Savage - Memories

Dave Perry and Nick Bruty were both external contractors for Probe Software in the late 80's and early 90's, collaborating on a number of different computer games primarily for the Sinclair Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC. Dave was the programmer and Nick was the graphic artist.

Quite often, Nick and Dave's original game ideas came from experimenting with the hardware, trying to push it to the next level. Nick was particularly keen on large main character sprites, having just done one for a U.S. Gold arcade game called Trantor - The Last Trooper with Dave.

Nick also loved giving Dave a technical challenge by using plenty of colour in the graphics. Colour was always tricky on the Spectrum thanks to the limitation of having only one 'paper' colour and one 'ink' colour per 8x8 pixel block on the screen. One solution was to try and have the game play as fast as possible, then the player wouldn't notice the colour problems because they had other things to worry about!

The design for Savage ended up so large that the game had to be split into three stages. The first was a horizontal left-to-right scrolling game that centred on the large main character sprite. The second stage might have superficially looked similar to Sega's arcade coin-op machine Space Harrier, but it's real inspiration was taken from an old Spectrum game called 3D Deathchase, a game that Dave Perry was particularly fond of. The final level was a multi-directional maze game, centring on a flying eagle.

The Spectrum version took about 3-4 months to code from start to finish. A stand-alone introduction was added to the start of the game to set the scene, but only once the game had an official title. It had gone under various internal project titles, and for a while it was being referred to as 'Roman Games' simply because the main character looked a little bit like a Roman Gladiator or Soldier.

Telecomsoft already had a steady working relationship with Probe, (mostly due to a series of budget titles published by Silverbird) and once the game was signed up then suggestions were taken for the final title. Where the name Savage came from is now long since forgotten, but as game titles go it was quite an apt one!

Other Probers converted the game to the remaining formats of the day. Gerry Harrison got coding duties for the C64, with debutant Neil Coxhead writing the second (3D) stage, Jeroen Tel doing the music and sound effects and Steven Crow doing the graphics.

Gerry used an Amiga to edit his code, and he then ported it to the C64 afterwards. The technical challenge on the C64 version was again the size of the characters, which involved lots of sprite multiplexing and careful timing to stop them intruding over various vertical boundaries which would otherwise cause vertical sprite ripping (sounds painful!).

Neil Coxhead had only just started working for Probe when he was given the second stage of Savage C64 to code. The reasons for his assignment were two-fold; to save Gerry some time (as they were on quite a tight deadline) and to show Probe what he was capable of. The pseudo-3D style of the second stage put Neil in good stead for his next Probe job, writing Outrun Europa for the C64.

Dave Perry and Nick Bruty handled the Amstrad CPC conversion themselves. The 16-bit conversions for the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga were coded by Tim Moore, with Kevin Collier doing the music and Nick Bruty once again creating the visuals. The final version was for the IBM PC, with Brian O'Shaughnessy coding, Alan Tomkins adapting the graphics for the limited PC's colour palette and resolution and Jas Brooke creating the music and sound effects.

Telecomsoft started promoting Savage at the 1988 PC Show, with the loud Amiga music (complete with heavy samples!) blaring out to all and sundry within earshot of Earls Court, let alone the Telecomsoft stand inside! After a few days of continuous exposure, some of the Telecomsoft staff manning the stand ended up feeling a bit 'savage' as well!