Byte Bitten - Memories

Byte Bitten was written by Tony Barber, who originally wrote the game after playing Virgin Games' Falcon Patrol on the Commodore 64. There was nothing similar on the Spectrum, so Tony (as Mind Games) wrote Jump-Jettin' and sent it to Virgin, who responded in writing to say that the game wasn't sufficiently close to the original game to be considered. However, they asked if Tony was interested in writing an official spectrum conversion, but at the time he was too busy so he turned the offer down.

Tony proceeded to re-write Jump-Jettin', adding various new features to the design - including relegating Jump-Jettin' to a sub-game. He called his new game Byte Bitten, and shortly afterwards he saw the Firefly advert and was immediately interested. Being an ex-British Telecom engineer, he recognised the Upper St Martins Lane address and managed to track down a telephone number. After a quick conversation with Tony Rainbird, the two Tony's set up a meeting.

Tony Rainbird liked Byte Bitten and signed it up as part of Telecomsoft's initial launch portfolio. An advanced royalty payment was made to Tony Barber, and he heard nothing more until he received a phone call from Tony Rainbird shortly after the press launch for Firebird. Virgin Games had attended the launch, and accused Firebird of copying Falcon Patrol. Tony Rainbird felt he had no choice but to withdraw Byte Bitten and recover the advanced royalty payment. Thankfully for Tony Barber, he still had the letter he had received from Virgin Games which proved that they hadn't considered Jump-Jettin' (which was now part of Byte Bitten) to be similar enough. Armed with this fresh information, Tony Rainbird was happy to go ahead as originally planned, on the proviso that the Harrier Jump Jets were changed to Sea King Helicopters. This minor change was made, the sub-game was renamed Sea King, and Byte Bitten was published in late 1984.