The behind the scenes story of what happened back in 1989 / 1990…

Philip Oliver informs me that of the Oliver Twins, it was just him working on the 30 Games CD project as Andrew Oliver was busy on starting Fantastic Dizzy on NES. Philip Oliver informed me that he spent about 4 weeks work. Nov./Dec ‘89 on the project (but It was only supposed to be 2 weeks work).

Q1. When was the 30 games on one CD idea first developed and by who?

Philip Oliver: Richard Darling and Ted Carron I think. But it was much earlier in the year and we weren’t around when it started. We were still working from our house in Trowbridge.

The first version was on Commodore 64. I think either Jon Menzies or Andrew Graham did the code on that version.

Q2. What was the actual product?

Philip Oliver: A box containing a Cable audio jacks one end and an adaptor Jack, a signal converter chip and a joystick port adaptor the other.  It also included a CD ROM containing the Games and an instruction booklet.

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Q3. How did the product work?

Philip Oliver: We saved the games using a very high baud rate, 20 times the speed of the regular signal to a high quality audio DAT tape. You couldn’t write to a blank CD in those days – that technology hadn’t been invented then played it back to the computer.

The “Saver” and Loader” had to be written with extreme accuracy and error checking build in. It had to allow for slight variations in signal “high’s”( 1’s) and “low’s” (0 ’s). Once you had the tech working you loaded the game – saved it to the DAT at ~20 times speed. Sent the DAT to a company to cut a test CD. Tested it – and if it passed QA you did the production run. The joystick port input acted like a cleaner digital input port, but still very similar to the Audio in used when loading tapes. Initially the plan was to use the Stereo output from the CD player to have 1 channel work as the timer channel and the other to act as the stream of faster data. Wait for the Timer channel to switch (0 to 1 or 1 to 0) and read the other channel for the data. Sadly we discovered through buying a load of CD players that some of the cheaper makes mixed the stereo to a mono output to save money. We clearly had to be compatible with all CD players and reverted to a software solution relying on only 1 input signal – very similar to have a regular tape loaded.

Sounds simple? It was so hard to get it reliable.

Q4. Could 30 games really fit onto the one CD at the time ?

Philip Oliver: Yes – actually more. a CD is 74 mins.  The game typically loaded between 20-30 seconds depending on exact size. So you could get about 150 on !

There were 30 games on the Amstrad [34 on Spectrum] that we felt were high enough quality. So we simply saved all twice – in case someone scratched a disc – there were 2 tracks for each game. There was still a tonne on capacity left on the CD.

Q5. You mentioned to me on FB that it was quite an experience and not much fun – what was your involvement with the project ?

Philip Oliver: What I thought was a simple task turned out to be extremely tricky. Different CD players at the time were of varying quality. At first it was assumed that all were stereo. Certainly they all said they were. But actually some of the cheaper, mass volume CD players cheated and were mono. This made writing code that code deal with all the variance very tricky. Time was against us – this was supposed to be the ideal present for Christmas. But we only started in November – so we were really against the clock. Every hour and every day counted. Andrew and I moved from our nice new house in Trowbridge to be on site to help. On-site meant working and practically living in a portacabin. Being November was nasty weather! It was cold and windy outside, but being a portacabin meant it was noisy and rocked and not in a good way! We practically lived in our coats. Peter Williamson, one of the other game developers offered that we could sleep on his floor, in sleeping bags, at his flat.   The problem was with Christmas fast approaching and technical problems I ended up working 20 hours days in that portacabin and living on pot noodles, crisps, chocolate and coke. The electronics’ guy leading the project was Ted Carron who was a chain smoker – we’re talking 50+ a day! I don’t smoke, I never have and hate cigarette smoke. He’d sit next to me most of the time, smoking (days before people went outside to smoke), and to make matters worse, he thought it was funny to drop his butts in my can drinks when I wasn’t looking.

(Find photos attached of outside portacabins & 1 inside shot. (Andrew’s Desk).

(The Dog is Jim Darlings Pointer called Zak. The other guy with us is Peter Williamson).

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Q6. In the AA#52  interview, David Darling said that tests were done to make Amstrad CPC specific games. Did you or anyone else at Codemasters actually put together any specific games to take advantage of the extra storage and speed capabilities of the CD?

Philip Oliver: Sorry to burst that bubble, but the plan was to put existing games on the CD. Nothing new and no extended titles.

Q7.  David Darling said in the AA#52 interview that Codemasters spent quite a bit of money on the project, it wasn’t just for the Amstrad CPC but also the Spectrum and C64 machines.  Did it ever hit the shelves ?  If so what were sales like?

Philip Oliver: The C64 was first out, in November I recollect, the Spectrum version also got released but not the Amstrad CPC version.  The main reason for this was that unfortunately due to poor sales of the C64 and Spectrum versions the  decision was made not to release an Amstrad CPC version. The inventory did probably cost quite a lot and I’m sure Codemasters lost money on the venture.

Codemasters co-founder Richard Darling, was interviewed in 2015 on website http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2015/05/codemasters-cd-games-pack-amstrad-cpc-version/ and stated “I think we originally intended to launch it simultaneously on the 3 formats but had some difficulties with the Amstrad version, so we launched with C64 and Spectrum intending to follow-on with Amstrad. However, when we launched it for Spectrum and Commodore 64 the sales levels were very low, so we decided not to roll-out the idea to the Amstrad.”

Q8. In AA#52, Adam Waring stated that anyone who owns a CD player and a CPC is going to find this irresistible.  Why do you think the project failed so badly ?

Philip Oliver: It was a cool idea and good tech, but timing was all wrong. When developing it I remember saying anyone that plays games and has the money to buy a CD player would buy an Atari ST or an Amiga, both released 4 years prior, before attempting to hook up their 8 bit computer to their CD player. In addition most of the CD players were sold as part of a stack system and were non-portable – in many cases this was unlikely to be near the players 8 bit computer – that had to be tethered to a bulky static TV. Both the Atari ST and Amiga had Disk Drives and were 16 bit computers with far better graphics.

Q9.  The sky seemed the limit with this project.  It was touted that gaming on 8bit machines such as the Amstrad CPC, Spectrums and C64 would be changed forever.  Claims such as full screen graphics, huge animated sprites, extra levels, digitized music and movie styled video were going to be the norm.  It sounded a little far fetched, would we have seen this if the project have been a success ?

Philip Oliver: I still believe that the limiting factor would have been the 8 bit computers. People wanted 16 bit computers, these had disk drives that were already a significant improvement on Cassettes. Some CD Rom Drives were made for 16 bit computers and they did quite well – they obviously used the disks as proper digital data discs – which was obviously far better than the crude method we used. Codemasters were quick to produce a CD Rom for one of these – the Amiga CD32. It was called the Big 6 Dizzy Pack.  Then came a console with an integrated CD Rom drive – that was amazingly successful – that was the original PlayStation!

Q10. Looking back now with hindsight do you think people just didn’t understand it and maybe it would have been more successful if Codemasters had developed an actual CD ROM hard drive for the CD instead ?

Philip Oliver: I think Codemasters were very innovative, they came up with a clever solution and saw it through, but I don’t think the market was there. People with enough money to a have a CD player – had enough money to buy an Atari ST or Amiga. That was the fundamental problem.  However, when you are an innovator and pioneer, you expect some failures. Some of their other innovations, like the Game Genie were spectacularly successful.

It’s is better to try and have some successes, rather than be terrified of failure and try nothing.

I would like to thank Philip Oliver for his time and fantastic in depth answers on the Codemasters, 30 Games on 1 CD project of 1989 / 1990.

CPC4EVA