Gyron - Memories

Gyron for the 48k Spectrum was written by Torus, a small development team that consisted of Phil Mochan, Ricardo Pinto, Dominic Prior and Mark Wighton.

Ricardo had moved from Edinburgh to London in 1983 after getting his degree and heard through the grapevine about a American-Swedish businessman called John Dixon who was looking for computer game programmers. Confident in his ability but lacking any programming experience at all, Ricardo blagged the interview and got the job, working in a small flat in Chelsea (London) with fellow Mathematics graduate Dominic Prior.

Ricardo learned machine code programming within a few weeks of joining Torus, but within a few months the workload was becoming too much for the duo, so Ricardo drafted in two graduate friends - Phil Mochan (armed with a degree in Computer Design) and Mark Wighton (who had a degree in Artificial Intelligence).

The original game design included a linear trench with trap doors, monsters and other obstacles. However, that was considered a little too simplistic and so the straight trench became 'an abstract network' or maze. Ricardo evangalised the idea of adding roaming spheres into the maze, and the shooting towers that were originally on the walls inside the maze were moved outside.

Despite some resistance from their manager, Torus went ahead with the spheres idea and quickly discovered that the Spectrum ROM routine for drawing circles was far too slow and inaccurate. Ricardo and Dominic used their mathematical expertise and came up with their own alternative code, which ended up ten times faster. Thanks to the entire game being accurately modelled in 3D, the spheres also varied in diameter from just 2 pixels to a staggering 512!

Torus also employed an area in memory to draw some of the graphics, allowing them to switch rapidly between the standard on-screen display and the secondary screen. This was actually faster to update than constantly refreshing the one display and it also allowed for a few neat graphical tricks at the same time.

In total, it took Torus 12 months to write Gyron from start to finish. By the end of the development, memory was so tight on the 48k Spectrum that Torus had to use some of the black areas of the main display to hide and run some of their machine code routines.

Although their manager John Dixon had negotiated an offer from Thorn EMI, the team felt they could do much better so they took the game to Tony Rainbird at Telecomsoft. He was very keen and immediatey saw it as a potential release for the premium label, Firebird Gold. A deal was struck, although it took Torus a couple of months of legal wrangling to fire their manager before they could finally sign on the dotted line.

Technically, Gyron was one of the most impressive games released on the Spectrum. However, it was also quite an abstract scenario and it was quite tough to play. From a design and coding point-of-view it was exceptional, but it didn't give immediate gratification in the same way as the faster and more simplistic arcade games could. However, Firebird knew that Gyron was a quality title, and so they pushed their marketing machine into high gear to help sell it.

Firstly, a high profile competition was included to win a Porsche 924 LUX sports car or the cash equivalent (around £12,500!). Hidden somewhere in the depths of the harder Necropolis maze was a secret code. Any player who found the code could submit it to Firebird using the official form, as long as it arrived no later than 6th November 1985. Regional play-offs were then held in various cities and countries where the successful entrants had to compete against the clock, playing a specially written maze called Gyron Arena. The winner was 16 year old Juan Manuel Perez Vazquez, from the Spanish heats. He completed the Arena maze in just 18 minutes, and opted for the cash prize.

To further help push sales, Firebird also released a special Spectrum demo tape to computer shops. Called The Gyron Demonstrator, the demo showed animated sequences from inside the Necropolis maze, switching back and forth to the Gyron title screen every 15 seconds. The idea was to have shops load the demo and leave it running during the day.

Gyron received some very positive magazine reviews, and it helped to raised the profile of the Firebird Gold label. Despite this, the game didn't sell as well as Firebird or Torus had hoped. Partially due to the problems they had experienced behind-the-scenes with their manager, the Torus team failed to make much money out of Gyron. Although Torus were much keener on developing their own ideas, Firebird had recently bid for and won the publishing rights to convert Elite to a wide range of home computer formats, and they asked Torus to write the Z80 conversions. Swallowing their pride and their principals, Torus agreed...

Thanks to The World of Spectrum for the Gyron Demonstrator inlay image.