“It’s been a strange life.”
I’m sitting opposite Saboteur’s coder, Clive Townsend, at a retro gaming show in the Midlands.
I laugh nervously while swigging a mouthful of Spanish lager.
“But I’ve not trained for a long time.
“It was the 80s, so ninjas were everywhere,” he grins again.
I do wish he’d stop doing that.
“A mate and me used to watch loads of them, Jackie Chan and so on.
I thought it would be cool to have a ninja running around doing a mission in a game.
A sort of combination of James Bond, Batman and martial arts.”
Then, as the 80s dawned, it wasn’t long before Townsend encountered home computers.
“My introduction to computers was when a friend bought a ZX81,” he recalls.
“Between us, we took turns reading and typing out the listings from magazines.”
Unfortunately, just one missed character or - worse - a misprint, usually resulted in a non-working program.
Having coded a handful of minor games, Townsend took them to a local shop.
Durell was founded in 1983 by Robert White, ostensibly to produce and sell insurance software.
Having been promised a job upon leaving school, Townsend returned a few months later.
His first task: to write a Spectrum version of an in-house game design.
“But it wasn’t - although the concepts involved in making the game were.”
Unfortunately for the teenage programmer, Durell deemed Death Pit unsuitable and canned the project, his work wasted.
Well, not totally.
While working on the doomed Spectrum Death Pit, Townsend beavered away on another project in his spare time.
“Then I discovered Ninjutsu, which seemed to combine other martial arts and also weapons training.”
“He said it was good - but the scrolling was too slow.”
Still a relative newcomer to coding on the ZX Spectrum, this was a pixelated epiphany for Townsend.
“He told me to make it flick screen instead.
“But they aren’t actually sprites!”
Big and imposing, Saboteur’s not-sprite guards made the game look impressive.
“I had such plans!”
“But everything costs memory, and there’s a limited budget.
“), Saboteur was ready, and quickly became a hit with ZX Spectrum owners in particular.
The sequel-shy Durell boss was perplexed, but Robert White gave his blessing nonetheless.
It was risky - this was way before Tomb Raider when suddenly everyone wanted female characters.”
“I copied my loading and title screens from pictures,” he says.
“And I needed a picture of a leather-clad woman for Saboteur 2.”
In these pre-internet days, such an image was difficult to find.
The decision scuppered Townsend’s grandiose plans for a 16-bit Saboteur 3 and further sequels on PC and consoles.
It’s clear Saboteur’s popularity has not dimmed over the last (almost) 40 years.
What does its author think is the secret to this enduring 8-bit legend?
I’ve been chatting to Townsend for almost two hours, and we’re three pints down - each.
“I don’t think I realised how much fun it was back then,andI actually had money!
- so I’ve never had a real job.
It’s been a strange life.”
For updates on the Saboteur series,go to Clive Townsend’s website.
My thanks to Townsend for his time.
