"Born in 1958, Chris Stamper discovered computers while studying physics and electronics at Loughborough University. He was soon making one of his own, built around an RCA 1802 microprocessor, and learning to program it; this comfort with hardware as well as software would be key to his career. By 1979 he?d finagled a job at Associated Leisure, a new British firm set up to not only import Japanese and American arcade machines into the country but to continue to support the needs of the arcade owners who purchased them once they arrived. In that spirit, Chris spent much of his time working up conversion kits which would allow an owner to, say, convert a Space Invaders machine to a Galaxian when the former started getting long in the tooth. He also found a job for his less technical little brother Tim in graphics and design, and became firm friends with John Lathbury, another coder and hardware engineer.
Their manager at Associated was a fellow named Norman Parker. Realizing the talent he had working under him, he convinced them all to leave Associated with him for a new venture: a company called Zilec, which would become one of just two British companies to manufacture and sell original arcade games. They became his secret weapons, engineering and programming a dozen games that were sold in Britain under the Zilec name or licensed to big Japanese companies like Konami and Sega. Probably the most famous of their arcade creations is the last, Gyruss, which they sold to Konami."
The only Zilec games I can find that fit the timeline are Vortex (1980), Phantoms II (1981), Blue Print (1982), The Pit (1982), Check Man (1982) and Saturn (1983). Space Phantoms (1979), Enigma II (1984) and Reaktor (1987) don't fit the timeline.
Everywhere else I have seen Gyruss is listed as written by Yoshiki Okamoto, not the Stampers.
That one looks like a very interesting game to convert to the Spectrum!! :o
I had never Heard of it before, and it also very interesting to know that Ultimate wrote some other coin ops in the early 80s... so they changed the arcades for the Spectrum, also a non-natural movement, but it paid off really well for them, specially since they were pioneers in the ZX in many things, maybe thanks to their experience in the coin op industry.
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I thought that they did more coin ops, but looks like I was mistaken:
http://www.arcade-history.com/index.php?page=database&editeur=1
"Born in 1958, Chris Stamper discovered computers while studying physics and electronics at Loughborough University. He was soon making one of his own, built around an RCA 1802 microprocessor, and learning to program it; this comfort with hardware as well as software would be key to his career. By 1979 he?d finagled a job at Associated Leisure, a new British firm set up to not only import Japanese and American arcade machines into the country but to continue to support the needs of the arcade owners who purchased them once they arrived. In that spirit, Chris spent much of his time working up conversion kits which would allow an owner to, say, convert a Space Invaders machine to a Galaxian when the former started getting long in the tooth. He also found a job for his less technical little brother Tim in graphics and design, and became firm friends with John Lathbury, another coder and hardware engineer.
Their manager at Associated was a fellow named Norman Parker. Realizing the talent he had working under him, he convinced them all to leave Associated with him for a new venture: a company called Zilec, which would become one of just two British companies to manufacture and sell original arcade games. They became his secret weapons, engineering and programming a dozen games that were sold in Britain under the Zilec name or licensed to big Japanese companies like Konami and Sega. Probably the most famous of their arcade creations is the last, Gyruss, which they sold to Konami."
(from http://www.filfre.net/2014/01/the-legend-of-ultimate-play-the-game/)
The only Zilec games I can find that fit the timeline are Vortex (1980), Phantoms II (1981), Blue Print (1982), The Pit (1982), Check Man (1982) and Saturn (1983). Space Phantoms (1979), Enigma II (1984) and Reaktor (1987) don't fit the timeline.
Everywhere else I have seen Gyruss is listed as written by Yoshiki Okamoto, not the Stampers.
Does anyone else have any insight into this?
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That one looks like a very interesting game to convert to the Spectrum!! :o
I had never Heard of it before, and it also very interesting to know that Ultimate wrote some other coin ops in the early 80s... so they changed the arcades for the Spectrum, also a non-natural movement, but it paid off really well for them, specially since they were pioneers in the ZX in many things, maybe thanks to their experience in the coin op industry.
I have to admit that I'd never heard of it either until I watched The Spectrum Show 30 (iirc).
Here's a look at the binary;
Just like I did with Blue Print and Saturn here;
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showpost.php?p=560198&postcount=76
My games for the Spectrum: Dingo, The Speccies, The Speccies 2, Vallation, SQIJ.
Twitter: Sokurah
http://www.arcade-history.com/?n=enigma-ii&page=detail&id=758