The strategy paid off as Sabre Wulf went on to sell over 350,000 copies on the Spectrum alone. This coincided with the introduction of the distinctive Ultimate "big box" packaging (used with all further Spectrum releases until Gunfright, and with various releases on other platforms), which the company felt might also help justify the price increase and encourage gamers to buy the game rather than copy it. This increase was to discourage piracy, with the idea being that if customers paid more for a game they would be less inclined to give away copies. The price of Ultimate titles had previously been just £5.50, which was typical for Spectrum arcade-style games at the time. In 1984 came Sabre Wulf, the first in the Sabreman series, and the first release at a recommended retail price of £9.95. Both games were very well received by the gaming press, CRASH magazine in particular praising what Ultimate had managed to do with the extra memory Lunar Jetman used. Ultimate's first 48K releases were Lunar Jetman – a sequel to Jetpac – and Atic Atac, both of which were released in late 1983. They were also republished on cassette, with distinctive silver inlay cards, by Sinclair Research for inclusion in ZX Spectrum bundles. Jetpac, Pssst, Tranz Am and Cookie were four of only ten games ever to be released on the 16K ROM format for use with the ZX Interface 2. This was followed by three further 16K releases, Pssst in June, Tranz Am, and Cookie, before Ultimate stepped up to the 48K Spectrum. Jetpac was a huge commercial success the Spectrum version alone sold more than 300,000 copies to a market of only one million Spectrum owners at the time, and providing the fledgling company with a turnover in excess of £1 million. In a 1983 interview, Tim Stamper said that they deliberately targeted 16K machines as their smaller size meant development time was much shorter, claiming they could produce two 16K games in one month, or one 48K game. Ultimate's first release was Jetpac in May 1983 for the 16K Spectrum. Ashby released four arcade games: Blue Print for Bally-Midway, and Grasspin, Dingo and Saturn for Jaleco. This led to ACG's initial trade being in creating arcade conversion kits, before moving into the home computer software market developing games under the Ultimate Play the Game name. Both Tim and Chris had worked in arcade game development including, according to one report, Konami's Gyruss, and claimed to be "the most experienced arcade video game design team in Britain" until tiring of working for others and leaving to start Ashby Computers and Graphics. Other members of the Stamper family were also involved in the early running and support of the company, which was initially located in a house next to the family-run newsagent. Ultimate Play the Game was founded in the Leicestershire town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch in 1982 by Tim and Chris Stamper, their friend John Lathbury, and Tim's girlfriend (later wife) Carole Ward. 1.4 The Ultimate name in subsequent years.In 2015, several Ultimate titles were collected and released as part of the Rare Replay compilation for Xbox One. In 2006, Rare revived the "Ultimate Play the Game" name for an Xbox Live Arcade remake of Jetpac named Jetpac Refuelled. Rare was purchased by Microsoft in 2002 for US$377 million, a record price for a video game developer, and now develops exclusively for Microsoft platforms such as Xbox and Microsoft Windows. īy the time of the label's last use in 1988 on a retrospective compilation, Ultimate had evolved into Rare and moved on to developing titles for Nintendo consoles. the greatest single advance in the history of computer games" ( Edge). revolutionary" ( GamesTM), "one of the most successful and influential games of all time" ( X360), and "probably. Knight Lore, the first of the Filmation games, has been retrospectively described in the press as "seminal. Ultimate are perhaps best remembered for the big-selling titles Jetpac and Sabre Wulf, each of which sold over 300,000 copies in 19 respectively, and their groundbreaking series of isometric arcade adventures using a technique termed Filmation. Ultimate released a series of successful games for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, MSX and Commodore 64 computers from 1983 until 1987. Jetpac, Pssst, Cookie, Tranz Am, Lunar Jetman, Atic Atac, Sabreman series, Alien 8, Nightshade, GunfrightĪshby Computers and Graphics Limited, trading as Ultimate Play the Game, was a British video game developer and publisher, founded in 1982, by ex- arcade game developers Tim and Chris Stamper.
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