I didn’t know what a Metroidvania game was when I played Exile in the eighties – probably because the term didn’t exist yet. I also didn’t appreciate how pioneering this BBC Micro game was. Realistic gravity and inertia; a procedurally-generated map; non-linear gameplay; advanced AI, and a coherent world to explore – this game had the lot, and bags of atmosphere, too. “We knew and intended to create something novel,” says one-half of the creative team behind the Superior Software game, Peter Irvin. “But didn’t know how much anyone else would like it. We wanted to play it ourselves, and it was always fun play-testing – a good sign.” While the story of Exile ended in tragedy in 1992, it remains one of the eighties’ greatest and most innovative games.
By 1988, the 8-bit market was beginning to shrink. Arcade conversions and budget games dominated, and original products were becoming rare. “It was still a reasonably strong market,” says Superior Software boss Richard Hanson, “but it was starting to show some signs that it may have passed its peak.” This failed to deter Irvin and his colleague, Jeremy Smith.
Irvin and Smith were old school friends from St Albans. Says Irvin: “There was a group of us who were excited by the home computers that were starting to appear. Ian Bell [co-author of the legendary space trading game, Elite] was a friend, too.” Their school purchased a handful of Tandy TRS80 computers, and by the time Irvin and his friends were in Sixth Form, the BBC Micro had arrived. “In my gap year, I developed a game called Starship Command – while Jeremy did Pirates In Space. After university, we decided to carry on with games development.”
Published in 1982 and 1983, Pirates In Space and Starship Command are aesthetically similar, evoking the Atari classic, Asteroids. Once he returned from university, Smith chose another arcade game as inspiration for his next effort. Published by Superior for the BBC Micro and Firebird for the other 8-bit computers, the Gravitar-inspired Thrust was a big hit. Irvin abandoned work on his own game, Wizard’s Walk, and the two self-taught programmers finally joined forces.
Having cut their teeth on space adventures, Irvin and Smith settled on a game based around a lone astronaut. “Initially, it was just finding out what was fun to play,” says Irvin. “And what was possible on the BBC in terms of speed, graphics and RAM. The game evolved as we became more experienced in building up technologies and creative ideas. Later, we created the story that fit what we could do.”