There is a motorbike game for the Spectrum, programmed by Mervyn J. Estcourt and released by Micromega, which is beloved enough to have been the subject of remakes and of retrospectives in The Guardian and Retro Gamer in the decades since. There is a motorbike game for the Spectrum, programmed by Mervyn J. Estcourt and released by Micromega, which was a massive seller and reached #1 in the UK charts in 1984. They are not the same game. One blogger’s claim from a couple of years ago is illustrative: “Say the words MJ Estcourt to any hardcore ZX Spectrum fan and 99% will reply with “Deathchase!”, 1% may mention Full Throttle”.

Mervyn Estcourt (who shares his name with a character in an Agatha Christie short story) grew up in Bristol and worked at the dock before developing games in his thirties. Before Deathchase and Full Throttle, his breakthrough came with Luna Crabs in 1983. Luna Crabs is a 360-degree shooter with some similarities to Beach-Head developer Bruce Carver’s Neutral Zone. It has a 3D effect where the enemy crabs look increasingly giant as they move towards you. Estcourt completed it on his own before taking it to London-based publishers Micromega. He was, according to Micromega’s Robin Cooke-Hurle, not particularly easy to deal with and suspicious of the contracts he was offered, but they would work together successfully.

  • Luna Crabs (Micromega, 1983, ZX Spectrum)
  • Luna Crabs (Micromega, 1983, ZX Spectrum)

It’s easy to see why Luna Crabs was a good fit for Micromega, because 3D was a big thing for them. They stuck the word “3D” in large text at the top left of their game covers, which would frequently cause “3D” to get erroneously added to the titles. Computer & Video Games quoted Micromega as saying Luna Crabs was “carefully constructed to achieve the correct 3D perspective and push the Spectrum’s graphics capabilities to the limit”. That wasn’t the only boundary Micromega were keen to push in 1983, claiming to become the first ever home computer software company to advertise on TV. They spent £4,000 on slots on ITV and Channel 4 as part of moving from utility software into games.

For Deathchase, Estcourt took the 3D effect from Luna Crabs and applied it to riding a motorbike through a future dystopia, shooting other bikers for cash bonuses. There is something of Ultimate’s Tranz Am in the general concept, but it’s a concept transformed by getting up close. You see in a first-person view, hands turning the handlebars in front of you. Trees rush towards you and you have to weave between them, watching for not just other riders but tanks and helicopters in the distance. Every so often the sky turns from blue to black and the words “Night Patrol” come up. It’s instant, marvellously atmospheric, and even more impressive for being able to run on lower-memory 16K Spectrums. The first ever issue of Crash made it “New game of the month”, calling it “breathtaking” and declaring that “Return of the Jedi has nothing on this”.

  • Deathchase (Micromega, 1983, ZX Spectrum)
  • Deathchase (Micromega, 1983, ZX Spectrum)

Even before Deathchase was released, Mervyn Estcourt started work on his next game. Despite never having actually ridden a motorbike, he made them the basis for this game too, but he took that in a quite different direction. Full Throttle is a simulation of motorbike racing across ten different real-world circuits, putting you at the back of a field of 40 riders competing to be the fastest. Taking a more distant view from well behind your bike, it keeps you pretty much at the centre of the screen while the road snakes off to the left and right, in the manner of Namco’s arcade classic Pole Position.

Pole Position was not the most referenced title in reviews of Full Throttle. Micromega said that they “recognised the limitations of other road-racing games on the Spectrum and set out to correct them”, and the most obvious game to be talking about was Psion’s Chequered Flag. ZX Computing said that Full Throttle “does for computer motorcycle racing what Chequered Flag did for computer motor racing” while Popular Computing Weekly, amusingly, went for “does for motorbike racing what Chequered Flag didn’t do for cars“, chiefly referring to the addition of race competitors. The result was “one of the best simulations” per Personal Computer News.

The simulation brings a quite impressive sense of speed to its monochrome track, striped curbs doing much of the work. Better still is the way its physics work, your rider leaning responsively to the side but only slowly returning to upright after sharp turns, centripetal force in effect. Estcourt did finally ride a motorbike at some point during its development, and seems to have used that experience well. The Big K’s S.K., professing to be more experienced, vouched for the “authenticity of the movement”. Riding around the tracks is a tough but rewarding time, needing a fine line to be threaded to stay on track and fast, every touch of the edge of the road heavily punished. 

The weaker part is the addition it brought to the genre on the Spectrum, all those other riders. Hitting another bike results in an even faster trip to zero miles-per-hour than running on the curbs, but doesn’t take the other rider down with you. Together with the fact acknowledged on the cassette inlay that you have the best bike, it never feels like you’re really racing them, but instead that they’re obstacles in the path. It’s not as dramatic or drastic as hitting trees in Deathchase, but the experience is even more similar than you might immediately think.

Deathchase was a top 10 hit, but Full Throttle took success to another level. It spent two weeks at the top of the UK arcade chart, and stayed around the charts for most of the rest of the year. Eventually, it got a port so successful and so different that I will give it its own post when I get to 1986. Even before that, it demonstrated that while death, atmosphere and technical skill can bring a game a lot of love, something graspable and tied to real life sport can sell a lot more copies even without the same acclaim. It’s a lesson that will not take long to come up again.

  • ASP individual formats chart (arcade) for week ending 25 August 1984, Home Computing Weekly
  • ASP individual formats chart (arcade) for week ending 01 September 1984, Home Computing Weekly

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