He joined the new Gremlin Graphics, became a director and wrote Potty Pigeon, the Commodore 64 version of Wanted: Monty Mole and Suicide Express, then left after three or four months, over what CRASH called “differences on the board”. On how his games were marketed, he said, “I had no say whatsoever, the way I saw it,” and “it’s not the money I was after, it’s a satisfying job.” His next move was to set up Wizard Development with Roger Taylor, owning half each. “I don’t think I’ll be leaving Wizard, don’t worry about that,” he said in May 1985.

Where did the graphics come from? For Suicide Express he had gone to Spain in the middle of the job, got bored on the beach and filled a pad with “giant mushrooms, mazes, even things like the words in stone”, which went straight into the game. Critics noticed his scrolling more than anything. When they complained that all his games scrolled, he answered that a scrolling screen was “more advanced, and it’s also harder to write on, than a flick screen”.

Wizard’s William Wobbler came out in late 1985, and ZZAP! gave it 65%. By early 1986 he was writing its Atari version and supervising the Spectrum one. He also ran the Art Gallery on Compunet, the Commodore 64 online service, where users posted their pictures. In May 1986 Amtix reported that he had signed an exclusive contract with Alligata again. In Sinclair User, Gremlin’s gossip column enjoyed the line in Alligata’s press release claiming that “Tony’s most creative period was whilst with Alligata in 1983-4”. In March 1987 Computer Gamer found him at Ariolasoft, turning Moebius, a game once planned for Alligata, into the official Gobots game.

W.E.M.U.S.I.C.

Crowther also wrote music, and with Ben Daglish, back in Sheffield, he set up a music company run from Daglish’s home. ZZAP! printed its name as “We MUSIC”; later accounts expand W.E.M.U.S.I.C. as “We Make Use of Sound In Computers”. When ZZAP! gathered Rob Hubbard, Daglish, Crowther and David Whittaker for its musicians’ round-table in August 1986, Crowther claimed the music of Suicide Express. The partnership did not last long: early in 1987 Crowther went to Ariolasoft and Daglish to Gremlin, and Computer Gamer wondered what would become of “the dynamic duo’s fruitful partnership”. The Ben Daglish entry tells his side.

Mirrorsoft and Mindscape

From the late 1980s Crowther worked with the designer David Bishop on a run of games for Mirrorsoft: Zigzag, Fernandez Must Die and Phobia, Bishop designing and Crowther programming. One night Bishop was staying at Crowther’s house to finish one of them when, he told Amiga Power, he “sat bolt upright in bed at about 3.30 in the morning” with the idea for the puzzle game Bombuzal. It came out at Christmas 1988, designed by both of them.

His first Amiga game of his own was Captive (1990) for Mindscape, a science-fiction role-playing game in which the player directs four remote-controlled droids. Amiga Power said it took its cue from Dungeon Master and “manages to refine the style to perfection”. In 1991 ACE found him working on Knightmare, a game of the ITV series built on Captive’s system, and a computer game of the cartoon Captain Planet at the same time, while planning a Captive sequel. He designed Captain Planet “in a matter of hours” and planned to finish the Amiga version in five weeks. He had kept its violence out on purpose: “I don’t want to kill anyone in Captain Planet because it’s a Greenpeace-type thing.”

The sequel was Liberation: Captive II, which he wrote with Ross Goodley, the two calling themselves the Byte Engineers, for the Amiga CD32; The One interviewed the team about programming the new console in January 1994.

3D, consoles and Sumo

Crowther went back to Gremlin. In July 1996 Edge profiled him as the designer of the 3D engine behind its new PC and console games, including Realms of the Haunting, which he considered the best thing he had worked on. “Life was a lot simpler then,” he said of the 8-bit years; looking at his old projects, “aren’t they bad!” Gremlin’s software manager Tim Heaton confirmed the old habits: “He works all night and rarely gets up before lunch time.”

By the end of 2000 Gremlin had been taken over by Infogrames, and Edge found Crowther there, “just one member of the team” on Wacky Races. It blamed his relative anonymity on “the demise of the solo programmer”. Public reference works record his later work on console games for Electronic Arts, among them Harry Potter games and Burnout Paradise (2008), and a later role as a technical consultant at Sumo Digital, the Sheffield studio founded by former Gremlin and Infogrames staff.

Sources

Chris Anderson, “Crowther: Super being a superstar!”, ZZAP!64 issue 1, May 1985, pp. 59–61: his age, the PET and Mastermind, the VIC-20, Superior Systems and Lunar Rescue, art and physics, leaving Alligata and Gremlin, Wizard and Roger Taylor, Curraha, Suicide Express and Spain, scrolling screens.
Computer and Video Games issue 2, December 1981, p. 98: dealer list including “Superior Systems, Sheffield”. Issue 7, May 1982: Superior Systems Ltd, 178 West Street, Sheffield.
ZZAP!64 issue 7, November 1985: William Wobbler review (65%). Issue 10, February 1986: Gary Liddon’s interview (the Atari William Wobbler, Compunet) and the Compunet Art Gallery; the same issue interviewed Martin Galway separately. Issue 11, March 1986, p. 97: Alligata compilation offer (Blagger, Son of Blagger, Loco, Killer Watt).
ZZAP!64 issue 16, August 1986, pp. 39–42: “The Musicians’ Ball”, round-table with Rob Hubbard, Ben Daglish, Tony Crowther and David Whittaker.
Amtix issue 7, May 1986: Crowther’s exclusive contract with Alligata. Sinclair User issue 50, May 1986: Gremlin’s column on the same press release.
Computer Gamer issue 24, March 1987: “the gypsy of the software world”; Ariolasoft, Moebius and Gobots; Daglish’s move to Gremlin.
Amiga Power issue 0, May 1991: Captive review; David Bishop on Bombuzal and his Mirrorsoft games with Crowther.
ACE issue 45, June 1991: Captain Planet, Knightmare and the Captive sequel.
Amiga Format issue 32, March 1992: Knightmare coverdisk demo by Tony Crowther.
The One issue 64, January 1994, and Amiga Computing issue 70, February 1994: Liberation, Tony Crowther and Ross Goodley, the Byte Engineers.
Edge issue 34, July 1996: profile (the Gremlin 3D engine, Realms of the Haunting, Tim Heaton).
Edge issue 92, Christmas 2000: Crowther at Infogrames, six platforms, Wacky Races.
Wikipedia, “Antony Crowther” (web, secondary): date and place of birth; later games including Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Burnout Paradise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Crowther
Wikipedia, “Sumo Digital” (web, secondary): the studio’s founding by former Infogrames Sheffield and Gremlin staff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumo_Digital