Artic Software

In the early 1980s, Artic Software, also known as "Artic Computing" was a software development company based in Brandesburton near Hull. The company's first games were for the humble Sinclair ZX81 home computer but they expanded and were also responsible for various ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC Micro, Acorn Electron and Amstrad CPC computer games. The company was set up by Richard Turner and Chris Thornton - the name ARTIC being coined from their initials. Charles Cecil who later founded Revolution Software joined the company shortly after it was founded, writing Adventures B through D. Developer Jon Ritman produced many of their games.

Initially packaging and distributing games themselves, some titles were picked up by Sinclair, who repackaged them under the Sinclair brand.

Adventures A through D were written for the ZX81 but were quickly ported to the ZX Spectrum platform on its release. By comparison to other Spectrum adventure games available at the time (e.g. "The Hobbit"), they are rather basic.

Games

*"1K ZX Chess" (1981)
*"Adventure A: Planet of Death" (1981)
*"Adventure B: Inca Curse" (1981)
*"Adventure C: Ship of Doom" (1982)
*"Adventure D: Espionage Island" (1982)
*"Adventure E: The Golden Apple" (1983)
*"Adventure F: The Eye of Bain" (1984)
*"Adventure G: Ground Zero" (1984)
*"Adventure H: Robin Hood" (1985)
*"Bear Bovver" (1983)
*"The Great Wall" (1986)
*"Paws" (1985)
*"Web War" (1985)
*"Woks" (1986)

Trivia

* Most Artic adventure games feature a maze of some sort. The way out followed directions which would return the player to the same place (North, South, East, West in "Planet of Death" / South, East, West, North in "Espionage Island").

* The parser in their adventures is of a basic 2-word design ie. Verb Noun, such as "Use Axe". Other developers later produced multiple word parsers, as featured in games by Infocom and Magnetic Scrolls.

* In 1982, Artic Software released a chess game for the unexpanded 1 kb ZX81.

* 1982's "Ship Of Doom" had included a private bad taste joke by the authors if the player typed in "Rape Robot" fairly early on in the game. This resulted in Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers And Listeners Association demanding computer & video games be covered under a new anti "video nasties" bill then going through the House Of Commons by 1984.

References

* cite web
url=http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekpub.cgi?regexp=^Artic+Computing+Ltd$
title=Sinclair Infoseek - Artic Computing Ltd
accessdate=2006-01-27
work=World of Spectrum

External links

* [http://www.if-legends.org/~adventure/Artic_Computing.html Artic Computing at Adventureland]