Software Creations, and the people there

Software Creations

Software Creations was a Manchester studio, and for a stretch of the late eighties and early nineties it was one of the best places in the country to be if you wrote games. Richard Kay set it up in 1985 and got it going properly the year after, off the back of an advert in the Manchester Evening News. The office was on Oxford Road, above a computer shop directly opposite the BBC.

The early work was conversions, often for Firebird, and often for a few hundred pounds a game. What the company got a name for was taking arcade machines and putting them on home hardware that had no business running them. Bubble Bobble on the Commodore 64 is the one people still bring up. Bionic Commando was another. The trick was never really the graphics, it was deciding what to throw away and getting the feel of the thing to survive the journey.

I came to it after Binary Design, and the C64 work I did there is elsewhere on this site. The one that people ask about is Gauntlet III, which was finished and reviewed and then never properly released, for reasons that had nothing to do with the code.

The people

Small companies are just the people in them. These are the ones whose work is on the record, and what they did with it.

Richard Kay

Founder

Software Creations was his. He set it up in 1985 and got it properly moving in 1986, after an advert he placed in the Manchester Evening News was answered by Steve Ruddy. The office was on Oxford Road, above a computer shop directly opposite the BBC.

What he built there was a studio with a reputation for taking on the arcade conversions other people said could not be done on the hardware, and then doing them. Bubble Bobble on the Commodore 64 is the one everybody remembers. He has told the story himself in a good many interviews since, and it is worth hearing from him.

Mike Webb

Co-founder

Came to the company from Ocean, where he had been a programmer, and helped get Software Creations off the ground in its earliest days.

Steve Ruddy

Programmer, and the first through the door

The one who answered the advert. With Richard Kay, Mike Ager and Andrew Threlfall he made up the first four people at the company.

His name deserves to be better known than it is. He wrote the music drivers that the Follins’ NES work ran on — the code underneath some of the most admired music ever written for the machine. The tunes get the credit, and rightly, but somebody had to build the thing that played them.

Tim Follin

Composer

Started writing game music on the Spectrum at fifteen, in 1985, and joined Software Creations full time in 1987. From there he wrote across the Spectrum, the C64, the Amiga, the ST and the NES.

The Solstice title theme is the one he has named as his own favourite, and the Silver Surfer score on the NES is still held up as some of the finest music anyone got out of 8-bit hardware. Plok!, Equinox and Rock’n Roll Racing followed in 1993. Thirty-odd years on, people still take those tunes apart to work out how he did it.

Geoff Follin

Composer

Tim’s brother, and his co-writer on a great many of the NES soundtracks that came out of the company. The pair of them wrote either together or in turn across most of what Software Creations shipped, and he wrote the music for Puzznic on the C64.

Mike Follin

Programmer

The third of the Follin brothers at the company, on the programming side rather than the music.

Haydn Dalton

Artist

Drew for Gauntlet III alongside Martin Holland, and had come through Binary Design before that, so our paths ran along much the same track.

He went a long way afterwards: lead designer on Darksiders and Darksiders II, and creative director roles in the United States since. A good artist who turned into a good designer, which is rarer than it sounds.

Martin Holland

Graphics

Worked on the Gauntlet III graphics with Haydn Dalton. He is also the reason the story of that game is on the record at all — he was the one who told Games That Weren’t what had happened to it.

Mike Ager and Andrew Threlfall

Among the first four

Hired at the very start, alongside Richard Kay and Steve Ruddy, when the whole company would fit in one room above a shop.

Mark Wilson

Artist

Came in as the company grew past its first handful of people, working on the art side.

What became of the place

The company was sold to Bristol Coin Equipment, later Rage Software, in 1994, and again to Sweeplink in 1997. Acclaim bought it in 2002 and renamed it Acclaim Studios Manchester, and that closed in 2004. Former staff started SilverBack Studios the following year. By then the catalogue behind it ran from Bubble Bobble on the C64 through Solstice and Plok! on the Nintendo machines to Mortal Kombat 3.

Afterwards: Barcrest

The move after games was to Barcrest, in Ashton-under-Lyne. Barcrest had been going since 1968 and was the country’s biggest name in fruit machines, supplying pubs, clubs and bingo halls from a five acre site on Margaret Street. It was among the first to put real computing behind the reels, with MPU boards that brought skill and feature rounds into what had been a game of pure chance — the ancestors of every wheel bonus and pick-em round in the industry since.

It is a different discipline to writing a game. The machine is regulated, the maths has to be provable, and the thing has to run in a box in the corner of a pub for years without anybody touching it. The habits transfer better than you would think: tight code, small memory, and no room to be clever for the sake of it. Some of it came back round much later, when I wrote 5 Reel Spinner for the iPhone, holds and all.

Dates, credits and company history here are drawn from the public record — Wikipedia, Games That Weren’t, and interviews Richard Kay has given about the company since. If I have any of it wrong, or missed somebody who should be here, tell me and I will put it right.

My games that were released on the C64

Strike! – 1987
A bowling game published by MAD / Mastertronic. Players compete in a ten-pin bowling tournament, aiming for strikes and spares while mastering the timing and accuracy needed to send the ball down the lane.

Raw Recruit – 1988
A multi-event sports game in which players take control of a new army recruit undergoing military training. Events include obstacle courses, shooting practice and fitness challenges, all designed to test speed and skill.

Scumball – 1988
A quirky multi-screen platform game where the player controls a bouncing ball-like character through a series of dangerous rooms filled with enemies, ladders and traps. The goal is to collect items and survive long enough to reach the next stage.

Sky Shark (US Version) – 1988
A vertically scrolling shoot-'em-up based on the arcade game by Taito. Players pilot a fighter plane through enemy territory, avoiding heavy fire while destroying tanks, ships and aircraft across increasingly difficult levels.

War Cars Construction Kit – 1988
Part action game and part creation tool, this title allows players to design their own arenas and then battle computer-controlled opponents using armed vehicles. It offered a surprising amount of freedom for a Commodore 64 game of the era.

Baby Blues – 1990
A fast-paced crosshair shooter in which the player must defend against waves of cartoon-style enemies. The game combines quick reflexes with colourful graphics and a light-hearted sense of humour.

Gunslinger – 1990
A Wild West themed shooting game where the player takes on the role of a lone gunslinger facing enemies in a series of quick-draw shootouts. Success depends on fast reactions and accurate aim.

Puzznic – 1990
A conversion of the popular arcade puzzle game. Players must slide matching blocks together to make them disappear, solving increasingly complex puzzles using logic and careful planning.

Gauntlet III: The Final Quest – 1991
An action game inspired by the Gauntlet series, featuring dungeon exploration, monsters and treasure. Players guide their hero through maze-like levels, battling enemies and searching for the exit while collecting power-ups along the way. :contentReference[oaicite:7]{index=7}