Denial

Did Codemasters release something for the VIC? Wikipedia suggests so but I haven't seen anything by Codemasters in the vic20tapes.com or anywhere else.

Codemasters didn't form until 1986 so highly doubtful (their first release was BMX Simulator iirc). However the Darling brothers did write games for Mastertronic beforehand. I've got nothing in GB20 against either of them, but that isn't to say they didn't write anything for that company (I got plenty of games without credit against them).

Finding out if the Darling brothers have worked on a VIC-20 game is quite hard.. I don't even have Mastertronics tapes. And the Codemasters probably don't have time for such questions right now

None of my Mastertronic games mention any programmers in the packaging.
I'll have a look in the games/code.

Checked the Mastertronic games I've dumped. None with any credits by the Darling brothers.. Only a couple of games had any credits besides Mastertronic.

Thanks for checking those out!

Find them then and ask them...


Send emails to everyone you can find with their names, that's how I found a Channel F programmer...

Yep, sometimes you can locate people in the most amazing ways. I remember helping out with the HVSC STIL, trying to locate the composer of some Broderbund Music Shop demo tunes. I found the homepage of a woman who used to work with label design, marketing or such. I asked if she had any memories of that piece of 1984 software she worked on, and much to my surprise she was able to dig out the otherwise unpublished names of the developers and I think even a valid e-mail address to one of them! Armed with this information, it was easy for me to get the tunes confirmed.

Mastertronic released a number of VIC games, but how many were re-releases and which were original ones? Even if the Darlings were responsbile for a couple of games, they're hardly Codemasters releases.

Interesting discovery time... going through a huge TAP archive for GB20 checking to see if I was missing anything (a few of them), I happen to run across something called Games Designer by Galactic Software. No cover scan so all I have are the TAPs.

But the description of how it works and what it does reminds me of the Games Creator software for the C64 that was made by the Darlings. So I fire it up and try out the sample games provided. And what names are on the title screen credits? Richard and David Darling.

I have no idea if Galactic Software was their company or they did it for a third party, but 99% proof here they did do something for the Vic20...

Thank you, I found some information but not very much:
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/shee ... erId,4043/
says that Galactic Software was their first software company. It might have been before they started working for Mastertronic.

Seems likely... I've got three games in GB20 against Galactic Software: Bug Diver, Robot Mouse and Space Shuttle. No in-game credits to the programmer(s), but could quite likely be them.

When loading the first part of Space Shuttle there's this text at $1900:

"Have fun!!" and then "there is a purpose to this but i'm not gonnatell you!!!is this a clue?"

It appears in the BASIC listing at row 3000...

Is it part of a copy protection?


I noticed something is added there at $1963 when running the program.

I just looked through the data to see if there were any obvious signature by the programmer.

Galactic Software... oh yes, Now I remember.
I've got some tape games for the c64 made by Galactic Software.

http://c64tapes.org/title.php?id=2758
http://c64tapes.org/title.php?id=2759

and the same Bug Diver for the vic20.

Galactic published Neutron Zapper for the VIC too,
http://www.mobygames.com/game/neutron-zapper

Looks like they licensed Neutron Zapper to Mastertronic, I've got the game listed under it instead (and 3D Maze by the looks of it).